GIGABYTE GA-990X Gaming SLI Review

👤by Tony Le Bourne Comments 📅12-06-16
Test Setup, Methodology & Overclocking

Test Setup
CPU AMD FX-8350, FX-8370
Cooling AMD WRAITH Cooler
Motherboard GIGABYTE GA-990X Gaming SLI
Memory AMD RADEON 2x 8GB DDR3 2400MHz
Graphics GIGABYTE AMD R9 280X
Storage HYPERX 3K 240GB
PSU NZXT HALE 650W



Benchmarks
Cinebench R15 – CPU/OpenGL Score
x264 HD 4.0 – 1st and 2nd pass encoding
SiSoftware SANDRA 2014 – CPU & Memory benchmarks
AIDA64 – CPU benchmarks
PCMark 8 – Home Suite
3DMark FireStrike – DX11 3D Benchmark
Games – Tomb Raider, THIEF


Other Software
CPU Specification Monitoring: CPU-Z


Overclocking
With the GA-990X Gaming SLI, we took the opportunity to test it out with the FX-8370 and the latest Wraith Cooler from AMD.

You can see just by the sheer size difference that things should be significantly better than most stock coolers out there. In fact, AMD claim that it is one of the 'quietest' coolers for <$50 (that's around £30-35). It's primary aim is to add value to the FX-8370 CPU, and so we check out how well we can overclock using it alone.

By default, the FX-8370 sits at 4GHz with a turbo that jumps it up to 4.3GHz as and when it has the available TDP for a limited amount of cores. Well, as with any good overclock, you will want to turn off all those power saving options in the advanced CPU Core options, and then out without touching any other setting, I set the base core speed to 4.5GHz just to test things out. Everything seems perfectly fine, temperatures (according to GIGABYTES APP Center 'Hardware monitor', were topping out at around 52 degrees C after a run through 3DM Firestrike. I went back into BIOS and wanted to find the optimal overclock without needing a voltage bump, I settled on a 220 Bus and an x21 CPU multiplier for a decent 4.6GHz, and 2860Hz on the HT Link. It is worth noting that AM3+ CPU's and motherboards are rather limited in regards to memory bandwidth (when you consider that they are running on a 5 year old design), and that the Hyper Transport Technology pretty much tops out with 2133MHz DDR3. This is why the GA-990X Gaming SLI only natively supports 1866MHz memory, though we managed to use our RAMs XMP for 2133MHz. Topping out at 55 degrees in a warm room sitting at 4.6GHz at a reasonable sound level is no small feat, and while this is far from a comprehensive review of the Wraith Cooler, I wouldn't be surprised to find a stable 4.7GHz FX chip sitting under it too. However, for 4.7GHz in our setup, it required a voltage bump which of course summoned the Joule horses to raise the temperatures a little too much.




15 pages « < 5 6 7 8 > »

Comments