AMD's 890GX Chipset - Same Graphics, Better South Bridge
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 2, 2010 4:36 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Testing the SB850’s SATA Controller
Update: New 3Gbps and 6Gbps results on the AMD 890GX here.
In my review of OCZ’s Vertex Limited Edition SSD I previewed some of the results of the world’s first SSD with native SATA 6Gbps support - Crucial’s RealSSD C300. Capable of sequential read speeds greater than 333MB/s, the C300 is the only drive in the world that can actually benefit from 6Gbps SATA at this point.
There’s just one problem. My RealSSD C300 died in the process of testing it with the 890GX. I don’t believe it was the motherboard or chipset, but right now it looks like I stumbled upon an untested usage case that put the drive in a state where it won’t even let a system POST anymore.
It’s because of situations like this that I’ve been very cautious in recommending any new SSDs. Hence my conclusion in the Vertex LE review:
“Go up another $100 and the recommendation is easily the Crucial RealSSD C300. Again, assuming that nothing horrible ever happens with the drive. I do have more faith in Crucial’s validation testing given that Micron is shipping the same drive to OEMs, but it’s still a brand new, unproven platform.”
With the bricked C300, I can’t provide any 6Gbps results on the 890GX unfortunately. I should have a new drive in about 12 hours so I’ll update here once I do get it. With the C300 out of my parts bin, I switched to a drive that could really push the limits of 3Gbps SATA - the OCZ Vertex LE.
Unfortunately, in doing so I uncovered another problem - this time with the 890GX. It’s AHCI performance is noticeably lower than Intel’s:
| Iometer 6-22-2008 Performance | 2MB Sequential Read | 2MB Sequential Write | 4KB Random Read | 4KB Random Write (4K Aligned) |
| AMD 890GX | 248 MB/s | 217.5 MB/s | 38.4 MB/s | 130.1 MB/s |
| AMD 790GX | 247.8 MB/s | 213 MB/s | 37.6 MB/s | 119.5 MB/s |
| Intel H55 | 264.9 MB/s | 247.7 MB/s | 48.6 MB/s | 180 MB/s |
AMD’s south bridge ends up delivering anywhere from 72 - 93% of the performance of Intel’s ICH. While this isn’t something that you’d necessarily see with hard drives, it is something that is evident with SSDs since they do actually push the limits of 3Gbps SATA. To make sure it wasn’t an iometer thing I also copied a 2.4GB x264 over from the boot drive (Intel X25-M G2 160GB) and still noted slower performance on AMD’s chipset. This is actually an improvement over the SB750 used in the 790GX/FX. Performance was even worse back then, particularly with writes.
And in case you’re wondering, running the SSD in Native IDE mode didn’t help either - performance was expectedly slower.
ASUS’ engineers apparently ran across something similar. They found that disabling C1E and Cool’n’Quiet boosted drive performance and recommended I try it. The results were unexpectedly higher, but not on par with Intel’s ICH performance:
| Iometer 6-22-2008 Performance | 2MB Sequential Read | 2MB Sequential Write | 4KB Random Read | 4KB Random Write (4K Aligned) |
| AMD 890GX | 248 MB/s | 217.5 MB/s | 38.4 MB/s | 130.1 MB/s |
| AMD 890GX (C1E/CnQ Disabled) | 256.4 MB/s | 234.8 MB/s | 42.3 MB/s | 135.3 MB/s |
| Intel H55 | 264.9 MB/s | 247.7 MB/s | 48.6 MB/s | 180 MB/s |
Obviously disabling important power management features isn’t a long term solution, but it does show that AMD may be able to provide a future hardware or BIOS fix for the problem.
