mATX Roundup

[Gary Key]

Good Day Everyone,

We are in the final phases of the mATX roundup. All testing has been done under Vista Ultimate 32-bit to date. The majority of benchmarks utilized in the 690G roundup are back along with a couple of new ones. We have also received the abit Fatal1ty F-I90HD (thanks to Steve at SFFStore after our abit sample was delivered in two pieces) , Sapphire 690G in a bright white design, and a couple of Q965 boards for the business crowd.

NVIDIA is trying their hardest to get us a 7050 board this weekend and Intel has promised new drivers (will be released next week) tomorrow along with a sneak peak of the performance drivers shown at GDC. We will have to do some retesting on the Intel boards over the weekend and while we have five test beds setup again I thought it would be interesting to find out what you expect to see in a mATX review.

My question is, " Besides the normal benchmarks, power consumption tests, and board analysis, what else is important to the users of these boards?" Let me know your opinions and we will see what we can do in the next couple of days. The article is scheduled for April ??? (update this weekend), will be about 30 pages long.

Thanks!!!

 

[chucky2]

Gary,

First, thanks for taking the time to ask us what we'd like to see!

1.) I for one want to know before I go the AMD route if the 690G and/or 7050 boards will or will not support Agena and/or Kuma CPU's.

I know you've confirmed with AMD already that the 690G chipset at least supports these future CPU's, but I think the motherboard manufacturers themselves need to step up to the plate and give a definitive Yes or No. Plunking down $200+ now on the most modern AMD platforms out, that are just being released, and then having those platforms be EOL'd in 6 months when Agena and Kuma hit, is just not acceptable to me. All of the motherboard manufacturers that are releasing 690G and/or 7050 boards also sell LGA775 boards...so they've got nothing to loose by telling us the truth upfront.

2.) Run tests on the DVI port to ensure that HDCP works correctly through that port.

3.) In either the 690G preview or the review, someone posted a link over to AVSForum talking about audio standards supported or something like that. While this would probably be only valuable to the HTPC crowd, it'd be a nice touch if you could go over to that thread and see what their looking for...and then maybe see if the boards here are capable of it.

Thanks again for all the hard work!

Chuck

 

[RamIt]

Overclocking on the core based boards please.
E4300 info would be great.

 

[chucky2]

Oh:

4.) On the AMD systems, some X2 2600 and X2 2800 benches would be nice...especially gaming and HTPC stuff.

Chuck

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: RamIt
Overclocking ...please.

Fixed. I'd like to see all boards tested for overclock.

Also, would like to see comparisions between a mATX board and an ATX board using similar chipsets, same hardware and all settings the same. Chipset wise, something like Q965 versus P965, Geforce6150 versus Geforce4, things like that. All parts and settings (RAM, video, CPU, clock settings, RAM timings, etc.) the same. I'd like to put to rest the urban legend that mATX boards are somehow slower than ATX boards.

 

[Wirrunna]

Gary, Thank you for asking what we want to see " Besides the normal benchmarks, power consumption tests, and board analysis"

My interest is purely HTPC as displayed on a Sony Bravia X, so I want details of the onboard 2D HDCP display quality, audio quality and ease of setting up a bog standard (no overclocking) bios. The fan connectors are also of interest, can the fans be controlled by Speedfan ? I have an ASUS A8N-VM CSM which has 2 fan headers but only one can be controlled by Speedfan or the bios. Other computers I have built also feature multiple fan headers but do not have the ability to control all the fans without an external device. Control of the fans is essential for quiet computers.

 

[rexian96]

Thanks for asking us Gary. To the points mentioned above, I'd like to add audio quality test (mainly SNR for 7.1 HD audio boards) and RAID performance.

 

[renethx]

HD video playback ability using the CPU of the highest clock speed exactly in the same format as

HD Video Playback: H.264 Blu-ray on the PC

(i.e. X-Men III). In particular I would like to see how well abit Fatal1ty F-I90HD can handle HD contents of higher bitrates with Core 2 Duo X6800 (or actually an overclocked E4300 for most users).

 

[najames]

First, thanks for asking for input, very nice. I'd also like to thank renethx for the nice documentation in The *Official* MSI K8NGM2-FID GeForce 6150 Motherboard Thread, very, very good stuff!!

I am in the market for a mATX based system, and have been for some time. Every time I decide what board to buy, it vaprizes from the market MSI K8NGM2-FID, Abit AM2, etc. I just bought a "new" Tforce 6100 for fun, only to find the video was dead and the leads fried on the back of the board, no luck.

Test with all RAM slots (4 hopfully) filled. I have 4GB DDR2 sitting here without a home and need to see how it will work all on one board.

I am kind of an AMD guy, but open. It would be nice to know if mATX AMD boards support the Brisbanes decimal multipliers. This simple information actually seems hard to find since most manufacture's websites are out of date. It would be nice to find out what CPU/video cards are required like mentioned in your XMen HD Playback test (concerning C2D).

Statements like this below make me nervous. This is from the Asus website for the M2A-VM HDMI board. It sounds like a lot of ifs and buts, maybe I am over reacting. They also only have 2 CPUs listed as compatible. This same thing applies to the Intel side. Are they overclockable. What about the Intel X3000 or whatever the current integrated chip is called?

