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Review of MSI 870A-G54 AM3 ATX motherboard

Review of MSI 870A-G54 AM3 ATX motherboard based on AMD 870 chipset for Socket AM3

Specifications

The MSI 870A-G54 AM3 ATX motherboard in question supports AM3 processors and is based on the AMD® 870 chipset and the AMD® SB850 south bridge. The manufacturer declared support for the HyperTransport 3.0 bus, which is capable of providing data transfer at speeds up to 5200MT / s.

Four slots support up to 16 GB of unbuffered DDR3 RAM modules from 800 MHz to 2000 Mhz and a memory voltage of 1.5 V. On the surface of the dark PCB there is one PCIe V2.0 x16 slot and one PCIe V2.0 x4 slot ... There is also one PCIe x1 slot, three PCI slots supporting the PCI bus with a supply voltage of 3.3 / 5 V.

The JMicron® JMB368 provides one IDE port providing support for Ultra DMA 66/100/133 modes. The south bridge supports six Sata 3 ports and two Usb 3 ports located on the rear panel of the board.

Superior 8-channel audio is provided by the Realtek® ALC892 chip.

We will build gigabit Ethernet based on the Realtek PCI-E GbLAN 8111DL controller.

Especially for maximum performance and convenience of overclocking, there is a proprietary Auto-BIOS technology, which offers the most efficient overclocking by choosing the best overclocking configuration. Using the technology, it is possible to add a 26% increase in processor performance when you turn on OC Genie, and when you turn on OC Genie at the same time, along with Unlock CPU Core, you can really end up with a 48% increase in processor performance.

Proprietary Hidden Core Unlocking technology allows you to identify hidden processor cores that are present in some select copies of the AMD processor lineup. At the same time, the function allows you to quickly carry out both the inclusion of hidden cores, and their shutdown. The difference between the technology and similar solutions from other manufacturers is the ability to unlock four-core processors to processors with six cores. Unlocking hidden cores allows for a performance gain of 4% to 20%

A significant reduction in energy consumption, which is not at all unimportant in the modern world, can be obtained by the technology of active phase switching. The technology monitors the level of power consumption and performs partial shutdown of the power supply, clearly responding to the decrease in power consumption of the processor or chipset. This organization of power management for the processor and other elements of the motherboard, allows you to achieve significant energy savings, which you will especially like when paying "for light" bills.

It is also possible to adjust the FSB frequency directly in the BIOS in real time, by simply turning the tuning knob located on the motherboard.

A special program Live Update 4 independently searches for driver and BIOS updates and automatically performs the installation, which significantly saves the user time and reduces the likelihood of errors.

Features of the board

For motherboards of the middle budget range, it has already become traditional to have two PCIex16 slots, even for motherboards based on chipsets, for which CrossFire support has not been officially announced. The MSI 870A-G54 in question is no exception. The organization of the second PCIex16 slot is carried out by allocating four reserved PCI Express lines of the chipset. The location of connectors for installing graphics accelerators is somewhat unfortunate. So if, when installing one video card, the user will not have any special problems with the accessibility of ports located on the surface of the motherboard. It is possible, of course, when installing a video card with a two-slot cooling system that one of the PCI slots will become unavailable for use, but taking into account the fact that there are three such connectors on the board, in most cases the user does not have access to one of them. will notice.But when installing two graphics accelerators, the user loses access to all three PCI slots. Of course, this would not be so critical, especially taking into account the fact that recently, expansion boards with the PCIex1 interface have appeared quite actively on the market and the use of which is more preferable due to the higher speed of the PCIex1 interface, however, the presence of only one such connector on the board does not give reason to hope that there will be no problems with the use of expansion cards.

Another possible problem may be the fact that in the BIOS settings of the board there is no possibility of resetting the interrupt table, and when carrying out a large-scale upgrade in the future, the user may be faced with the need to reinstall the operating system.

The layout of the elements on the motherboard itself is very successful and rational. The use of angular Sata connectors eliminates the problems of connecting devices to these ports when using long-profile video cards in the system. There are also obsolete connectors for connecting a floppy, the location of which is very unusual on the surface of the board at the bottom of the board, parallel to the PCI connectors.

There is also a COM port located on the back of the motherboard. The location of the connectors for connecting coolers is not very good. All three connectors present on the board are assembled in the area of ​​the processor socket and memory connectors, and the desire to install a fan on the HDD can pretty much spoil the user's nerves. The user should not forget about the physical size of the motherboard, which is a little short of the size of ATX, so there is a chance to damage the motherboard if excessive efforts are applied to install the system elements.

