Unigine Tropics, Oblivion, and Power Consumption
Unigine Tropics Benchmark

    This native DX 10.1 benchmark flies the user over a pleasant, tropical island full of water and lighting effects, as well as complex geometry.  The benchmark was set at 800 x 600 resolution with no AA/AF, low shaders, and no ambient occlusion.

AMD 890GX Chipset Review - SATA 6G goes native - Motherboards 27

    We see a nice overall increase in performance, though it is far from being buttery smooth at even this low resolution.  The extra 200 MHz results in around a 25% increase in overall performance from the older 785G.

Oblivion

    I did a manual runthrough in the forest east of the Imperial City and recorded it with FRAPS.  Resolution was set at 800 x 600, Medium quality settings, no AA/AF enabled.

AMD 890GX Chipset Review - SATA 6G goes native - Motherboards 28

    We again see a nice increase in framerates, and the biggest jump was in the minimum frame rates.  The board supported this last generation game very nicely, and it was very playable and had very good graphics considering the integrated nature of the part.

Power Consumption

    The board was tested without a standalone video card, which could easily double the power consumption depending on what card was being used.  AMD liked to point out that they now have SATA 6G and increased graphics performance for a small increase in chipset TDP.  Let’s take a look at the differences between the older 785G board and the new 890GX.

AMD 890GX Chipset Review - SATA 6G goes native - Motherboards 29

AMD 890GX Chipset Review - SATA 6G goes native - Motherboards 30

    The differences between the two boards are really not all that great once we consider what is actually included.  The Gigabyte board has both an extra USB 3.0 controller, as well as a separate SATA 2 controller, both of which will consume power when enabled.  The Asus board is essentially a bare 785G with none of those extras.  When we consider the core clock of the graphics is 200 MHz faster, the difference in overall power consumed is fairly negligible.  Six watts under graphics load is nothing.


« PreviousNext »