Review Conclusion
of
DFI LP JR 790GX-M2RS AMD
790GX+SB750 Mainboard
Bluetooth 29 Dec 2008
Conclusion
We have seen many AMD 780G/SB700 and AMD
790GX/SB750 board reviews in year 2008. Many manufacturers have thrown their
hats in the ring and made available their AMD 790GX boards as early as September
this year. Unfortunately, most board makers sacrifice features for space. The
DFI LP JR 790GX-M2RS is also based on the AMD 790GX+SB750 chipsets. Although
space constraint is an issue when designing boards, DFI is able to provide full
CrossFireX support on this board by providing two full length PCIe 2.0 slots. As
it is based on AMD 790GX+SB750, it also supports integrated ATI™ Radeon HD3200 graphics
IGP with sideport memory, which includes AMD Hybrid CrossfireX technology and DirectX 10
capabilities.
This board uses a 4 phase high end digital PWM,
enabling stable voltage to the CPU, avoids damage to the capacitors and enhances
the efficiency of the power consumption. There is also Realtek 885 audio codec
for theater level audio and high end Marvell 8053 GbE controller on board. On
top of that, the baord uses high end Made IN Japan Solid stat capacitors for
durability. The LP JR series heatpipe is also designed to cool better than
conventional heatpipes. The design of the north bridge also allow one to switch
to other kinds of heatsinks easily, e.g. water cooling.
If you noticed, we didn't test the IGP this time round. Instead we tested it
with 2 external 4850 graphics cards. One thing we noticed during the test of
this board is that the DVI output is a digital out only, DFI did not lay the
lines for Analog to be output via the DVI connector. Thus we are unable to test
that portion unless we get a digital monitor. The other thing we noticed about
the design is that the two PCIe 2.0 slots are hard wired to PCIe x8. There isn't
much difference in the performance when running a card in 8x or 16x. CrossFire
works in Dual 8x though.
As for CPU overclocking, the BIOS comes with a wide
range of options including memory timing, voltages, wide range of HTT etc. See gallery
for more information. As it uses the SB750 (SB) of the board is the
Embedded Controller for AMD OverDrive- Advanced Clock Calibration. With that,
we can run AMD Overdrive to overclock the CPU cores by adding a 4% increase in
all the 4 cores through this option below. We were able to o/c it to 255MHz
x11= 2.8GHz with the voltages bumped up as shown below.
In conclusion, DFI has made an excellent product which is small
yet powerful. Although most mATX design only has a single PCIe x16 slot, DFI
managed to make 2 on board. Unfortunately, it is hard wired to run at 8x per
slot. The on board DVI-I is also a disappointment as most users might find it
weird why this DVI-> D-SUB won't work on a conventional CRT monitor. Of course,
you would argue that most people already uses DVI cable digital monitors, but it
is best that a board is able to cater to a wider range of users. Just imagine
you buy the board and there is not output and you start to RMA it. There was no
information about the use of digital display in the manual too. Overall, it is
an almost perfect product if it would throw in some eSATA ports and 1394.
Discuss
Pros
- Excellent Image quality (int graphics)
- Low CPU Utilization when playing back VC-1 (int graphics)
- HDMI interface
- Hybrid CrossFire & CrossFireX support
- Power On/Off Switches
Cons
- no eSATA
- No 1394
- DVI-I interface (no analog mapping)
- Single PCIe is 8x lane only
Ratings
Here are my ratings out of 10.
|
Category |
Score |
|
Performance |
8 / 10 |
|
Features |
8
/ 10 |
|
Ease Of Installation |
10 / 10 |
|
Overclocking Features |
8 / 10 |
|
Documentation |
7 / 10 |
|
Packaging |
8 / 10 |
|
Cost / Performance |
8 / 10 |
|
Overall Rating : |
8.1 / 10 |
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