AMD’s 890GX Chipset

AMD’s 890GX Chipset: Low-End Price, High-End Features

Contributing Writers:
Patrick "Mac"
Mike "lemonlime"

Before we really get into this article, let’s rewind to November of 2007 when the original AMD Phenom processors were first released as B2 stepping chips. As many of you will remember, those were tough times for AMD since Intel had already been heavily marketing their quad core Kentsfield for almost a year. To make matters even worse, the original Phenoms failed to perform up to expectations and featured a TBL bug that popped up in certain situations. AMD however retained their fighting spirit and pushed through adversity to release the B3 stepping Phenoms and eventually went on to introduce the highly successful Phenom II and Athlon II lines of dual, tri and quad core processors. With these products, they have been able to concentrate on brining value to the CPU market in the face of what seems to be rapidly increasing prices from Intel’s camp.

While AMD’s processors have quickly progressed from one generation to the next, the associated AM2+ and AM3 motherboards didn’t fare quite as well. 790FX-based boards were the flagship products back when they were released in 2007 and still remain so today. The same can be said about the other 790-series boards but many of them were replaced with the newer 785G products over the course of last year. Let’s be honest though; in terms of component lifecycles, nearly three years is a hell of a long time. The 700 series of chipsets were getting long in the tooth and while the 785G boards did breathe some life into things, AMD needed an update. This is where the new 800-series comes into play.

Today marks the official release of AMD’s new chipsets that are based on the new SB850 and SB810 southbridge chips. These new products are basically more evolved versions of the 700-series and will make up the backbone of the new Leo and Dorado platforms. At their most basic, the two new platforms will be targeting different ends of the market. AMD has stated the Leo will appeal to buyers looking at the upcoming Phenom II X6 and Zosma-based quad core processors while the Dorado aims for the lower end dual and quad core products. According to the information we have, these new chipsets pack a number of new features but will retail for almost the same amount as the outgoing products. If anything, this should cement AMD’s value-oriented goals into the mindsets of the buying public.

It should also be noted that today marks the first time the media is allowed to talk about the upcoming Thurban-based Phenom II X6 as a bona-fide product. You won’t see any firm benchmarks yet (at least not from us) and actual availability is slated for sometime in the April / May timeframe but at least we now know the name of this elusive 40nm, 6-core processor. However, the only reason AMD is announcing it now is to stave off some of the bleeding which will inevitably come with Intel’s upcoming Gulftown release.

For the purposes of this article we will be concentrating on the 890GX chipset since it targets a potentially lucrative market for AMD and one which will appeal to consumers looking at a value-oriented setup. There won’t be many benchmarks here since they will come in the separate motherboard reviews but we do have boards from ASUS and Gigabyte on-hand which will be on display a bit later in this article. So, treat this article like a primer for a whole series of 890-series reviews in the coming months.

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AMD’s 890GX Chipset

Introducing the Leo and Dorado Platforms

With the release of the 800-series chipsets, AMD is now moving away from their older “Dragon” and “Pices” platforms towards what they call “Leo” and “Dorado”. Leo will basically be the all-encompassing name for their high end and upper mainstream products while Dorado will end up targeting entry level consumers. Let’s take a look at how these new platforms compare to their predecessors.


Looking at the chart above, it should be come apparent that the new SB8xx-based boards aren’t really going to offer anything revolutionary but will rather evolve AMD’s platforms to fit better with today’s market trends. The most important move in our opinions from a compatibility standpoint is the omission of DDR2 support from the newer platforms. It was only a matter of time until the move to a DDR3 / AM3-exclusive platform was made and make no mistake about it; we feel this has been a long time in coming.

Much like the 790GX and 785G from the last generation, the lower-end 800-series boards will feature integrated graphics but we will go into more about that a bit later. One of the more interesting things about the graphics aspects for these chipsets is the fact that yet another mid-range GX-series board from AMD will feature dual 8x PCI-E lanes for Crossfire use. However, it should be noted that it is up to the board manufacturer to implement the necessary on-board automatic switch to ensure full 16x operation if only the first PCI-E slot is populated. Also of note is the fact that none of these boards will be SLI certified for the time being. The 800G on the other hand makes due with a single 16x PCI-E slot.

890GX: Gigabyte and ASUS

One of the most significant evolutions between the 700-series and 800-series is the addition of SATA 6Gb/s compatibility to the southbridge. This could give AMD a serious leg up on Intel who would have had to change their CPU dies in order to support this new standard since all of their I/O functions are now controlled through the CPU package. Instead, all AMD had to do was add the functionality to their southbridge and it was off to the races. Unfortunately, while the number of USB 2.0 ports was increased on the SB800-series, SuperSpeed USB (or USB 3.0) will not be natively supported but can be added through a controller chip. Just remember that the 880G will not have support for SATA 6Gb/s.

