DFI LANPARTY JR 790GX-M3H5 Living Review

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DFI LANPARTY JR 790GX-M3H5 Living Review

Following on from the DFI LANPARTY DK 790FXB-M3H5 DFI have a new MATX AM3 board the LANPARTY JR 790GX-M3H5 using the GX variant of the 790 chipset, rather than the FX found in the DK. This adds an Integrated ATI Radeon™ HD 3300 graphics core. to compensate the loss of the third PCI-E slot, found on the DK. So the board is capable of Crossfire and Hybrid Crossfire.
As with previous DK and JR boards the board has the 4-Phase Digital PWM + 1-Phase NB Digital PWM, As with all DFI boards there is a comprehensive bios to maximise the tweaking, though with the addition of ABS2 and the Advanced and Easy Mode Bios options.

I was taken with the Phenom II x4 945, but it's limited by a locked x15 multi. Since the DK review AMD have launched the 955 see AMD Phenom™ II X4 955 HDZ955FBK4DGI and Model Number and Feature Comparisons - AMD Phenom™ II Processors The best feature of the 955 is that it's a Black Edition (BE) with an unlocked Multi.

INDEX

Bios Template - DFI LANPARTY JR 790GX-M3H5

Motherboard
1) The Package
2)Official Specifications
3)Small but perfectly formed
4)Motherboard a closer look
5) Closer Look Continued
6)Accesories and extras
7)Motherboard miscellaneous shots
8) Components and Test setup

Bios
9) Bios - General Bios 1 of 4 - Advanced & Easy Mode, Standard Cmos Features, Advanced Bios Features
10) Bios - General Bios 2 of 4 - Advanced Chipset Features - PCIE Configuration Sub Menu
11)Bios - General Bios 3 of 4 -Advanced Chipset Features - IGX Configuration Sub Menu (1of2)
12)Advanced Chipset Features - IGX Configuration 2of2
13)Bios - General Bios 4 of 5- Integrated Peripherals
14)Bios - General Bios 5 of 5 - Power Management Setup, PnP/PCI Configurations, PC Health Status, Cmos Reloaded
15)Genie Bios - Main Menu 1of3
16)MCI Memory Timing 1of3
17) MCI Memory Timing 2of3
18) MCI Memory Timing 3of3
19)Dram Configuration ODC Sub Menu
20)Genie Bios - Main Menu 2of3
21) Genie Bios - Main Menu 3of3 (Including voltages)
22)CPU Features Sub Menu
23) Genie Bios CPU Specific CPU-NB Voltage BE Extra Feature

Clocks, Benches with bios settings
Phenom II x4 945
24) Max stock volt clock 3,225 15x215 @1333 = 1432Mhz 7-7-7-19
Phenom II x4 955
Air Cooling
25)Default Phenom II x4 955 Stock Volts 3,600 - 18x200 1600Mhz 8-8-8-21
26) 3,690Mhz 18x205 @1600 =1,640Mhz 7-7-7-21
27)3,800Mhz 19x200 DDR3-1600 7-7-7-21
28) TRFC0~TRFC3 settings Comparison
29)3.8Ghz 17.5x217 @1,333Mhz 1,487Mhz 6-6-6-18 2T Unanged
30)3.8ghz 17x224 @1,333Mhz 1,493Mhz 6-6-6-18
31) 3.8Ghz 17.5x217 @1,333Mhz 1,487Mhz 6-6-6-18 1T Ganged 1T to 2T Comparison
Water Cooling
32) 3.9Ghz 19.5x200 @1,600Mhz 8-8-8-21
33) 4,000 20x200 @16,00 8-8-8-21

33) Final thoughts and Conclusion

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Very nice stylish artwork:-




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Motherboard is in Anti static bag underneath the tray of manuals and accessories.

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Official Specifications

CPU

• AMD® Phenom™ II processor
• HyperTransport 3.0 (5200MT/s) HyperTransport 1.0 (2000/1600MT/s)
• AMD OverDrive provides tuning options using the new “Advanced Clock Calibration” overclocking feature.
• Socket 938 AM3 45nm

Chipset

• AMD chipset - Northbridge: AMD 790GX - Southbridge: AMD SB750

System Memory

• Four 240-pin DDR3 DIMM sockets
• Supports DDR3 1600(O.C.)/1333/1066 MHz
• Delivers up to 21Gb/s bandwidth at 1333MHz
• Supports dual channel (128-bit wide) memory interface
• Supports non-ECC unbuffered DIMMs
• Supports up to 16GB system memory Windows® 32-bit operating system is unable to accurately detect more than 4GB system memory. Therefore, if you are using this operating system, we strongly recommend that you install a less than 3GB system memory.

