Summary
SB750 southbridge
Often the weak link in previous AMD/ATI boards, the southbridge for
790GX has been upgraded to SB750, supporting RAID5, and a new feature
that helps overclock Phenom-based CPUs. Used with what AMD terms
Advanced Clock Calibration (ACC), Phenom CPUs can be better overclocked
by 'retuning their internal parameters for greater performance',
according to AMD's engineering team.
The proof will lie with the
testing, and we've still to receive a crystal-clear reason as to why SB750 mojo helps overclock the CPUs to higher frequencies than by adjusting the parameters in the BIOS.
Note that the SB750 can be paired with existing chipsets to provide the
same overclocking boost, so it's not a feature that's solely peculiar
to the 790GX, and we've seen it on select 790FX boards.
Summary
AMD's 790GX chipset is a logical extension of the 780G
that
debuted a few months ago, bringing with it more speed and a greater
feature-set. We expect most mainboard partners to ship regular
ATX-sized motherboards, housing 2x x16 PCIe 2.0 slots (2x x8 in
CrossFireX), and, hopefully, to
push the IGP core's speed even higher. MicroATX models will follow
shortly, we've been informed.
Indeed, 790GX is what 780G should have been; the headroom has always
been there. Our hope is that retail examples arrive at the same cost a
vanilla 780G's, at around £50, otherwise the bonus of the IGP
is somewhat
negated
The best-featured IGP-based chipset has just got better. The question
on whether it provides a reasonable gaming experience, when compared to
low-end discrete cards, will be answered in our performance look.
