ASRock’s gamer oriented 990FX motherboard, endorsed by gaming legend Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel – It has the looks, but does it have the performance?
Product on review: 990FX Professional
Manufacturer: ASRock
Street Price: £160 inc. VAT
The second 990FX board we’ve had the pleasure to review is here, and once again, it’s a special one. The ASRock 990FX Professional marks the pinnacle in ASRock’s AMD lineup and is designed squarely for gamers and overclockers. Designed as part of the ‘Fatal1ty’ range of products with Jonathan ‘Fatal1ty’ Wendel, this board aims to provide not only top end performance, but a whole range of useful features.
This is the first AMD ASRock motherboard Vortez have looked at and 990FX Professional has some tough competition, so let’s not waste any further time and see how it fares.
About ASRock
ASRock Inc. is established in 2002, specialized in the field of motherboards. ASRock strives to build up its own brand. With the 3C design concept, “Creativity, Consideration, Cost-effectiveness”, the company explores the limit of motherboards manufacturing while paying attention on the eco issue at the same time, developing products with the consideration of eco-friendly concept.
ASRock has been growing fast and become world third largest motherboard brand with headquarter in Taipei, Taiwan and branches in Europe and the USA. The young and vibrant company targets from mainstream to enthusiast MB segments for different kinds of users, owning reputation around the world market with its reliability and proficiency.
ASRock has been growing fast and become world third largest motherboard brand with headquarter in Taipei, Taiwan and branches in Europe and the USA. The young and vibrant company targets from mainstream to enthusiast MB segments for different kinds of users, owning reputation around the world market with its reliability and proficiency.
Technical Specifications: Full Details
Features
• Premium Gold Caps (2.5 x longer life time), 100% Japan-made high-quality Conductive Polymer Capacitors
• Digital PWM Design, Advanced V12 + 2 Power Phase Design
• Supports Dual Channel DDR3 2100(OC)
• Supports AMD Quad CrossFireX™, 3-Way CrossFireX™ and CrossFireX™
• Supports NVIDIA® Quad SLI™ and SLI™
• Dual PCIE GLAN with Teaming function
• Dr. Debug, Smart Switch Design: Power/Reset/Clear CMOS Switch with LED
• Supports Fatal1ty XFast USB, XFast LAN technologies, Graphical UEFI
• Supports Fatal1ty F-Stream, On/Off Play Technology, Turbo UCC
• 7.1 CH HD Audio with Content Protection (Realtek ALC892 Audio Codec), Supports THX TruStudio™
• Free Bundle : 1 x 3.5mm Audio Cable, 1 x Front USB 3.0 Panel, CyberLink MediaEspresso 6.5 Trial
Packaging and first look
The 990FX Professional is presented in a box that highlights the Fatal1ty branding by showing the logo and related images. Some features are shown in the bottom right, including AMD FX CPU support and a sticker showing a free trial for Cyberlink’s MediaEspresso 6.5. The back of the box has a list of the boards features and a labelled image of the main PCB components.
The Fatal1ty branding takes centre stage
Inside the box there are two compartments, one with the motherboard in, the other with the accessories. The bundle includes:
• Full multilingual user’s manual
• UEFI BIOS quick start guide
• Technologies brochure
• Driver and software CD
• IO shield
• 1x SLI bridge
• 2x molex to SATA 4-pin power connectors
• 1x 3.5mm audio cable
• 3x black SATA data cables
• USB3.0 front port bay & SSD mount
• USB3.0 rear IO cover
A good selection of accessories
Having removed the motherboard from the box, we can see that it has a very striking design: The classic red and black to imply the Fatal1ty branding, but this time with gold highlights in the form of solid Japanese capacitors. If you’re a Vortez fan, you will have noted that when we looked at the ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3, it also sported these expensive looking additions. They are, in fact, the same type of solid capacitors we see on a lot of modern boards, but simply with a different finish. The three heatsinks (MOSFET, 990FX chipset, SB 950 south bridge) also all show some kind of branding for the product. Overall the look is clearly aimed towards gamers, overclockers and those who take pride in the appearance, as well as the performance of their system. It certainly looks at home among any set of high end hardware.
