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- Date:
- Tuesday , August 04, 2009
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
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.
Introduction
MSI is a well known name to the world of computing enthusiasts. They maintain a wide product range of motherboards, graphics cards, and other products.
Their motherboards range from basic no frills designs for the OEM market to more expensive and high end solutions for today's latest and greatest processors which are obviously targeted toward the computing enthusiast. Today we are looking at the MSI 790FX-GD70 which is designed for AMD's latest socket AM3 processors.
The MSI 790FX-GD70 is based on the AMD 790FX chipset and is coupled with AMD's SB750 south bridge. The 790FX-GD70 supports AMD's socket AM3 Phenom II X4, X3, and X2 processors as well as the new Athlon II CPUs. According to MSI's documentation, the 790FX-GD70 supports 140 watt CPUs, DDR3 2133MHz memory, along with active phase switching. It also supports AMD's Crossfire and CrossfireX multi-GPU technologies. The board boasts and impressive array of other features. The MSI 790FX-GD70 also has a new feature for MSI boards called the OC Dial. This is not unlike the joystick on the Rampage II Extreme. It serves the same basic purpose which is to manually control FSB speeds in hardware on the fly.
MSI includes their Dr. MOS feature which is a driver IC combined with two MOSFETs. MSI claims this allows for 93.6% power efficiency, improved response time and lower temperatures. The board also supports active phase switching. This function turns off unnecessary power phases to reduce power consumption.
Main Specifications Overview:
Detailed Specifications Overview:
Packaging
The packaging is what we'd call "old school." It is a simple box that we've come to know over the years. Printing is basic, and the board is protected by an anti-static bag and a piece of foam and cardboard holds the bundled cables and manuals on top of the board. Which is really all most of us want to pay for. Our board arrived without damage. Absent in this case is the retail manual and drivers disks. This board was an production sample and its packaging was not intended for retail distribution, but should be representative of actual retail product. While the packaging gets the job done, it does not impress.
Board Layout
The first thing I noticed about the 790FX-GD70 when I took it out of the box was that the board itself is very svelte looking. In fact, this is arguably the best looking MSI board I've ever seen. It is certainly one of the best looking AMD processor compatible boards I've seen. While we don't rate boards on their appearance generally speaking, a good looking board beats an ugly board provided all else is equal right? 
Well the MSI 790FX-GD70 has at least that much going for it right out of the box. The second thing I noticed was the board's layout. The layout on the 790FX-GD70 is one of the better ones I've seen for an AMD processor compatible motherboard. AM2/AM2+ boards were notorious for being badly laid out, in my opinion anyway. This board could be better in that regard as well, but I have only a few complaints, all of which are minor.
The CPU area is nice and clear. There shouldn't be any problems installing most modern heat sink and fan combinations on this board. Even the RAM slots are positioned to leave ample clearance in front of the CPU socket.
The 790FX-GD70 has four DDR3 DIMM slots. The board supports a total memory capacity of 16GB. I don't care for how the memory slots are grouped, but it isn't as bad as what they used to do. The black slots indicate one bank, and the blue the other. Instead of the old method MSI used where they'd group a blue and a black as one bank and so on. (Using this color scheme as an example.) That is a minor issue compared to the fact that the memory slots are too close to the primary PCI-Express x16 slot. You cannot easily remove the modules, or install new ones without pulling the video card, or flexing some stuff. I almost have to give MSI a pass on this issue though even given the fact that this sort of thing bothers me quite a bit.
The northbridge is a bit oddly placed here in that it is almost behind the CPU socket area. It is interesting in that I've never seen that before and it makes great use of the space. The cooling system used by the north bridge is fairly ample and covers the PWMs and the south bridge as well. The chipset cooler was always only barely warm to the touch. North and south bridge temperatures were 36c and 32c respectively.
As I stated before, the south bridge shares the north bridge's cooling system. The south bridge is located in the usual place in front of the expansion slots. Directly in front of the south bridge are the 8 SATA ports. MSI did fairly well here as they used right angle, locking SATA headers. I like that. The blue ports attached to the JMicron JMB322 controller are locking, but plug strait down into the board. I'm not a huge fan of that, but they are for the most part located out of the way.
The expansion slots are in my opinion, laid out almost perfectly. Between each blue PCI-Express x16 slot there is ample room before reaching the next one. Therefore two, three, and even four card multi-GPU configurations would be well at home here. The board features 4 PCI-Express x16 slots that operate in either 16x16 mode, or 8x8x8x8 modes. The board also has 1 PCI-Express x1 slot and 2 legacy PCI slots.
The I/O panel features the usual PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, 1 SPDIF out, optical out, 7 USB ports, 2 RJ-45 ports, six mini-headphone jacks and the most bizarre port of all. A combination USB / eSATA port. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it and used it. I actually tried both a USB flash drive and an eSATA device through this port, and both devices worked. I am not really sure why they chose to engineer such a port, but it is kind of neat. This port also provides power over eSATA for devices that support the feature.
Overclocking Center
MSI included a simple utility with the 790FX-GD70 called the Overclocking Center. The overclocking center has basic system information on the main screen. This includes motherboard, CPU, VGA and BIOS information. The D.O.T. menu is for MSI's Dynamic Overclocking Technology. The software has two modes, a basic and an advanced. The basic mode has preset profiles. 5 to be exact. These set all the overclocking values. Cooling, Silence, Default, Game, and Cinema are represented here.
In advanced mode you can save and edit your own profiles, or load a previously saved profile. There are a fair amount of options here, which is good. The utility is easy to use and understand as a result of its simple nature. The memory tab works very much like CPU-Z's. You can see model, brand and size information, memory load, and the timings table for each modules. The modules are viewed separately and are selected by the drop down list on the left. The PCI tab displays PCI device resources, vendor ID's and a bunch of other technical information.
The BIOS isn't the easiest thing to work with. Most everything is essentially in one place which is nice, but I think there are too many sub-menus to make using the BIOS intuitive. Still, it gets the job done and more is better than less when it comes to BIOS settings.