MSI 790FX-GD70 AMD Motherboard @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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MSI 790FX-GD70 AMD Motherboard - The MSI 790FX-GD70 looks to be another winning product for MSI. It's a feature rich solution designed for AMD's socket AM3 processors using DDR3 memory with the overclocking enthusiast in mind.

The MSI 790FX-GD70 motherboard seems to be an extremely stable and solid platform for anyone looking to build a stock Phenom II system that shows to be an extremely energy efficient and cool running product.
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Nice to see a board that doesn't look like an accident at the Crayola factory.
 
A few observations

- The box with the test systems list the cpu as Phenom II X4 940
This is impossible since the GD70 is an AM3 only board and the X4 940 is an AM2+ cpu

- If the actual cpu used was the Phenom II X2 550 @ 3.1ghz, the platform looks pretty good.

- If the cpu used was a Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.2ghz, the numbers seem a little low
 
Good review. Wanted to point out about the combined eSATA/USB port. I don't think that's really new. My dad's middle of the road, 8 month old HP laptop has one of those. It was the first time I saw it, but have seen it on many other HP and other laptops. I say if it works, awesome. Make them all that way! :p
 
I think that some of Dan’s issues came from incompatibilities with older mechanical hard drives which we should probably look into replacing soon.
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LOL. He tests with a 150GB Raptor and a SATA 2.0 Samsung drive and you call those old? Wow. Just... wow. Dan's testing shows that this is a piece of shit motherboard and you blame it on "older" equipment? They're a 150GB Raptor and a SATA 2.0 drive, not some PIO 2 drive from the 90's. Then there is:
The MSI 790FX-GD70 motherboard seems to be an extremely stable and solid platform for anyone looking to build a stock Phenom II system that shows to be an extremely energy efficient and cool running product.
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Are you serious? After all the problems Dan had with the board? Is MSI paying you or something?
 
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digitalfreak said:
LOL. He tests with a 150GB Raptor and a SATA 2.0 Samsung drive and you call those old? Wow. Just... wow. Dan's testing shows that this is a piece of shit motherboard and you blame it on "older" equipment? They're a 150GB Raptor and a SATA 2.0 drive, not some PIO 2 drive from the 90's. Then there is:
Are you serious? After all the problems Dan had with the board? Is MSI paying you or something?
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Do you know anyone that owns one or have used one yourself? It's far from a pos.

todayz.jpg



x4b50test3.jpg
 
Why wasn't this motherboard compared against at least 1 other AMD mobo? That would be a better test of how well the motherboard performs instead of comparing them against all i7 setups.
 
digitalfreak said:
After all the problems Dan had with the board? Is MSI paying you or something?
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I was thinking the same thing. Dan seem to had a number of problems till he reformated with Windows 7.

When it comes to overclocking I have never had a hard-drive corrupt on me. Though I been overclocking only on ASUS boards up till recently.
 
its a request to please change the Phenom II 3.2 GHZ tabs everywhere in the charts to the more appropriate Phenom II x2 550 3.2 GHZ...otherwise if a person looks at the charts alone then he might get the wrong impression that you have used an x4 955 with also works at 3.2GHZ
 
shadow_419 said:
Do you know anyone that owns one or have used one yourself? It's far from a pos.
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Indeed I'm sure he doesn't. I've had this board for over a month now and have had not one problem with it. I'm running RAID 0 and have zero issues with it. I think Kyle is right and that those issues were probably due to aging/faulty mechanical drives. I've found the GD790FX to be stable, easy to use, and does as good a job of OC'ing as the AMD CPU allows.

I was wondering Dan: why did you use Ganged mode over Unganged mode? And why the 550 over a triple or quad-core Phenom?
 
shadow_419 said:
A few observations

- The box with the test systems list the cpu as Phenom II X4 940
This is impossible since the GD70 is an AM3 only board and the X4 940 is an AM2+ cpu

- If the actual cpu used was the Phenom II X2 550 @ 3.1ghz, the platform looks pretty good.

- If the cpu used was a Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.2ghz, the numbers seem a little low
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As noted in the review the packaging was sample packaging and not complete.