An overview of the motherboard – red, black and gold
Closer Look
Let’s look at the board in more detail. The first area to focus on is the CPU socket. The 990FX Professional makes use of a V12+2 power phase design and Digital PWM to deliver a solid voltage to the CPU, even under overclocking. Having a 12+2 power phase puts the board firmly apart from the competition, that typically sport 8+2 phases for the AM3+ platform, including the GIGABYTE flagship, the 990FXA-UD7 that we looked at last week. This should give the board serious overclocking potential, which we will explore later in this review. As a side note, however, it was felt that this board was not nearly as weighty as the GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD7, possibly attributed to the extra copper used in the PCB and larger cooling solution of the UD7.
The CPU socket itself is the regular AM3+ design, with no surprises here. There is plenty of clearance for CPU coolers as well as large graphics cards, as the top most expansion slot is only PCI-E 1x.
A view of the CPU socket and surrounding area
Like other 990FX boards, the 990FX Professional is equipped with 4x DIMM slots for dual channel configuration of DDR3 memory of frequencies from 800MHz to 2100MHz (OC). There is also a maximum capacity of 32GB. We can also see the 24-pin ATX power connector in a standard fashion (as opposed to right-angled) as well as two ports for front panel USB3.0 – i.e. up to 4 physical ports.
RAM slots attach at one end only, but RAM is secure
The board comes with 6x SATA III ports, all provided by the AMD SB950 southbridge, which are capable of RAID 0, 1, 0+1, JBOD, and RAID 5. There is a 3rd party solution for the two rear eSATA connections, but no additional internal SATA ports.
Enough storage capabilities for most users
The board is also equipped with power and reset buttons, as well as an LED debug feature that allows you to check the status of POST and and if there is an error, possibly see why the PC may not be booting correctly. Welcome additions and they sit next to the large southbridge heatsink with the Fatal1ty logo on top.
Power and reset buttons on the board along with debug LEDs
Moving onto the bottom of the board, we can see the front panel connections, which include two USB2.0 connections (for four ports), the usual array of power LEDs, switches etc (located in the middle as opposed to the right side), a COM port, IR port, firewire, and HD audio. There are also two of the 6 fan headers here, with 2 PWM and 4 DC type. The power and reset buttons light up in blood red when the motherboard is booted, but can be turned off in the BIOS if required.
A normal complement of front IO ports
There is ample support for PCI-E configurations as well as legacy PCI devices, with two PCI slots and 3x PCI-E 16x slots (two are 16x/16x, other is 4x) and two PCI-E 1x slots. This allows for up to three way Crossfire and SLI (or 4-way if you have dual GPU cards of course). No PCI-E 3.0 support, but this is not expected to come on the Scorpius platform at any point, and we’re likely for a bit of a longer wait before that’s an option on AMD setups. However, with no PCI-E 3.0 GPUs yet, this is not at all important. The inclusion of two legacy PCI slots on this board is rare for a high end model, so may differentiate it from the crowd, especially if you’re running a sound card and TV tuner, for example.
Support for Crossfire and SLI is a feature common to 990FX boards
With regards to IO ports, the 990FX professional has a pleasing amount of connectivity. Here’s a breakdown, going from top left to bottom right:
• PS/2 mouse
• PS/2 keyboard
• Clear CMOS button
• Coaxial digital audio
• SPDIF digital audio
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 2x USB2.0
• 2x USB2.0
• eSATA
• 2x USB2.0
• Fatal1ty USB mouse port
• USB2.0
• Firewire
• eSATA
• Gigabit Ethernet #2
• 2x USB3.0
• 7.1 analogue audio
Very good IO connectivity is also common to other ASRock designs
BIOS
The 990FX Professional uses the new UEFI interface as a replacement for the traditional text-based BIOS. In theory, this allows for easier, clearer and more reliable manipulation of the advanced system settings as well as the more mundane ones. As you can see the UEFI design matches the branding.