AMD’s new line-up does look quite strong and it is great to see pricing won’t see significant upwards movement when going from one generation to the next. We have to applaud AMD for this price stagnation and there is no doubt in our minds the new features will entice quite a few people to make the jump to a non-Intel platform.

These will basically be the last major revisions to AMD’s current chipset architecture before the release of the Scorpius and Lynx platforms in 2011. While not much is known about either of these platforms, we can tell you that they will offer the first brand new x86 architecture from AMD in quite some time. Basically, Scorpius will use a 32nm Zambezi CPU with up to 8 physical Bulldozer cores while Lynx will encompass 32nm dual, triple and quad core Llano CPUs. All in all, it looks like AMD will have a strong line-up far into the future.

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AMD’s 890GX Chipset

890GX Features and Specifications

As with any new chipset launch, we’ll turn things over to the customary block diagram.

Image courtesy of AMD.

As with all of AMD’s platforms, the 800 series is a dual-chip solution encompassing the 890GX primary controller hub – we don’t feel right calling it a northbridge any more as the memory controller resides in the CPU – as well as the SB850 southbridge. As expected, the duties of 890GX include CPU interface and PCI-Express I/O control as well as graphics processing via the integrated graphics core dubbed Radeon HD 4290. You may notice that there isn’t much detail on the IGP depicted above, but not to worry, we’ll cover that in detail shortly.

You may notice that there is no mention of DDR2, only DDR3 and socket AM3 in the block diagram. Unlike earlier IGP platforms, it appears that AMD will be targeting the 890GX to AM3 based DDR3 systems – particularly with their new AM3 based Athlon II line of CPUs. Since memory control is exclusive to the CPU, and the CPU interfaces with the chipset using the same Hypertransport 3.0 bus, there is technically no reason that the 890GX couldn’t be adapted for use with AM2+ based systems. We’ll have to wait and see what board partners decide to produce, but we wouldn’t be surprised if the 890GX platform remains exclusively AM3, which makes sense as that seems to be the market direction – even for budget systems.

Let’s begin with the PCI-Express configuration supported by the 890GX. Like it’s predecessor, the 790GX, the 890GX has a healthy array of PCI Express 2.0 lanes, including a 16X 2.0 lane that can be evenly split into two 8X 2.0 lanes for Crossfire-X configurations. This was certainly nice to see, as the previous lower end 785G chipset couldn’t split it’s 16X lane, and users are forced to more of a crippling 16x4 configuration that could be limiting with higher end cards. A dual 8X configuration gives buyers a lot of flexibility. Not only can they begin with nothing but integrated graphics, but they can move all the way up to a pair of higher end cards if they so desire.

Aside from the graphics card lanes, there are a total of six additional 1x 2.0 lanes available for integrated components – like audio and network controllers – and additional slots. If this weren’t enough, two more 1x 2.0 lanes are provided by the SB850 southbridge.

Moving on down to the shiny new SB850, we see that AMD has updated the chipset interconnect and is now using a 2GB/s interface dubbed “Alink Express III”. Although we’re not sure exactly what has changed, the older Alink Express II was essentially a 4x PCI-Express 1.1 lane, so bandwidth appears to have been increased – likely to a 4x 2.0 lane - for improved chipset to chipset communication performance.

Speaking of the southbridge, the most significant new feature that is has been brought to the table is 6Gbps SATA support. That’s right, those lucky enough to own one of the new Sandforce 1500 based SSDs can now enjoy Read/Write performance well beyond 300MB/s. Aside from updated SATA support, the remainder of the southbridge is consistent with the older SB750. We unfortunately don’t get to enjoy integrated USB 3.0 support at this point in time, as the SB850 remains a USB 2.0 controller.

Image courtesy of AMD.

On the topic of USB 3.0, we should note that AMD was very careful to point out that USB 3.0 controllers can be interfaced to the chipset using the 1x PCI-Express 2.0 lanes for a maximum theoretical throughput of 500MB/s. Coincidentally, Intel’s new H55 and H57 are limited to half bandwidth lanes and a maximum of 250MB/s to off-chip USB 3.0 and SATA 3.0 controllers. This likely won’t be of concern for USB 3.0, but having on-chip SATA 3.0 support is certainly a benefit as the only bottleneck is the 2GB/s Alink interface between the chipsets and the 1x component interface lanes don’t need to be used at all.