Slower SSDs didn’t exhibit the problem. I tried the Indilinx Barefoot based Mushkin Io:
| Iometer 6-22-2008 Performance | 2MB Sequential Read | 2MB Sequential Write | 4KB Random Read | 4KB Random Write (4K Aligned) |
| AMD 890GX | 229.6 MB/s | 166.5 MB/s | 35.7 MB/s | 13.4 MB/s |
| AMD 790GX | 229.7 MB/s | 166.5 MB/s | 35.7 MB/s | 13.4 MB/s |
| Intel H55 | 236.9 MB/s | 164.4 MB/s | 36.0 MB/s | 13.4 MB/s |
It appears that the dropoff only happens in one of two cases: 1) When you’re pushing a lot of IOPS (e.g. 4KB random write tests on the OCZ Vertex LE) or 2) When you’re pushing a lot of bandwidth (e.g. 2MB sequential read tests on the OCZ Vertex LE).
As a mainstream chipset, the SATA issues don’t really matter. Unfortunately, if you are going to buy a high performance SSD then it may be an issue.
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Paladin1211 - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
TechReport has pointed out the 890GX has very good overclock capabilities. I want to know if it can really get the Athlon II X4 630 to over 4Ghz. You have been praising the overclocking potential of the Core i3/i5 + H55/57 all lately. How about the same test with a few sensible AMD CPUs?Thank you.
Reference link:
http://techreport.com/articles.x/18539/10">http://techreport.com/articles.x/18539/10
Rajinder Gill - Wednesday, March 3, 2010 - link
Hi,From the looks of it, those were simply bus frequency tests made possible by a low CPU multiplier. I doubt that CPU's are hitting higher overall core frequencies (at normal CPU multiplier ratios) just by a change of Southbridge.
regards
Raja
Paladin1211 - Wednesday, March 3, 2010 - link
Wasn't it a change of southbridge that "Enabled higher Phenom overclocks?"http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
Rajinder Gill - Wednesday, March 3, 2010 - link
I'd have thought once you get to 4GHz or so most people are limited by cooling because the AMD substrate seems to favour lower temperatures for outright CPU frequency.We can test it against 790 at some point (assuming both boards have been 'engineered' to the same level).
later
Raja
Paladin1211 - Wednesday, March 3, 2010 - link
Waiting for boards, BIOSes, drivers to be more mature is always a good idea. I do care about 24/7 stable overclocking at stock voltage and highest possible core speed on air.Thank you, I'll stay tuned :)
Rajinder Gill - Wednesday, March 3, 2010 - link
Hi,Waiting for things to mature would be a good idea based upon what I'm seeing with the Sharkoon Drive Port..
regards
Raja
chucky2 - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
What was the point of this release, other than to come out with a "new" product to increase sales from the Gotta Have It crowd...?1. STILL no 8 channel over HDMI???? It's something that should have been done in 780G, then 790GX, then 785G, and now 890GX does not support it?!?!?! I don't need to buy an add-in card AMD, I can just buy an Intel box. Insanity.
2. Would it seriously have been so hard to put in a 5000 series core to one-up Intel and actually have SOME reason to buy this over cheaper - and essentially just as good - mature 790GX alternatives (which can also still do core unlocking btw)? Exactly why buy this over a cheaper, more stable 790GX, or competing Intel product?
They should have called this 795GX and saved themselves the embarrassment. <- 690G and 790GX user, not an Intel fanboi.
Chuck
leexgx - Wednesday, March 3, 2010 - link
the audio is very good point, it still can unlock cores and do ACCgeok1ng - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
I once again request a side by side image quality comparison.AT is almost making me concede that Intel graphics are good enough, now all the matter is to proof once and for all that Intel is not cheating ( again, i would kindly remember)on image quality, as it did on the past.
swaaye - Tuesday, March 2, 2010 - link
I'm guessing that one big reason for the IGP being the same is that the bandwidth to RAM, across the HT bus, is unchanged since Phenom came out. The peak bandwidth is a measly 8.8GB/s assuming you have a CPU with a 2.2GHz HT clock, and that is shared with the rest of data going across HT.