The BIOS splash screen
The first sceen in the BIOS gives information about the CPU, including current frequencies and other information. The main screen of interest here is the OC Tweaker screen, which allows us to overclock and change various settings relating to system performance. Although it looks slick, all the information doesn’t fit on one page alone, even though a more efficient layout may allow, and at times the response from the mouse seemed to lag, and transitions between settings wasn’t as fluid as a traditional interface. One can only hope this will be addressed with a BIOS update, but it seems more like a fundamental issue with the relatively new UEFI technology. In addition to this, the fan control seemed to only function correctly on certain fans, perhaps an issue to do with the PWM/DC control methods, as this left our test rig Corsair H70 at full-pelt, which was unpleasant and unnecessary.
The OC Tweaker screen
Technologies & Software
The 990FX Professional is packed full of exciting features – this section aims to explain those and assess their worth.
Fatal1ty XFast USB
This technology improves USB transfer performance with storage devices, in some situations, with up to 145% boost. Software is installed as part of the bundle that allows you to turn this feature on and off.
XFast LAN
This is a useful feature that allows you to not only monitor all LAN traffic (a small gadget can be installed) but also shape traffic according to your preferences. For example, one could set traffic from particular games to be prioritised above other traffic to increase bandwidth and reduce latency. If you have the time and inclination to set this up, it may be of use to you, but it is not fully automated unfortunately.
Digital PWM Design
The CPU Vcore voltage stability is improved by using Pulse Width Modulation to smooth and optimise power delivery.
V12+2 Power Phase
12 phases are used for the CPU power and 2 for memory. Most 990FX boards seem to offer 8 phases for CPU, so offering another 50% is a marked improvement by ASRock. In theory, it should translate to increased stability, efficiency and even better temperatures.
Fatal1ty Mouse Port
This USB port on the rear of the board can be used in conjunction with the F-Stream software to tune the USB polling rate. 125Hz to 1000Hz is possible, with 500Hz being the preferred value. This allows smoother mouse movement and faster response for serious gamers. Many gaming mice are already bundled with this kind of functionality, but it is a welcome addition to the motherboard itself. Note: This won’t work with all mice.
Turbo UCC
This is an automatic overclocking solution that also allows you to unlock CPU cores on AMD processors where they have been locked out. It is almost certainly better to perform this manually, but if you’re a newbie to overclocking this may help with the basics.
Premium Gold Caps
These are the capacitors used over the motherboard, which are solid, 100% Japan made with a gold coating that is designed to represent long life and stability associated with this type of capacitor.
Graphical UEFI
This is the new interface to the BIOS that we looked at already. It also supports booting from 2TB+ hard drives.
F-Stream
This piece of software allows you to monitor hardware temperatures, RPMs, voltages, frequencies and so on, and also allows you to tweak them. You can use this tool to overclock from within windows, and most of the time it works fine. I did experience it setting the PCI-E frequency to the lowest value once, for no real reason. It’s a good way to fine tune your overclocks relatively easily. At the time of review, AMD Overdrive isn’t working with the 990FX Professional, so this is a worthy alternative.
Dual PCI-E GLAN with Teaming Function
This allows you to team up the two LAN connections into one single connection with twice the theoretical bandwidth. In theory, this should increase throughput in situations where the network connection is limiting of speed, but if you’re already using gigabit apparatus, this isn’t usually likely. You’ll also need the source of the transfer to have sufficient bandwidth in its subsystems to allow for any increase in transmission speed.
On/Off Play Technology
This feature allows you to connect a portable audio device to output through the PC speaker, hence the 3.5mm audio cable in the accessories bundle. Personally, I don’t at all see the point in this feature on a high end 990FX motherboard.
Cyberlink MediaEspresso 6.5 Trial
This is a trial version of software that allows you to convert video into formats suitable for mobile devices or the internet.
App Charger
This features allows charging of ‘many Apple devices’ simultaneously. I can’t see why it is specific to Apple, so I must speculate this refers to USB charging functionality.