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SilverStone HDDBoost

SilverStone HDDBoost Hybrid SSD / HDD Device


Manufacturer's Product Page: SilverStone Technology HDDBoost
Price: MSRP $49


There really is no denying that solid state drives have a level of power and performance in certain crucial areas which simply make them better than hard disk drives as “Operating System” drives. With the number of SSD reviews showing their faces around the internet, it should be obvious to you that even the slowest modern generation solid state drive is faster in most areas than the fastest hard drive. However, all that power and performance comes with a massive increase in price and a huge decrease in storage capacity versus a spindle-based drive. This has led to many people forgoing the SSD upgrade option for the time being.

In the past, hard drive manufactures like Seagate and Samsung have tried to combine the power of solid state drives with the capacity of spindle-based drives with their “hybrid” products. Sadly these efforts were less than impressive and were quickly discarded. Meanwhile, Adaptec has approached this problem differently with their MaxIQ kit MaxIQ kit , which allows you to use a solid stat drive as cache for a raid array. Unfortunately, this solution is designed for an enterprise environment, costs a heck of a lot of money and is limited in which SSDs you can use.

Users want the best of both worlds: the storage capacity of a spindle-based drive with the speed of an SSD and this is where SilverStone’s HDDBoost comes into play. The HDDBoost allows you to mix and match different hard and solid state drives while combining the units in such a way that if one drive kicks the bucket, the data on the other is still safe and sound. In a nutshell, the HDDBoost is a two port RAID 1 controller with a twist and besides the obvious limitation of one HDD and one SSD, allows for a massive amount of flexibility. We will get into what makes the HDDBoost so unique, but needless to say this is certainly a novel and intriguing way of overcoming past (seemingly insurmountable) problems which plagued earlier Hybrids. The ability to chose your level of performance and storage size based on your own personal criteria is seductive, but only if it works. SilverStone also claims that by minimizing the writes to the SSD, you will effectively extend its life as well.

This unit doesn’t include a drive but should rather be treated as the means to combine two dissimilar drives one virtual drive. As such, it comes with a frugal price of around $49. With a price such as this, the HDDBoost is intended to bridge the chasm between consumers that can afford high performance, high capacity SSDs and those that just want some extra speed in their system without sacrificing storage capacity.

To help us figure out how this product performs in its intended market niche, we have carefully selected two moderately priced drives to showcase the HDDBoost’s abilities. On the hard drive end of things we have chosen the venerable Western Digital 320GB single platter hard drive which goes for about $45, and for the solid state drive we have gone with the Kingston branded version of the Intel X25-V 40GB: the now defunct Kingston SSDNow V 40GB which retailed for as little as $90. All in all, this could prove to be an interesting review.

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Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1GB Toxic

Product Number: 100282TXSR
Price:
Price @ NCIX.com
Price @ Newegg.ca
Price @ Newegg.com
Warranty: 2-years


With Hardware Canucks cluttered with reviews of ATI cards, it is obvious that competition isn’t something the graphics card market is seeing a lot of lately. A situation such as this wasn’t expected by anyone about a year ago but we have to live with it for the time being. In the meanwhile, ATI hasn’t been pulling their punches or resting on their laurels and neither has their board partners. While competition against NVIDIA cards is virtually nonexistent at this point, there are some healthy battles going on between the heavyweights within ATI’s stable of partners. These manufacturers are striving to differentiate themselves from their rivals by releasing cards sporting increased clock speeds and some downright interesting cooling solutions and this review will be focusing on one such card. While any sort of competing product from NVIDIA would be welcome by the market, we’re more than happy to make do with Sapphire, ASUS, Gigabyte, PowerColor, and others releasing ATI-based cards of ever-increasing potential.

Sapphire usually leads the pack when it comes to custom versions of ATI cards and even before the official release of the HD 5000-series, they were already leaking information about what would become the first custom HD 5870 available on the market: the HD 5870 Vapor-X. They have followed up that impressive card with a successive number of non-reference DX11 products but have so far stuck to the mostly reference-clocked Vapor-X products. Missing in action were the Toxic and Atomic editions which made a serious name for themselves when they were released as HD 4890 cards not that long ago but it was only a matter of time before comparable HD 5000-series cards saw the light of day. Well, the wait is over because Sapphire has now introduced their HD 5850 1GB Toxic into the market.

The HD 5850 Toxic represents a significant step forward for Sapphire and HD 5850 cards in general since it throws out the reference design, adds a custom cooler and pushes clock speeds above and beyond what we are used to seeing. In order to keep the heat from an overclocked core under control, Sapphire has decided to use their Vapor-X cooling technology as well as a truly impressive heatsink design. There are other features as well such as specially designed chokes but we will get into those a bit more later on in this review. To make matters even better, all of these additions don’t come at an exorbitant price increase as we have seen this card retailing for under $340 which represents a mere $30 premium over a reference HD 5850.

In our opinion, there is a lot about the Sapphire HD 5850 Toxic to get excited about and by the end of this review; we hope you will feel the same way.

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