3.2GHz Used for testing.
 
maddude0025 said:
Good review. Wanted to point out about the combined eSATA/USB port. I don't think that's really new. My dad's middle of the road, 8 month old HP laptop has one of those. It was the first time I saw it, but have seen it on many other HP and other laptops. I say if it works, awesome. Make them all that way! :p
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Yes, I have seen them as well. Dan has not obviously. Not a really big deal IMO.

digitalfreak said:
LOL. He tests with a 150GB Raptor and a SATA 2.0 Samsung drive and you call those old? Wow. Just... wow. Dan's testing shows that this is a piece of shit motherboard and you blame it on "older" equipment? They're a 150GB Raptor and a SATA 2.0 drive, not some PIO 2 drive from the 90's. Then there is:
Are you serious? After all the problems Dan had with the board? Is MSI paying you or something?
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Your opinion is noted, and YES those are some older drives. And Yes, MSI is an advertiser of ours.

JoNo216 said:
Why wasn't this motherboard compared against at least 1 other AMD mobo? That would be a better test of how well the motherboard performs instead of comparing them against all i7 setups.
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Changing over the full testing suite to Win 7 and this was our first AMD board to run on it. The next AMD review will have a comparison.
 
mbbs20 said:
its a request to please change the Phenom II 3.2 GHZ tabs everywhere in the charts to the more appropriate Phenom II x2 550 3.2 GHZ...otherwise if a person looks at the charts alone then he might get the wrong impression that you have used an x4 955 with also works at 3.2GHZ
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I am unsure as to why you would think what you do. All benchmarks for Multimedia, Games, and Synthetics were performed with a PII 955 BE FOUR core processor.

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition - HDZ955FBK4DGI (HDZ955FBGIBOX)
 
I'm talking about this box, taken from the review:

1245379164xuubmu5t33320.gif


I was just observing a typo.

I am unsure as to why you would think what you do. All benchmarks for Multimedia, Games, and Synthetics were performed with a PII 955 BE FOUR core processor.

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition - HDZ955FBK4DGI (HDZ955FBGIBOX)
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This might be why he was confused :

NOTE: For all Subsystem Testing, an AMD Phenom II X2 550 (3.1GHz) Black Edition and 2 x 2048MB Corsair Dominator TR3X6G1600C8D ver 2.1 DDR3 1600MHz (8,8,8,24,1T @ 1.65v) memory modules running at DDR3 1333MHz (ganged mode) were used. The CPU was cooled with a Corsair Nautilus 500 paired with an Swiftech Apogee GT water block.
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http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/08/04/msi_790fxgd70_amd_motherboard/3
 
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That is now fixed. Thanks for being specific in what was being pointed out. A PII 955 X4 was used for perf benchmarks.

For SUBSYSTEM Testing, the specs are correct. Audio, Lan, drive controllers etc are done at a separate time from the performance testing.
 
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No problem, it was just a little confusing since none of the graphs specified what cpu was being used except for the one box and that was clearly incorrect.
 
I was pretty excited to see [H] do a review on this AMD board as I bought one just after they launched (took a chance before many reviews were out) and have been tweaking and playing with it ever since.

I am sorry to hear how much trouble Dan had with the board as I have not had any of the major issues he experienced. I feel it has been a Great! board one of the best AM3 boards in my opinion. My only complaint is the time it took to get a good bios that will unlock my x3 720 (take forever MSI) but now I am all happy with a x3 720 BE running unlocked @ 3.5ghz 24/7 could not be happier with my board and my $150 CPU.

I know this site is Pro I7, I don't blame you it is an awesome CPU and the benchmarks prove it. But for my budget it was not in the cards. I just wish this site would show a little more love towards the lower end (poor peoples hardware) price/performance type, and by love I mean a few more reviews. Cause nothing beats a [H] Review for equality and no BS sugar coating. Except of coarse this review I think might have been a little lackluster compared to the [H] Standard. But I am bias as I own the board so take it for what you want.
 
Having done several builds with this motherboard, my experience is completely opposite to this review. I found the board to be excellent. Runs nicely with DDR-1600 low voltage memory, very stable, runs cool, no issues at all.

