Msi 890gxm-g65

[phoronix]

Phoronix: MSI 890GXM-G65

Earlier this year AMD rolled out the 890GX Chipset with an ATI Radeon HD 4290 integrated graphics processor, support for Serial ATA 3.0 with the SB850 Southbridge, DDR2/DDR3 memory support, and other leading features. About a month ago we reviewed the AMD Athlon II X3 425 processor when coupled with an AMD 890GX + SB850 motherboard and in this review we are taking a closer look at that motherboard under Linux. The motherboard in question is the MSI 890GXM-G65 with USB 3.0 and Serial ATA 6Gb/s support.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=14994

[avsa242]

Michael,

I look forward to your review. I've had one of MSI's 790GX-G65 boards paired with a Phenom II X4 810 for a little over a year now and have been quite pleased with it (especially coming from a socket 754 Athlon64). I'm curious, though, have you tried updating the BIOS image on any MSI boards you have or have tested? I was able to update once last year but it seems MSI has decided to remove the ability to directly download new images in favor of a Windows-based utility called Live Update . I haven't yet tried to contact them personally to ask about it but I recall a site where a petition to have them revert this change was started. This could be very unfortunate for those not using Windows wanting to add support for newer processors, etc.

Cheers,
Jesse Burt

[DanL]

You can still download them, but you do have to mess around with a DOS boot disk. http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=do...1&prod_no=2012

Just one more reason I prefer BIOSTAR TForce boards - simply download BIOS image to FAT-formatted USB stick, press F12 (IIRC) at POST to boot directly into the BIOS flasher and it's done before you know it..

[deanjo]

You can still download them, but you do have to mess around with a DOS boot disk. http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=do...1&prod_no=2012

Just one more reason I prefer BIOSTAR TForce boards - simply download BIOS image to FAT-formatted USB stick, press F12 (IIRC) at POST to boot directly into the BIOS flasher and it's done before you know it..

Or buy an Asus, no boot disk required. Flash utility is in the bios. Maybe one day the PC industry will finally adopt EFI.

[avsa242]

Well it looks like these 890GX owners will be fortunate enough to be able to download them. The 790GX board, however...all Live Update (even the v1.3 that I previously downloaded last year):

http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=do...1&prod_no=1739

FWIW, the 790GX at least has a flash utility in the BIOS, too (just moot now). It allows you to put it on a USB drive, just as DanL mentioned with the Biostar board. It even worked with my multi-card reader.

Cheers,
Jesse

[mattmatteh]

i was wondering too how good the bios was and how easy it is to update. i thought asus was supposed to be easy but its not, too my days messing with a usb disk, never worked.

kinda makes me wonder if phoronix needs something like a wiki for one place with current info, like what mainboard venders to avoid for PITA useage like updating the bios.

what is soo special about EFI ? thought plain openfirmware would be better or coreboot.

[Adarion]

Yeah, ASUS and Gigabyte have a nice update mechanism, no need to mess with Windows or DOS floppies.

And it has only 1 PCI slot. I think this is becoming a narrow situation. I have a lot of PCI hardware that I still use and 1 slot doesn't seem to be enough. ("Thanks" to intel for their legacy free propaganda and having kill IDE from their chipsets and later now they want to kill PCI completely. Good that there is not only intel on the market.)

[d2kx]

I have the AM2+ 790GX board from MSI (DKA790GX) and you can update the BIOS from within the BIOS with an utility called "M-Flash". I would have thought it would be included with their newer boards, as it was only introduced last year.

[mlau]

Yeah, ASUS and Gigabyte have a nice update mechanism, no need to mess with Windows or DOS floppies.

I've updated my Gigabyte 890GPA twice with "flashrom". No need
for USB sticks :-)

[avsa242]

I have the AM2+ 790GX board from MSI (DKA790GX) and you can update the BIOS from within the BIOS with an utility called "M-Flash". I would have thought it would be included with their newer boards, as it was only introduced last year.

Mine has this utility built in to the BIOS as well...it's just that MSI has decided to only make some (in my board's case, all, including the one I updated to last year) of the BIOS images available for download only via their Live Update program, which is Windows only.