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Review: ASUS Crosshair IV Formula AM3 - Thuban's best friend?

by Tarinder Sandhu on 18 May 2010, 05:00 4.5

Tags: Crosshair IV Formula, ASUSTeK (TPE:2357)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaycz

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Setup and notes

Motherboard ASUS Crosshair IV Formula Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H
Price £165.55
 £104.41
Chipset 890FX 890GX
CPU AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
BIOS revision 0707 (26/04/2010)
 FBC (06/05/2010)
Mainboard software Catalyst 10.3
Memory 4GB (2 x 2GB) Corsair DDR3-1,600
Memory timings and speed 9-9-9-24-1T @ 1,600MHz
Discrete graphics Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB
Discrete graphics driver Catalyst 10.3
Disk drive Corsair Nova V128
Operating system Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit)
PSU Corsair HX850W

Tests

Benchmarks

SiSoft Sandra 2010 (16.26), aggregate bandwidth
SiSoft Sandra 2010 (16.26), memory latency
HEXUS.PiFast to 10m places
CINEBENCH R11.5 multi-CPU render
x264 encoding test - both passes recorded.

HDTach - SATA average read speed
HDTach - SATA burst speed
HDTach - USB3.0 performance
HDTach - FireWire performance

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 2 - 1,680x1,050 HQ

Power-consumption tests - idle, 2D load, and 3D load.

Testing notes

We're taking a look at the top-of-the-range board against a quality 890GX chipset-based mainboard from Gigabyte. The 890GPA-UD3H features integrated graphics but we'll be running all tests with a Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB discrete graphics card. Costing some £60 less than the ASUS, the Gigabyte also ships with USB 3.0 and FireWire, although not as much attention has been paid to cooling and overclocking.

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