ASRock 880G Extreme3 & 890FX Deluxe3

[phoronix]

Phoronix: ASRock 880G Extreme3 & 890FX Deluxe3

Last week we examined the ATI Radeon HD 4250 integrated graphics performance found with the AMD 880G chipset introduced a few months back. We found the performance of the 880G IGP to be not that different from the higher-end AMD 890GX chipset when using the proprietary Catalyst driver, but today we are looking more at the 880G chipset along with the 890FX chipset as we review the ASRock 880G Extreme3 and ASRock 890FX Deluxe3, respectively. Both low-cost motherboards offer USB 3.0, SATA 3.0, and eSATA3 connectivity, and Turbo UCC overclocking, among other features.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=15190

[yoshi314]

asrock really started improving their product quality.

i was seriously impressed with a330ion motherboard i bought recently, and those duracap capacitors. last time i used something from asrock was ~4 years ago with p4 motherboard, and it was far from stellar.

[elanthis]

It would be great if your reviews would go over some other basics, like the power output on the USB connectors. The last ASRock mobo I bought from one of your reviews turned out to undervolt the USB ports and I've had issues with a few high-speed devices, as well as with things like my Razer gaming mouse (which works perfectly on every other computer I've tried, it's just this particular mobo). A lot of lower priced mobos don't supply the correct voltage on all USB ports (many will spread the power out amongst all devices connected, so if you have more than one or two plugged in you start running into power issues) so it's a really useful thing to check for, and it's really hard to find reviews where things like that are tested.

[locovaca]

It would be great if your reviews would go over some other basics, like the power output on the USB connectors. The last ASRock mobo I bought from one of your reviews turned out to undervolt the USB ports and I've had issues with a few high-speed devices, as well as with things like my Razer gaming mouse (which works perfectly on every other computer I've tried, it's just this particular mobo). A lot of lower priced mobos don't supply the correct voltage on all USB ports (many will spread the power out amongst all devices connected, so if you have more than one or two plugged in you start running into power issues) so it's a really useful thing to check for, and it's really hard to find reviews where things like that are tested.

Do you have some evidence of this, like another site researching? Not disputing you, I've just never heard of this before.

The spec makes it sound like no more than 900 ma is required to be sent along any individual bus. Since each pair of ports usually are on the same bus, you could only do 900 ma per set of ports and still be in spec.

[jokeyrhyme]

That Realtek RTL8111E network interface on the ASRock 890FX Deluxe3 was incredibly frustrating to get working for me. When I bought this motherboard I was using Gentoo with the 2.6.32 kernel. The built-in kernel driver for this NIC did not power it up properly, but the official driver from Realtek didn't do the post-power initialisation properly. I ended up manually swapping between the two modules on-the-fly in order to first power up the NIC, then get DHCP working.

I finally bought an Intel NIC with excellent built-in kernel support. Haven't looked back.

Besides this hiccup, I haven't had any major issues in either Windows 7 64 or Gentoo Linux.

I have noticed that the USB 2.0 ports don't seem to be recognised as such on Windows 7 64 until you've installed the chipset drivers. I got the "your device could be running so much faster" message when I first plugged by phone in.

[elanthis]

Do you have some evidence of this, like another site researching? Not disputing you, I've just never heard of this before.

Hit NewEgg reviews, you'll find a lot of people bitching about cheaper mobos where external USB drives and the like won't work due to too little power. From my understanding (and Wikipedia), USB devices are supposed to get approx. 5V from the power line, and I've seen reports that some barely squeak by with 4V or even a little less. Some apparently don't distribute the power between all devices correctly or the like. I'm not really that knowledgeable on hardware (beyond how to make it do stuff with software), so perhaps I'm misunderstanding.

The mouse behavior took a looooong time to figure out. I've been back and forth with Razer for months before we finally narrowed it down to the mobo. Whether power is actually the issue is mostly a guess, but neither me nor their techs can come up with any other ideas given everything else we've tested and tried. The exact same peripherals work flawlessly on every other computer I've tried them on, and different brands of device will malfunction in a similar function on this machine. I actually only bought the damn Razer mouse because i thought my old one was going bad.

It's just damn annoying, too. The mouse cursor works fine for a while, then gets very erratic. Like I'll push the mouse up and the cursor will jump left and right. Sometimes it'll just "stick" in some direction, as in I push up and it goes straight left the whole time. Picking the mouse up and putting it down usually fixes it... for a little while. I was convinced it was the mouse itself until I tried it on several other computers, and I tried an identical model of mouse a friend had and it acted up on mine despite having worked flawlessly on his machine for months. Tried swapping mouse pads, trying other surfaces, etc. Issue is totally independent of anything, other than being plugged into this machine.

Then it started occasionally doing similar things with the keyboard. Sometimes (quite rarely) after power-cycling the machine, the mouse will work perfectly for long periods; however, the keyboard will then do weird things. Vim decided to delete a bunch of lines of code on my today when I wasn't even touching the computer because something decided to start sending a ton of random d's for about half a second, and earlier it was sending UP and l every few seconds for about a minute. If I unplug either device and plug them back in, the keyboard goes back to normal and the mouse goes back to its usual jittery wackiness.

Happens in both Win7 and Linux. Only on this one machine. Has been driving me freaking CRAZY for a while now.

Razer had some more tests for me to run, but they decided they didn't want to help anymore unless I completely removed Linux from the drive "just in case there was a conflict" (which makes no logical sense at all, of course), and i told them I'd solve the issue on my own. Which I'm doing now, by browsing NewEgg looking for a decent AM2-compatible micro-ATX board. Probably going to go with an ASUS M4A785-M or the GIGABYTE GA-MA785GM-US2H, after I look around a bit and see if anyone else has had USB glitches with either.

[curaga]

Ps/2 adapters for both mouse and kbd would be cheaper than a new mobo

[locovaca]

Probably going to go with an ASUS M4A785-M or the GIGABYTE GA-MA785GM-US2H, after I look around a bit and see if anyone else has had USB glitches with either.

I have now 4 of the Gigabyte boards. Love them to death. I don't have any USB issues, but they claim to provide 3 times the required power to USB ports. The highest power requirement I would have is a 2:1 USB switch, to an unpowered hub, to my keyboard (Saitek with built in backlight) and mouse (Logitech MX518); that entire branch is powered solely off the header.

[RoboJ1M]

Any sign of IOMMU support? (AMD-Vi, or hardware PCI virtualization)

J1M.

[anto44]

Any sign of IOMMU support? (AMD-Vi, or hardware PCI virtualization)

J1M.

http://forums.tweaktown.com/asrock/4...x-deluxe3.html