As you saw with our recent coverage of the Gigabyte Open Overclocking Competition (GOOC) North American Finals Gigabyte is pushing their way back into the fore front of the enthusiast scene. It was not that long ago when their mindset seemed to be one of just maintaining the status quo and building boards for the average consumer. But something changed their minds and they decided to refocus on the enthusiast and the upper end of the consumer market (the upper-mid-range?) We began to see Gigabyte (or GB for short) drop things in like 2 ounces of copper into each board. They shifted away from standard capacitors and move to all solid caps. They beefed up their power phases and even added in a hardware/software phase switching capability for better energy efficiency. GB seems to be willing and able to push the envelope of the enthusiast’s needs and even some of their crazed wants with their newest additions to the Ultra Durable line up. They have shown us great promise with their Intel based boards, so how about something from AMD? Not that long ago we took a look at the 890FXA-UD7 with AMD’s flagship CPU the Phenom II X6 1090T just to see if Gigabyte can maintain the same performance levels with AMD as they have shown with Intel’s CPUs.
Section IV Performance – GamingGaming as a test of motherboard performance is sort of a joke these days. The big player in the gaming arena is the GPU. Everyone but a few hardcore PR teams know this. However, it is important to run at least a few (one from each current DX version) to see if there are any issues with the combination of components on a motherboard. These are items like Audio lag, memory lag and of course problems with the PCIe lanes and signal traces. If there are issues in design, drivers or BIOS then you can have odd gaming performance. So without much more preamble let’s dive into the three games we currently use; Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 for DX9 FarCry 2 for DX10 and Battlefield Bad Company 2 for DX11.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 DX9 -This is an excellent but short game that put you right into the action from the beginning and does not let up the pressure until the very end. The graphics are a little better; most notably the night and thermal imaging have been improved. The AI is still the typical COD “bar fight” style AI, with maybe a tad more finesse. All in all it is not a bad game to play and a decent one to use for testing. Our testing run starts at the bridge and ends after you clear the school in the first level of the game. Settings are shown below as are the performance numbers.
Gigabyte’s 890FXA-UD7 falls into place around the middle of the pack for Modern Warfare 2. It is 7 FPS behind the leading system (that used an HD 5870).Still at these speeds it is doubtful you would know the difference between any of the boards except the H55N-USB running with the HD 5970.
FarCry2 DX10 -Although not one of my favorite games this tedious game does have some good graphics. The large sandbox style of the game lends to mission based play. The only problem is that the AI is rather low grade. Still the more CPU power the more the bad guys try to do. Over all the game was a little bit of a disappointment to play, but still not a bad DX10 representation. Our testing run starts right after you get your first mission to clean out the safe-house and ends after the hostage rescue. Settings and performance numbers are shown below.
Again we find the 890FXA-UD7 in the middle as far as gaming goes. This time it is only behind the leading HD5870 by 6 FPS, but is ahead of this same board for average FPS. In reality any of these products would make a good gaming platform for FarCry 2.
Battlefield Bad Company2 DX11 –I have liked many of the Battlefield games. They usually tend to be fast paced and fun. With Battlefield Bad Company 2 you do get some of that, but there is something about the graphics and the movement that just does not sit right. The AI is a less sophisticated form of the bar fight AI, but it gets the job done. Still, the game is good for testing as it can put a strain on the components of the board. Out testing run is the entire first level, from beginning to end. Settings are shown below along with the raw numbers.
For Bad Company 2 we see another middle of the road performance from the 890FXA-UD7. Nothing much to talk about here; it will give you an acceptable gaming experience if Bad Company 2 is your thing.
Gaming wrap-up -What can I say about the gaming performance numbers here that I have not said before? The performance numbers here were very close. In most cases you would never be able to tell them apart if they were side-by-side. The Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 will work for you as a good gaming platform plus it has room for expansion with the option for Quad Crossfire. The audio experience in-game was acceptable but again would not win you any audio excellence awards. The Dual Lan with teaming can be a plus if you are gaming over a LAN setup that supports teaming (Especially over 802.3ad LACP).
