Setup and notes
Comparison systems |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Motherboard | Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 | ASUS Crosshair V Formula | ||||
| Motherboard BIOS | F6E | 8301 | ||||
| Processor | AMD FX-8150 | |||||
| Chipset driver | AMD AHCI 1.2.1.301 | |||||
| Memory | Corsair 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 | |||||
| Memory timings | 9-9-9-24-2T @ 1,600MHz | |||||
| Graphics | AMD Radeon HD 6950 2GB | |||||
| Graphics driver | Catalyst 11.9 | |||||
| Disk drive | Corsair V128 SSD | |||||
| Optical drive | Sony AD-7263S | |||||
| Chassis | Corsair Obsidian Series 700D | |||||
| Power supply | Corsair HX1000W | |||||
| Operating system | Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit | |||||
CPU and memory benchmarks |
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| AIDA64 v1.80 | The successor to Everest - useful for measuring memory bandwidth and latency | |||||
| HEXUS.PiFast |
Our number-crunching benchmark stresses a single core by calculating Pi to 10m places | |||||
| wPrime 2.0.4 | Another number-crunching benchmark that stresses all available CPU cores/threads | |||||
| CINEBENCH 11.5 | Using Cinebench's multi-CPU render, this cross-platform benchmark stresses all cores | |||||
| 7zip 9.20 | We use the built-in benchmark in this open-source file-compression utility | |||||
| TrueCrypt 7.0a | An encryption/decryption benchmark that's partial to AES acceleration | |||||
GPU benchmarks |
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| 3DMark 11 | Run at the default performance preset | |||||
| StarCraft II | DX9, 1,920x1,080 ultra quality - 2x AA | |||||
| Call of Duty: Black Ops | DX9, 1,280x720, low/medium quality | |||||
General benchmarks |
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| Storage performance | USB 3.0 read and write speed (Kingston SSD inside Tsunami enclosure) | |||||
| Power consumption | While idling and when running wPrime | |||||
Testing notes
We've put in our shiny FX-8150 chip and looked at the Gigabyte in relation to the ASUS 990FX Crosshair V Formula motherboard. While we already have stock-clocked numbers for the ASUS board, we feel as if there's little point in showing you just how fast the Gigabyte UD7 is at basic speeds. Rather, potential purchasers will look to use such a board as a base for really pushing the chip.
Accordingly, the Gigabyte has been benchmarked with the FX chip running at 4.7GHz/1.42V, in line with the also-overclocked ASUS, and we'll determine just which is the better board for the enthusiast. You'll see three sets of results in upcoming graphs: one for the stock-clocked ASUS and two for the overclocked Gigabyte and ASUS boards.