890FXA-UD7 vs. CrossHair IV Formula with X6 1090T - AMD Strikes Back?

Our test configuration included the following elements:

• Motherboards:
  • GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD9
  • ASUS Rampage III Extreme
  • ASUS CrossHair IV Formula
  • GIGABYTE GA-890FXA-UD7
• Processor:
  • Intel Core i7 980X Extreme Edition 3,33 GHz ES
  • AMD Phenom II X6 1090T 3,2 GHz ES
• Processor cooler:
  • Scythe Grand Kama Cross
• Memory:
  • Kingston HyperX T1 1600 MHz 9-9-9-24 2 × 2 GB
• Hard disks:
  • HITACHI 160 GB SATA2 (HDS721616PLA380)
  • Samsung 200 GB SATA2 (SP2004C)
     
• Video card:
  • GeForce GTX 480
• Power supply: Xigmatek NRP-HC1501 1500 W
• Software environment:
  • Windows 7 RTM 64 bit Ultimate HUN
  • Intel INF 9.1.1.1019
  • NVIDIA GeForce 257.21 WHQL x64
  • Realtek HD Audio 2.49 Driver
• Display: ASUS 24T1 TV Monitor

Note for graphics tests:

Unfortunately, we can't compare the graphical measurements in this article to "X58A-UD9 vs. Rampage III Extreme, powered by i7 980X - whose crown?" with the results of the Intel systems in writing, as two GeForce GTX 7s provided 480D power in the Core i3 configurations, and unfortunately SLI is not available in the AMD config, so we were only able to get a single GTX 480 to work.

For the synthetic measurements (3DMark Vantage, Unigine Heaven Benchmark) the GeForce driver settings were not checked, everything ran according to the factory configuration. However, after the synthetic measurements, the games were manually turned on with 16 × anisotropic filtering, as in many applications this is not possible from the program, but its presence was felt necessary for the measurements.

The tests were first performed on both motherboards with basic settings, respectively on the base clock signal:

GIGABYTE GA-890FXA-UD7

ASUS CrossHair IV Formula

As you can see, the UD7 sets the base clock signal nine tenths higher for the processor (200,9 MHz), compared to seven tenths for the CrossHair IV, so there is no significant difference between the two models in this regard. Interestingly, the CrossHair IV set a much lower base voltage for the 1090T, and since the system was stable at 1,296 V, the need for the 890FXA-UD7 to be 1,472 V is questionable, of course in tuning without voltage change. With a GIGABYTE motherboard, we would probably go further than with the ASUS board (we witnessed a similar phenomenon in our test of Intel topsheets).

Tuning

Of course, we didn't want to present the article without tuning for the AMD tops either, so we started trying, first with the CrossHair IV Formula. The goal was to reach 4 GHz, which it did, but somehow it didn't want to be stable. We did not get discouraged, we transferred the procco to the 890FXA-UD7, set the required voltage and frequency values ​​(which are otherwise Over @ locker886 recommended to us), and everything seemed to be fine, the config was stable, as evidenced by running an Intel Burn Test.

We were happy to reach 4 GHz, as we pushed the 980X this much in our previous motherboard article, so we thought we could see what the two backside could be tuned to at the same frequency. We started running test programs for him too, but seeing the numbers, we started to feel worse and worse. Why? The answer is simple. The results obtained were far below the performance at the base clock signal, even on very, very many attempts. We couldn’t figure out the reason, so much is certain that although the Intel Burn Test ran and the system seemed stable in this way, something hadn’t clapped. This was also evidenced by the fact that, for example, when we monitored CPU usage with Everest under Cinebench, we found this:

Our joy thus turned to sadness, it is clear that it would not have made sense to include the lower-scoring, problematic results, so unfortunately at the measurement level the tuning was omitted and the two motherboards competed with each other on the base clock.

Applications used for measurements:

• CPU-Z 1.54
• Lavalys Everest Ultimate Edition 5.50.2100
• POV-Ray 3.7 beta 38
• Fritz Chess Benchmark 4.2
• Cinebench R10 64 bit
• Cinebench R11.5 64 bit
• WinRAR 3.92
• SuperPi 1.5 mod XS
• Uningine Heaven Benchmark v2.1
• 3DMark Vantage 1.02
• Crysis Warhead 1.1
• Colin McRae: Dirt 2 1.1
• Alien v Predator
• Far Cry 2 1.03