Premium Audio
The 990FX comes equipped with the Realtek ALC892 codec, and allows for use of THX TruStudio and playback of Blu-Ray format audio at 24-bit/192kHz quality in up to 7.1 channels.
If anyone reading would like any of the other technologies or software explained, follow the link at the end of this review and let us know on the forums and we’ll do our best to explain and maybe even include it in the review.
Test setup and overclocking
Let’s finally take a look at how the board was tested and our initial results. The test setup is made up from an array of modern parts from some top manufacturers:
CPU AMD Phenom II X6 1100T (3.3GHz, 3.7GHz Turbo)
Motherboards
–ASRock 990FX Professional
–Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7
Memory Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2x4GB Dual Channel), 1866MHz @ 9-10-9-24
CPU Cooler Corsair Hydro Series H70
Graphics ZOTAC GeForce GTX 570 AMP! Edition
PSU Corsair HX650W
Storage
Corsair Force Series F120 120GB SSD (Sandforce 1200)
LG GGC-H20L Blu-ray and HD-DVD ROM Drive
Case Cooler Master Lab Test Bench V1.0
Overclocking
The AMD 1100T has an unlocked multiplier, which makes overclocking the CPU as easy as increasing the multiplier and voltage and seeing how far you can go. However, we found that overclocking with the 990FX Professional was not as easy as one could hope. Bumping up the multiplier and frequency to 3.9GHz (19.5×200) was fairly simple, with only a small increase in Vcore needed to gain stability at 1.40V.
Getting this far was difficult
Despite our best efforts, the overclock could not easily be taken further. 4GHz on the same voltages was not stable, and any increases in Vcore or CPU-NB presented with lockups of the system and the base clock could also not be taken further and remain stable. The system was bootable up to 4.2GHz, but was not stable under our stress testing. It was also noted that the CPU power phases made a whistling or whining noise under load that was not heard with other boards tested so far. In addition to this, temperature readings from the BIOS differed wildly to the F-Stream software, which both differed from 3rd party programs. Such programs seem not to be able to get accurate readings at all for the AMD CPU, but instead only the ‘Core’ temperature, which is calibrated slightly differently, giving incorrect idle figures. Hopefully some of the issues here can be rectified with a BIOS update, and also AMD may have decided to drastically improve the temperature sensors in the new FX CPUs.
Synthetic benchmarks – AIDA64
CPU Queen
This simple integer benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and the misprediction penalties of the CPU. It finds the solutions for the classic “Queens problem” on a 10 by 10 sized chessboard. At the same clock speed theoretically the processor with the shorter pipeline and smaller misprediction penalties will attain higher benchmark scores. For example — with HyperThreading disabled — the Intel Northwood core processors get higher scores than the Intel Prescott core based ones due to the 20-step vs 31-step long pipeline. CPU Queen test uses integer MMX, SSE2 and SSSE3 optimizations.
CPU Photoworrx
This benchmark stresses the integer arithmetic and multiplication execution units of the CPU and also the memory subsystem. Due to the fact that this test performs high memory read/write traffic, it cannot effectively scale in situations where more than 2 processing threads used. For example, on a 8-way Pentium III Xeon system the 8 processing threads will be “fighting” over the memory, creating a serious bottleneck that would lead to as low scores as a 2-way or 4-way similar processor based system could achieve. CPU PhotoWorxx test uses only the basic x86 instructions, and it is HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) aware.
Strangely, the 990FX Professional outperforms the GIGABYTE UD7 by a huge margin in this test, despite the tests run being identical. This may be an anomaly, and we will monitor the scores of other motherboards to try and explain this.
CPU AES
This benchmark measures CPU performance using AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) data encryption. In cryptography AES is a symmetric-key encryption standard. AES is used in several compression tools today, like 7z, RAR, WinZip, and also in disk encryption solutions like BitLocker, FileVault (Mac OS X), TrueCrypt.
CPU AES test uses only the basic x86 instructions, and it’s hardware accelerated on VIA PadLock Security Engine capable VIA C3, VIA C7 and VIA Nano processors; and on Intel AES-NI instruction set extension capable processors. The test is HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) aware.