Expansion Slots

• 2 PCI Express (Gen 2) x16 slots - Hybrid CrossFireXTM - combination of the integrated graphics and a discrete graphics card in a PCIE slot (8-lane port). - Two graphics cards support CrossFireXTM; each operating at x8 (8-lane ports) bandwidth
• 1 PCI Express x1 slot
• 1 PCI slot

BIOS

• Award BIOS
• CMOS Reloaded
• CPU/DRAM overclocking
• CPU/DRAM/Chipset overvoltage
• 8Mbit SPI flash memory

Graphics

• Integrated ATI Radeon™ HD 3300 graphics core
• Onboard graphics interface - HDMI port for both digital audio and video HD display - DVI-I port for digital LCD display
• Microsoft® DirectX 10
• Hybrid CrossFireX™ technology combines the onboard GPU and a discrete PCIE graphics card
• Onboard Performance cache for added performance

Audio

• Realtek ALC885 8-channel HD Audio Codec
• High-performance DACs with 106dB dynamic range (A-Weight), ADCs with 101dB dynamic range (A-Weight)

LAN

• Marvell 88E8056 PCIE Gigabit LAN controllers
• Fully compliant to IEEE 802.3 (10BASE-T), 802.3u (100BASE-TX) and 802.3ab (1000BASE-T) standards

Serial ATA with RAID

• Supports up to 6 SATA devices
• SATA speed up to 3Gb/s
• RAID 0/1/0+1(10)/5/JBOD/AHCI

IDE
One IDE connector allows connecting up to two UltraDMA 133Mbps hard drives
Rear Panel I/O

• 1 mini-DIN-6 PS/2 mouse port
• 1 mini-DIN-6 PS/2 keyboard port
• 1 HDMI-out port
• 1 coaxial RCA S/PDIF-out port
• 1 optical S/PDIF-out port
• 1 DVI-I port
• 4 USB 2.0/1.1 ports
• 1 RJ45 LAN port
• Center/subwoofer, rear R/L and side R/L jacks
• Line-in, line-out (front R/L) and mic-in jacks

Internal I/O

• 4 connectors for 8 additional external USB 2.0 ports
• 1 connector for an external COM port
• 1 front audio connector
• 1 CD-in connector
• 1 IrDA connector
• 1 CIR connector
• 6 Serial ATA connectors
• 1 40-pin IDE connector
• 1 floppy connector
• 1 24-pin ATX power connector
• 1 8-pin 12V power connector
• 1 4-pin 5V/12V power connector (FDD type)
• 1 front panel connector
• 6 fan connectors
• EZ touch switches (power switch and reset switch)
• Power Management
• ACPI and OS Directed Power Management
• ACPI STR (Suspend to RAM) function
• Wake-On-PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse
• Wake-On-USB Keyboard/Mouse
• Wake-On-Ring
• Wake-On-LAN
• RTC timer to power-on the system
• AC power failure recovery

Hardware Monitor

• Monitors CPU/system/chipset temperature
• Monitors 12V/5V/3.3V/Vcore/Vbat/5Vsb/Vdimm/Vchip voltages
• Monitors the speed of the cooling fans
• CPU Overheat Protection function monitors CPU temperature during system boot-up

PCB

• microATX form factor
• 24.5cm (9.64”) x 24.5cm (9.64”)

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Motherboard a closer look
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A closer look continued

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PWM Cooler, bolted down.


CPU Socket


CPU Socket with mounting bracket removed.

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Accesories and extras



CD and manuals


Drive Cables


Other Items:

• Top - Crossfire Bridge. vga adapter for onboard graphics
• Middle - Smart Connect, spare jumpers and mounting bolts
• Bottom -Rear I/O Shield

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Motherboard miscellaneous shots

Backside of board, only southbridge is secured with pushpins
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Southbridge with Power and reset buttons with POST LED



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PCI, pci-e slots with USB headers and bios chip in between. Unlike the Intel equivalent the bios chip is fixed.


On Board Graphics output socket

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Bios - General Bios 1 of 4


One of the most radical features of this bios, is surprisingly not the on the Genie Bios section but on the main page. See that little option on the bottom right [F9] Change SETUP Mode ?

Pressing [F9] opens the red option below:-

This allows you to view the bios in 2 modes:-

• Easy Mode: Ideal if your a new user or not into heavy overclocking. Just shows the key bios settings.
• Advanced Mode Reveals all bios options. You'll most certainly get great performance just using Easy Mode, but if your after those extra MHz, this is where you'll get it.

DFI's solution here seems more elegant than Gigabyte's effort to do a similar thing on their X58 Motherboards.

Standard Cmos Features

Advanced Bios Features

Hard Disk Boot Priority Sub Menu

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Advanced Chipset Features



PCIE Configuration Sub Menu Much more detail than corresponding Intel offerings:-

PCIE- Slot1 Sub Menu Allows setting of fixed bamdwidth options ie x16 etc., and even a wattage limit.

Gen2 High Speed Mode

Link Bandwidth options

Wattage options

Link ASPM

NB-SP Port Features Sub Menu

Options:-

Advanced Chipset Features - Auto Optimise bottom IO