ECS A790GXM-AD3 (Socket AM3) DDR3 motherboard review - Introduction

AMD have certainly had to fight off an amount of heat they got ever since they introduced their Phenom processor. Plagued by a bug which they fixed moderately fast, their reputation got a pretty big dent. Last year, after April, things started to look much better. The new B3 revision processors where pretty okay. Then in January 2009 they released their Phenom II processor. Processors with tremendous good value for money, being able to compete with Intel's Core 2 Quad lineup of processors. And surely, while Intel has the upper hand in the high-end segment, AMD remains king of performance for money, as especially the Black Edition Phenom II processors offer good value and can be overclocked pretty darn well. Something the Guru3D readers like and enjoy doing very much.

With a successful launch of Phenom II processors, AMD has now started to further improve their chip design and overall performance. Squeeze more performance out of them, reach higher clock-frequencies, yeah the truth is, it isn't looking so bad anymore, no sir. I think roughly half of the PCs in my office alone are Phenom II based computers. I like the price, and I certainly like the performance very much, plus they are very energy efficient with the AMD 790 chipset.

So, while in early January AMD released Phenom II processors, in early February the first Phenom II update was already released. AMD Phenom II processors with a new socket design, Socket AM3, which opens up DDR3 memory support. The good thing, Socket AM2+ (DDR2) motherboards can run these AM3 processors fine (mandatory BIOS update required though). But fact is... that is a stackload of compatibility for sure as you can use a DDR2 memory platform with AM3 processors.

When we reviewed the 1st batch of AM3 processors, we did so on Socket AM2+ to prove how sound that chipset really is. We also promised to review a Phenom II AM3 processor on the new DDR3 (AM3) platform. And that's what we'll be doing today. We will review the A790GXM-AD3 motherboard from the folks at ECS Elitegroup. This article will entail two primary focuses. The first being a review on this motherboard, the second... to observe if we actually see a performance increase from DDR2 over DDR3 memory.

Good stuff, have a peek at this A790GXM-AD3 Black Edition motherboard, and then start up the review.