CPU AES test uses only the basic x86 instructions, and it’s hardware accelerated on VIA PadLock Security Engine capable VIA C3, VIA C7 and VIA Nano processors; and on Intel AES-NI instruction set extension capable processors. The test is HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) aware.
FPU Mandel
This benchmark measures the double precision (also known as 64-bit) floating-point performance through the computation of several frames of the popular “Mandelbrot” fractal. The code behind this benchmark method is written in Assembly, and it is extremely optimized for every popular AMD, Intel and VIA processor core variants by utilizing the appropriate MMX, MMX+/SSE, SSE2, SSSE3, or AVX instruction set extension. FPU Mandel test is HyperThreading, multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) aware.
Synthetic benchmarks – x264HD
Simply put, this test measures how fast your machine can encode a short, DVD quality MPEG-2 video clip into a high-quality x264 video clip. What’s x264, you ask? It’s more or less the next-generation Xvid/DivX codec. I think it’s ideal for a benchmark because the application (x264.exe) reports fairly accurate compression results (in frames per second) for each pass of the video encoding process, and it uses multi-core processors very efficiently.
x264 HD gives results for 2 passes when compressing an MPEG-2 clip into x264. It presents 4 separate results for each pass giving a total of 8 – all results are given in FPS. The results are averaged for each pass and presented below.
Synthetic benchmarks – Cinebench 11.5
CINEBENCH can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. This test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects which in turn contain more than 300,000 polygons in total, and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights, shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is displayed in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.
Synthetic benchmarks – SiSoftware SANDRA 2011
SANDRA isn’t always a benchmark that is included in hardware reviews but I believe it shouldn’t be ignored. SANDRA provides a vigorous package that tests your system in a rather large array of benchmarks. There are many aspects of benchmark that can be executed. We will be considering – CPU and memory tests.
Processor tests – In most of these tests there is not a great margin to separate the 990FX boards, but the ASRock does win out, especially in the processor efficiency test.
Memory tests – The ASRock board blows the 990FXA-UD7 out of the water in the memory tests, despite the memory being clocked exactly the same on the boards for testing. Clearly there was some untapped performance that ASRock have managed to wring out here.
Synthetic Benchmarks – PCMark 7
PCMark 7 is a tool provided by FutureMark that tests the PCs ability in general office and everyday use. It produces a number that reflects the all round performance of the PC and is useful to compare between differing setups. For more information, visit the FutureMark website.
Synthetic Benchmarks – Storage
In order to test how well the 990FX Professional handles storage, we tested a Sandforce SF-1200 based SSD, the Corsair Force F120 that has a rated maximum read speed of 275 MB/s.
ATTO
ATTO is a disk benchmarking tool that allows the user to test the performance of storage drives and controllers over a range of transfer sizes to give a representative indication of performance over a range of possible scenarios.
The AMD storage controller tested shows that the F120 is achieving its rated speeds at higher transfer sizes, so clearly no problems with any sort of bottlenecks in the controller when running an SSD.
Synthetic benchmarks – 3DMark 11
Designed to measure your PC’s gaming performance 3DMark 11 makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to consistently and reliably test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.
The latest version of 3DMark was run on both Performance and Extreme presets with only the benchmarking runs being performed. Each run was performed 3 times and the average results are presented below.
Overclocking the 1100T CPU provides a small boost when the graphics card is not bottlenecked, but on the extreme preset where the GPU is being tested, we see little or no improvement in overall score.
Gaming Benchmarks – Far Cry 2, DiRT 3, Metro 2033
It’s important for us to perform a number of game benchmarks as well as the synthetic tests because many of our motherboards on the test bench have features which market them directly at gamers. So here we have a selection of popular gaming titles, critically acclaimed and action-packed.