I was ready to go with the Asus in my own system, but I went with the MSI instead and am very happy with it. Easy to overclock the 955 to 3.6Ghz on stock voltage. Took mild voltage tweaks to get it stable when running the base clock@300 and the NB@ 2400. The board will to 2600 NB clocks with some effort as well. It also does DDR-1600 with all Dimms populated, although it takes a bit of tweaking and relaxing the timings a bit. The board does have the ability to recover from a bad overclock, I have never had to clear the CMOS, just cycle the board on/off 4 times does the trick.

I can't find anything really bad about the board at all. A few people have fried the power regulation area when using extreme voltages, so that is perhaps a weak point of the board if you are planning for extreme cooling and overclocking. Don't let the [H] review cool you to this board, it is probably the best AM3 board out there right now.

It is currently the highest rated AM3 board over at Newegg.
 
Icestation said:
I was pretty excited to see [H] do a review on this AMD board as I bought one just after they launched (took a chance before many reviews were out) and have been tweaking and playing with it ever since.

I am sorry to hear how much trouble Dan had with the board as I have not had any of the major issues he experienced. I feel it has been a Great! board one of the best AM3 boards in my opinion. My only complaint is the time it took to get a good bios that will unlock my x3 720 (take forever MSI) but now I am all happy with a x3 720 BE running unlocked @ 3.5ghz 24/7 could not be happier with my board and my $150 CPU.

I know this site is Pro I7, I don't blame you it is an awesome CPU and the benchmarks prove it. But for my budget it was not in the cards. I just wish this site would show a little more love towards the lower end (poor peoples hardware) price/performance type, and by love I mean a few more reviews. Cause nothing beats a [H] Review for equality and no BS sugar coating. Except of coarse this review I think might have been a little lackluster compared to the [H] Standard. But I am bias as I own the board so take it for what you want.
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Maybe you missed this.

http://hardocp.com/article/2009/05/19/real_world_gameplay_cpu_scaling/
 
§kynet;1034444159 said:
Having done several builds with this motherboard, my experience is completely opposite to this review. I found the board to be excellent. Runs nicely with DDR-1600 low voltage memory, very stable, runs cool, no issues at all.

I was ready to go with the Asus in my own system, but I went with the MSI instead and am very happy with it. Easy to overclock the 955 to 3.6Ghz on stock voltage. Took mild voltage tweaks to get it stable when running the base clock@300 and the NB@ 2400. The board will to 2600 NB clocks with some effort as well. It also does DDR-1600 with all Dimms populated, although it takes a bit of tweaking and relaxing the timings a bit. The board does have the ability to recover from a bad overclock, I have never had to clear the CMOS, just cycle the board on/off 4 times does the trick.

I can't find anything really bad about the board at all. A few people have fried the power regulation area when using extreme voltages, so that is perhaps a weak point of the board if you are planning for extreme cooling and overclocking. Don't let the [H] review cool you to this board, it is probably the best AM3 board out there right now.

It is currently the highest rated AM3 board over at Newegg.
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We just tell our readers the facts about our experience. Our forums are here so our readers have an outlet for their opinions and sharing them. The more opinions the better! :)
 
I agree with that the forums are great for people to express their opinions. I work at a computer store and we recently stopped carrying all Asus motherboards and switched over to Gigabyte boards to sell and use for our custom computers. We were experiencing too many issues with the boards, too many DOA, and other misc. issues. The gigabyte boards so far have been great.

Realize that for 7 years or so all we've been using is Asus boards, but recently the care for their products have been shit in our experience so we stopped carrying them. Also out of the 10 RMA's we just sent out 7 were still defective.

So far Gigabyte has been great to us and we will continue to do business with them. Also a recent manufacturer we switched to was Mushkin for their memory. We used to be Corsair only. So far Mushkin has been great! Very low defective rate and we get much better prices than Corsair.

To each his own I guess, it really just matters what experience you have with the manufacturer and of course if you have a shitty one up front you probably won't go with it again.
 
digitalfreak said:
LOL. He tests with a 150GB Raptor and a SATA 2.0 Samsung drive and you call those old? Wow. Just... wow. Dan's testing shows that this is a piece of shit motherboard and you blame it on "older" equipment? They're a 150GB Raptor and a SATA 2.0 drive, not some PIO 2 drive from the 90's. Then there is:
Are you serious? After all the problems Dan had with the board? Is MSI paying you or something?
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Really? The whole other 3/4ths of the internet and the conclusion to this article seem to disagree with you. Keep spewing your nonsensical bullshit. This motherboard can handle everything but the most tasking LN2/LHe runs.
 
