Review Conclusion of ASRock 880G Extreme3
Bluetooth 24 Apr 2010
Conclusion
ASRock has given us another surprise as we never expected ASRock to throw in so much features for a low-mid range chipset board. Being the first 880G board to support core unlocking using UCC, ASRock has given a new life to AMD enthusiasts. With the UCC, a dual core or tri core can be easily unlocked using UCC to turn it to a quad core. Likewise the Phenom II 960T quad core can be turned into a 6 core on this board. In addition, ASRock True 333 gives users USB 3.0, SATA3 and eSATA3 in full bandwidth and not shared PCIe bandwidth.
Performance wise, this board does have the power to pit against the 890GX. In fact, we find that the AMD 880G is much easier to overclock than the AMD 890GX north bridge. In our tests, 3Dmark 06/Vantage can run through tests at 1.1GHz too but it isn’t stable enough. Even at 1GHz, pairing with a high clock speed for the Sideport memory, the results already exceeded the performance of an unlock overclocked ASUS 890GX board. (The ASUS 890GX if overclocked to 1GHz should be on par with the ASRock 880G).
In terms of overclocking , we were able to reach around 3.6GHz, that is 1GHz above the original clock speed of the Phenom II X3 710 processor. Overclocking was done via BIOS and OC tuner to check it’s clock speed and voltage levels. For the lazy overclockers, ASRock also has a TURBO 50 option in the BIOS. Just select and get your overclocked system instantly without any tweaking. If you want you can find tun and save your overclocking settings through OC DNA.
In Conclusion, I feel that the ASRock 880G Extreme3 is a board that you should watch out for in your next upgrade purchase. It is one of the best price/performance board available in the year 2010. We give it our Editor’s Choice award.
Pros
USB 3 support
UCC
Power switches, Clear CMOS switch at the back
Cons
No DisplayPort
Ratings
Here are my ratings out of 10.
| Category | Score |
| Performance | 10 / 10 |
| Features | 10 / 10 |
| Ease Of Installation | 9 / 10 |
| Overclocking Features | 9 / 10 |
| Documentation | 7 / 10 |
| Packaging | 8 / 10 |
| Cost / Performance | 10 / 10 |
| Overall Rating : | 9 / 10 |
The 880 boards run well….
😉
No display port? Really?
[…] Below is a picture of the CPU-Z, images of it running 3Dmark Vantge, hyperPI etc can be found here in the forum. You can also read the review here. […]