Far Cry 2
Far Cry 2 is bundled with a benchmark tool that allows the user to customise the graphical details as well as type of area and events to measure the FPS of. In this situation, the gaming benchmarks were run at two sets of resolutions with varying AA and AF settings. All benchmarks used the highest level of detail possible otherwise (including DirectX10), and consisted of a flyover of Ranch (long).
DiRT 3
DiRT 3 is the latest in Codemasters exciting rally series that throws you into a graphically detailed world of off road events. It makes use of DirectX 11 features such as tessellation to improve the visual experience. Benchmarks here are run at the highest details possible using the in-game benchmark tool.
Metro 2033
Based on the novel by the same name, Metro 2033 is a first person shooter with elements of survival horror. As Artyom, you trawl through the mutant infested metro systems of post-apocalyptic Moscow. The game delivers presents a grim ambience that reflects on the overall atmosphere of the underground setting. Metro 2033 uses the setting as a back drop to showcase some of the best visuals of any game currently available, making it ideal for testing the highest end systems.
Benchmarks were run using the bundled benchmark tool (using DirectX 11) and set to the highest details possible.
Conclusion
There is a whole heap of things to like about the 990FX Professional, starting with the very cool colour scheme and heatsink design, gold caps, blistering stock performance and even down to the decent bundle of accessories. The board consistently outperformed the GIGABYTE 990FXA-UD7 at stock settings, sometimes by a fair margin. This is a very impressive effort from ASRock, and cements their ever growing positive reputation amongst the enthusiasts in the UK, and indeed the world.
Features such as dual LAN and the Fatal1ty mouse port set this board apart from the competition, and it’s also worthy of note that most of the competition is slightly more (~£10) expensive than the 990FX Professional, which leaves it in a very strong position. The ability to use SLI or Crossfire also adds to the flexibility you have with this platform, as well as plenty of USB3.0 support and SATA 6Gbps across the board. There is also a large amount of connectivity with the 990FX Professional, which is typical of ASRock to provide and a welcome addition that a lot of the competition don’t have, even when spending in this price range.
The board is fetching, but is it worth your hard-earned?
As much as we’d love to say it was all plain sailing with ASRock’s top end board, it wasn’t entirely. The main issue that was encountered was the overclocking performance. We could only take our AMD 1100T to 3.9Ghz, whereas using the GIGABYTE UD7, we managed a slightly better 4.2GHz with the same CPU. The UEFI BIOS was sometimes laggy (EDIT: fixed – see below) and difficulties with the BIOS temperature readings and fan control. In fact, a lot of the issues the 990FX Professional has may well be solved with BIOS update, so we’ll put these down as small issues now, that very well may be rectified. The BIOS the board came with was just the initial release, we’ll keep you posted with any developments and by the time the FX CPUs are here, there may be a BIOS update where these small bugs have been ironed out. The overclocking performance may even be down to optimisation for FX CPUs and not Phenom II architecture, as with an impressive V12 CPU phase, performance should be top notch. We’ll be taking another look at the rather impressive 990FX Professional when we get our hands on an AMD FX CPU.
Overall, we have a feature-rich, innovative and top performing motherboard that looks the part, but has a few niggles with overclocking and the BIOS. Should you consider it when buying into the AMD platform? Certainly. Is the competition better? Not entirely. Is this board good value for money? Definitely.
Pros
+ Great aesthetics
+ Plenty of features
+ Excellent stock performance
+ Innovation
+ Well priced
Cons
– Overclocking could be better
– BIOS niggles (Improved – see below)
+ Great aesthetics
+ Plenty of features
+ Excellent stock performance
+ Innovation
+ Well priced
Cons
– Overclocking could be better
– BIOS niggles (Improved – see below)
EDIT 30/8/11: After having spoken to ASRock about the BIOS issues, they have provided feedback and released a new BIOS version that deals with the apparent lag and mouse issues in the BIOS. Now the experience is much better. They have also been keen to point out that the temperature measurements are a limitation of the CPU, and the fan control caries depending on whether you are using the 4-pin or 3-pin headers. You must use the correct type of fan for each header to allow control. I am also confident that they will continue to improve the user experience with this board, which is a very positive sign.
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