ECS A990FXM-A review

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Finals Words and conclusion

 

Finals Words and conclusion

Just like the other 990FX reviews allow me to split up this conclusion into two segments, the AMD chipset and the motherboard. We'll start off with the chipset. To be honest we expected more features and innovation in the actual 990FX chipset, pretty much 990FX is a petit overhaul of the 890FX, only very subtle small changes can be found. The changes can be found in somewhat wider multi-GPU support, creating optimized data paths for stuff like USB 3.0 chips and thus bandwidth and some minor tweaks in the RAID unit. Truth be told, the 790 and 890 chipsets were already impressive, so while the chipset itself is really good we did hope for native USB 3.0 support, and how cool would it have been to assign three graphics cards x16 PCI-Express lanes? Still though, if you have two GPUs two full bandwidth x16 links are available to you and that is certainly much better than anything Intel has to offer with its chipsets. But to fully and optimally enjoy multi-GPU solutions, AMD needs faster processors. So tweaks, optimizations, better multi GPU support (SLI is now supported) and of course Socket AM3+ with Bulldozer processor support is what the 990FX chipset is all about.

 ECS AMD 990FX motherboard

That said, let's move onward to the ECS motherboard itself.

As far as build quality goes, ECS outdid themselves this round as this really is a nice motherboard. Phenom overclocking based on the processor multiplier in the BIOS, ECS for whatever reason decided did not implement the feature in the first BIOS. After feedback we gave them we already receoved an intial BETA BIOS with overclock (MP) support for Phenbom II. So that is in the works, yet too late to cover in this article.

Overclocking left aside, the overall performance baseline is as good as any other 990FX motherboard, no problems there. Additional features can be found in Power on/reset buttons, the inclusion of a USB 3.0 bracket, an extra Ethernet jack, Bluetooth and yeah, the Diagnostic POST LED. That last one displays error/activity/post and status codes of the motherboard. ECS once again forgot to include the description of the actual codes in the manual though. We like the new UEFI implementation of the motherboard (graphics interface BIOS). It will still need a few revision before it's top notch though, right now it's still a little laggy with mouse control but overall the layout and features seems to be quite okay.

Additional benefit of a 990FX motherboard is SLI compatibility as well, this board will support SLI and Crossfire. For that we really need faster AMD processors. Bring on Bulldozer FX processors AMD, bring them on...

The motherboard as delivered is extensive, you'll have all the feasible gadgets onboard ranging from integrated multi-channel audio, two gigabit Ethernet jacks, DDR3 1866 and 2133 (OC) MHz support in dual-channel configuration, the USB 3.0 ports and we like the three PCIe x16 slots. Running multiple GPUs is getting more common all the time so it's good to know that at the very least your motherboard supports it.

The overall baseline performance is as good as the 800 series chipset with a Phenom II processor, with 1600/1866Mhz DDR3 memory support now able to be configured in the BIOS you might see slightly faster performance thanks to that feature, but as many of our memory reviews have already shown, very high memory bandwidth does not do a lot for Phenom II and Athlon II processors at all.

guru3d-recommended_150px.jpgOverclocking wise, well since the Phenom II CPU multiplier could not even be changed with this first BIOS, we didn't even bother checking the baseclock overclock results as it's the Phenom's biggest handicap. The missing MP overclock feature of course is different with Bulldozer processors and a BIOS update is going to fix it for Phenom II processors, so once these become available this board will be a nice piece of machinery.

To date we feel that the 990FX chipset should probably have never been released prior to the new FX series processor, but alongside of it.

For us it is really hard to make a point as to what the motherboard is all about, which is AMD's FX (Bulldozer) processors. But we do hope that anyone can see through the Phenom II performance and look at the ECS A990FXM-A for what it really is, a decent design, overall good looks and all the latest features and gadgets you'll need to get your gaming freak on.

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