ASRock 890GX Extreme3 Mainboard Review (with Phenom II X4 960T and Phenom II X3 710)
Bluetooth 6 May 2010

Last week, we presented the ASRock 880G Extreme3 mainboard. Today, we take a look at the bigger brother the 890GX Extreme3 mainboard. Some what alike, both board features very similar specifications and functionalities. In fact, we aren’t able to find much difference between the two other than the 890GX Extreme3 uses the AMD 890GX north bridge which clocks it’s internal GPU at 700MHz instead of 560MHz on the 880G Extreme3.

The 890GX Extreme3 has a very complete feature set. It has  ASRock DuraCap (2.5 x longer life time), 100% Japan-made high-quality Conductive Polymer Capacitors with Advanced V8 + 2 Power Phase Design which can supports CPU up to 140W. This board also supports the Phenom II X6 6 core processor. The most interesting would be the UCC which allows it to unlock the hidden cores e.g. the Phenom II X4 960T, enabling the two hidden cores and ‘convert’ it into a  6 core processor.

As for memory wise, it supports Dual Channel DDR3 1800(OC). Graphics capability is better as it comes integrated with AMD Radeon HD 4290 graphics, DX10.1 Class iGPU, Shader Model 4.1, Max. shared memory 512MB. It also has a 128MB DDR3-1333 side port memory which can be overclocked to DDR3-1670 without any issues. The Radeon HD 4290 is also capable of decoding HD videos using UVD2, thus playing back of bluray is chicken feed.You can choose to use Multi VGA Output options: D-Sub, DVI-D and HDMI. 7.1 CH HD Audio with Content Protection, DAC with 110dB dynamic range (VIA® VT2020 Audio Codec with QSound) will definitely make it a good choice for a home entertainment box. If integrated graphics is not to your liking, you can always upgrade it to Hybrid CrossFireX, 3 way or quad CrossFire X.

In terms of peripheral connectors, this board supporst 1 x eSATA3 Connector, 6 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s connectors, 2 x USB 3.0 ports, 2 x IEEE 1394 ports. For overclockers, you would be delighted with the Smart Swith Design : 1 x Power Switch with LED, 1 x Reset Switch with LED, 1 x Clear CMOS Switch with LED and Dr. Debug (7-Segment Debug LED). There is also a comprehensive BIOS options in the BIOS like 30% Overclock etc.

Other software that comes free include  ASRock Instant Boot, Instant Flash, OC DNA, OC Tuner, IES, Multi-Speed Fan Control, CyberLink DVD Suite – OEM and Trial; Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi MB – Trial

Gigabyte GA-890GPA-UD3H new BIOS unlocks hidden cores of Phenom II processors turning quad core to six core. You can download the latest BIOS and try it out. Post your findings in our forums.

Download the latest BIOS from this link. Our Review can be read here  .

ASRock 890GX Extreme3 mainboard has the UCC function which can unlocked the 2 hidden cores within the Phenom II X4 960T, turning it into a 6 cores processor.

Some users were wondering if there are any stability issues. We ran Hyper PI 32M stability tests on 4 core turned 6 core Phenom II 960T processor and the 32M tests completed without any issues.

See the screen shots below on page 2

In another week or so, AMD will launch yet another chipset for the AM3 processors. The pair is known as AMD 880G north bridge and can be paired with south bridge SB810 or SB850.

Actually the 880G north bridge is quite similar to the 785G and 890GX. The 880G comes integrated with Radeon HD 4250 Graphics which supports DirectX 10.1, UVD2 and other specifications with a core frequency of 560MHz. It somewhat falls between the higher end 890GX and the to be replaced 785G. Most implementations will pair up the 880G with SB850 as SB850 supports RAID 5 in addition to 0,1,0+1.

Unified Shader architecture still remained 40 stream processors, 8 Texture Address Unit, 4 Texture Filiting Unit, 4 ROP. The motherboard also supports PCI 16X mode PCI-E 2.0 graphics card and support 8X +8 X Crossfire technology

The AMD 880G still supports HDMI 1.3 specification. It has built-in HDCP key support HD-DVD and Blu-Ray high-definition video playback. It also has embedded HD Audio codec, support 7.1-channel HDMI audio output , support ing Dolby Digital Plus and True HD audio technology.

Some manufacturers will also add on USB 3.0 support with NEC USB 3.0 chipset. Just like the AMD 890GX, AMD has disabled the loop hole that enables users with dual or tri core processor to enable the 4th core.

So far, ASRock, ASUS has AMD 890GX chipset based solutions which can unlock the hidden cores. I am sure the 880G would have similar implementations and it is all left to the manufacturers to think of ways to make their product stand out among the various brands and models.