There are also proprietary functions, which include the withdrawn knob in the form of an analogue reference frequency regulator. In order to use the function, it is necessary to press the button located in the immediate vicinity, the activation of the function is signaled by the appearance of illumination of the elements, and by rotating the knob, adjust the frequency value. The value of the frequency level obtained as a result of the adjustment is fixed and saved in the BIOS, so that after restarting the system it will work at the new frequency. However, the presence of such a function raises doubts about the appropriateness. Indeed, in fact, the motherboard is not overclocking and the presence of such a regulator raises doubts about its need. Simple thoughtless twisting of the handle will freeze the system and require a hardware reset of the CMOS. Obviously, frequency regulation for an inexperienced user is much easier and safer to perform using the AMD OverDrive utility, which has “fool protection”, and users who have the necessary knowledge to perform such adjustments will hardly be interested in a motherboard of this level.

As for the rest, the package bundle of the board is rather modest, and apart from supporting USB 3.0 ports, there are no other ports on the plan.

The modesty of the bundle also affected the organization of the cooling of the board. More than modest by today's standards, the Northbridge heatsink, although given the lack of an integrated video core and the relatively small number of supported PCIe lanes, more is not required. And to be on the safe side in case of an extremely hot summer or overheating during long periods of operation, you should choose a processor cooler with a lateral fan orientation.

We are pleased with the high-quality voltage regulator used on the board. The stabilizer is five-channel and is made using high-quality solid-state and tantalum capacitors. The use of coils with a ferrite core made it possible to reduce the temperature in operation by 20 degrees. Voltage regulators built on elements of this level were previously used only in top-level motherboards.

The Active Phase Switching function allows you to turn off unused power channels, which significantly saves the level of power consumption of the board, and control is possible thanks to the LED indication bar.

The board supports socket AM3 processors with a thermal capacity of up to 140 watts.

Functionality

MSI 870A-G54 motherboard is built on a set of AMD 870 chipset and SB850 south bridge. Connecting a disk subsystem can be organized thanks to 6 Sata3.0 connectors that support connecting hard drives with RAID arrays of types 0, 1, 0 + 1 and 5. The built-in audio controller is implemented on the basis of the Realtek ALC892 chip and allows you to get high-quality 10-channel HD sound, at which it is possible to receive two independent audio streams from the front panel and from the rear panel connectors.

JMicron JMB368 controller implements IDE interface support, and Realtek 8111DL network controller provides Gigabit Ethernet. The possibility of automatic regulation of the fan rotation speed is interestingly organized, which allows maintaining the temperature level set in the BIOS. The monitoring system works on the Fintek F71889ED controller.

BIOS

Testing capabilities

The performed testing of the analog outputs of the integrated codec using the RightMark Audio Analyzer 6.2.3 program and the discrete sound card Asus XONAR D2 / PM / A allowed us to obtain the following results:

Frequency response

Noise level

Dynamic range

Harmonic distortion + noise (-3dB)

Intermodulation distortion

Interpenetration of stereo channels

Intermodulation Distortion (Variable Frequency)

The results obtained can be described as very good, especially considering the fact that we are talking about a widespread embedded audio codec.

Overclocking potential assessment

The range within which it is possible to regulate the processor supply voltage, which is available directly in the motherboard BIOS, is quite wide, and its physical values ​​depend on the processor installed in the system. The table shows the possible parameters for adjusting the parameters for the Phenom II X4 810 processor used during the tests. The BIOS version on the tested board was 17.7. In case of an unsuccessful change in the frequency value after the number of unsuccessful starts specified in the BIOS, the motherboard starts with the default frequency values. It is possible to save up to six user preset profiles.

The results are excellent. Few expected such overclocking ability from a motherboard of this class. If overclocking a processor with an unlocked multiplier is not difficult on almost any motherboard, then the same manipulations with the reference frequency, due to various limitations of motherboards from other manufacturers, were usually not always successful. But the MSI 870A-G54 has almost fully revealed the potential of the processors.

Evaluating the performance and economy, we made comparisons with the test results of an almost similar solution Biostar TA870 +, which is built on the same chipset and belongs to the same price category.

Power consumption

The level of energy consumption was measured for the entire system as a whole with a wattmeter built into the power supply.

As you can see from the table, the MSI motherboard's power supply system, made from more expensive components, is more elaborated, which allows to obtain much better power saving values.

Conclusions.

The MSI 870A-G54 board is more focused on economical users who, while upgrading the previous system, are more interested in using expansion cards from the old system, and as a result, choosing solutions with a minimum number of their own built-in controllers of interface connectors. However, do not forget that when planning to use two video cards in CrossFire mode, there will be difficulties with access to expansion slots.

The board can be successfully used by users who want to use overclocking to some extent to squeeze the maximum out of the system elements without serious capital investments.

In addition, there is support for modern high-speed interfaces Sata 3 and Usb 3.0.

No doubt at $ 100, this is a good solution for a mid-range home gaming system.

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