there is also another mistake on page 3

"The results here are actually quite good for the 790FX-GD70. The results here actually best results we've seen from the Core 2 Extreme QX9770 which is no small feat."

there was no core 2 extreme QX9770 in the graph..

also the sub system note still states you used a x2 550 instead of the x4 955 that the graph says was used..
there was no core 2 extreme QX9770 present in the graph..


and as well as everyone.. i agree that there needs to be another AMD board present in the review.. you guys have always done it with the intel boards when you graphed the differences between the i7 boards and all the other intel chipset based boards.. so why doesnt the AMD side get the same special treatment?
 
Great review as always, but im a little confused as to why the graphs do not scale correctly, i know its mentioned in the article that they don't, but anybody just scrolling down will see that in some cases there isnt too much of a difference (like the RAR test), when in actual fact its more than 2x worse. This happens in 2 tests were the AMD platform gets decimated by the I7.
 
gathagan said:
I almost made the mistake you did, but reread it carefully and understood.
Try this word substitution: "The results here actually surpass results we've seen from the Core 2 Extreme QX9770..."




See post #16 from Kyle. The subsytem tests were not done using the x4 955





Are you reading any of the posts?
See post #13
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that makes more sense with the word substitution..


yeah i read the posts.. but it wasnt the reading the posts that was the problem.. it was me not really paying attention to the review when i first read it where it said the sandra stuff was done with the 955..
 
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The 790FX has 42 PCI-E lanes correct? So I imagine, after the two x16 slots take up 32 of them, there isn't enough lanes to for the two remaining x8 slots. Am I correct in assuming they're inactive unless Crossfire is activated?
 
They are normally switched off unless you put a card in. You can run sound cards or other such add on cards (pci-e x1 or x4) in the x16 physical slots.

edit: if you have more than two cards in crossfire they cut down to x8
 
shadow_419 said:
They are normally switched off unless you put a card in. You can run sound cards or other such add on cards (pci-e x1 or x4) in the x16 physical slots.

edit: if you have more than two cards in crossfire they cut down to x8
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I'm aware of that.

On top of the 32 lanes taken by the two x16 slots theres another 4 taken by the chipset interconnect. So thats only 6 lanes left. Obviously 2 x8 slots can't be supplied with this. So I imagine those two slots have no lanes allocated at all. They're completely inactive unless they are used the x8/x8/x8/x8 Crossfire configuration. Plugging in a sound card or whatever won't do anything since that won't trigger the Crossfire config (or if it does it'll steal 8 lanes from the one of the x16 slots).
 
Just want to share with any of you guys from Germany. I had a bad flash last week, bought my mobo from eBay without any warranty. I found on MSI website that says I can send my mobo in with 20Eur in cash to reflash the BIOS. I sent it in last thursday and got it back yesterday. Great support from MSI imo.
 
I just got this board delivered today to me- turns out it was DOA (or I'm not doing something right).

I went to power on the system and all the lights and fans spun up but, got no post, no video, nothing- It wouldn't even shut off when I hit the power button or the button on the board itself (even the damn digit counter that gives the mobo codes wasn't working). I tinkered with it for hours, tried a different graphics card, etc etc..Still no luck. Now Newegg's making me pay $12.50 to ship it back and wait a week for a replacement. :mad:
 
RailGunRiz said:
I just got this board delivered today to me- turns out it was DOA (or I'm not doing something right).

I went to power on the system and all the lights and fans spun up but, got no post, no video, nothing- It wouldn't even shut off when I hit the power button or the button on the board itself (even the damn digit counter that gives the mobo codes wasn't working). I tinkered with it for hours, tried a different graphics card, etc etc..Still no luck. Now Newegg's making me pay $12.50 to ship it back and wait a week for a replacement. :mad:
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That sucks man. It happens sometimes. I have this board and it's working great. I think it's one of the best AM3 boards out there.
 
I got a fresh one from Newegg and it's working just fine now. Good board- wrong impression lol.
 
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Just bought this board yesterday after a DOA gigabyte from the classifieds (I'm RMA'ing with the user's help but didn't want to wait a month to put my rig together.) I'm hoping it performs as well as (most) of you are saying it does!
 
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