"Integrated ATI Radeon X1250-based graphics
Maximum shared memory of 256 MB
Supports HDMI? Technology with HDCP compliant with max. resolution 1920 x 1080p
(It may not display 1080p smoothly when playing HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc due to current version player limit)
Supports YPbPr component TV-out with max. resolutions 1280 x 720p and 1920 x 1080i
Supports DVI-D with max. resolution 2560x1600 (@ 60Hz)
Supports RGB with max. resolution 2048 x 1536 (@85Hz)

Dual VGA output support:
RGB & DVI/HDMI
DVI & HDMI
TV-out(YPbPr/AV/S) & DVI/HDMI
(Simultaneous output for YPbPr, AV, S, and RGB is not supported)"

I have an old 53" Pioneer RPTV (1980x1080i) with VGA and component inputs, so althogh HDMI may be vital to new sets, there are still a lot of folks using older TVs. Test all connections.

Further out, are these boards with integrated video supported by Linux. I do a lot of Solaris/Linux work, so it would be nice to know.

Sorry, but you asked for it!!! Keep up the good work.

 

[compwarez]

http://www.vr-zone.com/print.php?i=4726

Biostar TA690G AMD 690G Motherboard Review

 

[najames]

It seems odd that the Biostar doesn't OC with all the options in the BIOS.

Maybe it's like my Asus A8N-E, the thing acted goofy and wouldn't clock worth a hoot until you enabled the floppy drive, even if you didn't have one. Then it would got to 290.

It needs firewire to "hopefully" connect to a cable/sat DVR. Well, we can dream can't we?

 

[Gary Key]

Originally posted by: najames
It seems odd that the Biostar doesn't OC with all the options in the BIOS.

Maybe it's like my Asus A8N-E, the thing acted goofy and wouldn't clock worth a hoot until you enabled the floppy drive, even if you didn't have one. Then it would got to 290.

It needs firewire to "hopefully" connect to a cable/sat DVR. Well, we can dream can't we?

We have received 5 BIOS releases from Biostar for the board. They are using the reference ATI, err AMD, BIOS so all options are open and it looks just like a DFI LanParty board in the BIOS setup. Unfortunately, the boards are just not overclocking well at this point and AMD is working on it. Their goal is to get to 300HTT stable, right now I am at 240HTT on the Biostar, the first BIOS would not post past 215HTT so they are slowly getting there.

 

[compwarez]

so you have the biostar hdmi motherboard for amd.

do you need a fastest cpu in order to be playing hd-dvd movies?

i want to review the quality of hd-dvd playing?

for example: CPU utilization , overclock speed for each of the board

 

[Gary Key]

Originally posted by: najames


Sorry, but you asked for it!!! Keep up the good work.

Not sorry by a long shot, just know the typical audience for these boards usually have completely different expectations or requirements so we want to focus on whats important to the readership.

I want to thank everyone for the comments. We will do our best to cover all bases and it appears to me we should have one article that focuses on the standard performance features and more importantly a second article that is geared exclusively to features.

 

[Madwand1]

I don't have any specific requests, but just FYI, I like to use such boards for home servers. On-board video, gigabit, SATA RAID and a free PCIe slot or two can be a very nice combination for such purposes. SATA RAID is important for Windows-based builds for the time being (until WHS at least), and Linux support is important for others.

While on-board RAID isn't as full-featured and robust as other solutions, the real solution is a backup, not a high-end RAID controller without a backup, so most of these issues are mitigated in that way. Moreover, a free wide PCIe slot leaves that option open for the future.

Looking for on-board video on desktop boards pretty generally takes us to mATX. Going to server boards takes us to limited choices, greater cost, etc. Been there and done that; I'm going with desktop boards for now.

 

[Skott]

Gary,
I got two things for you to look at. It concerns the ABIT FI90HD Fatal1ty mobo specifically, which I think you have in your mATX roundup. Ram compatability. People seem to be having issues with OCZ RAM modules and this mobo. Second thing has to do with the G80 cards blocking the SATA ports. Some are reporting two ports blocked and some saying all four ports blocked. Can you confirm/deny this?

In the last day or so a couple people over at HardForum have reported their FI90HD mobos dying after a couple days of normal operation. Not sure if this has to do with OCZ RAM, overclocking, or some other internal problem with the mobo.

Thanks,
~Skott~

 

[chucky2]

In reference to my #3 point above, I found the link. It's in the comments section of the AMD 690G: Performance Review article you posted, and was provided by StriderGT. The link is here: HDMI Soundcard Petition

Chuck

 

[JKing76]

Undervoltability. Is it available / for stock CPU speed how low can you go while remaining stable. Good for media PCs that you want to keep as cool/quiet as possible.

Also, if any of the boards offer eSATA, is it really hot-swappable? Also good for media PCs, where you could be moving and backing up lots of large files very often.

 

[chucky2]

5.) Maybe make a comment as to why manufacturers have had such little foresight to leave the one available PCIe or PCI slot on the mATX boards right next to the PCIe 16x slot, so when someone adds in a PCIe graphics card that takes up the slot next to it, they then loose their only PCIe or PCI slot along with it. Here's a great example of what looks to be a really nice board from the specs listed on ZipZoomFly's site ruined by such poor design decisions: SAPPHIRE PURE Innovation HDMI PI-AM2RS690MHD

Dumb...just flat out dumb.

Chuck

 

[BlingBlingArsch]

.

 

[Gary Key]

But Chuck, with the incredible performance of the integrated graphics, why would anyone want to use an external video solution. :laugh: I started testing the Sapphire board today, really nice from features viewpoint and the BIOS is pretty good also, but I wondered about the lack of a PCIe slot once the x16 is utilized. It just seems about every board we look at today has one glaring layout issue, you just sit there and wonder why.

 

[BlingBlingArsch]

- hdmi and xbox360 hd-dvd quality, HDCP Handshake working okay?
- system power consumption with onboard GPU and E4300 & AM2 EE

 

[chucky2]

Gary,

I feel the same way about the layout and/or feature issues...I just keep wondering why, especially with the inordinate amount of time ATI/AMD took to get this chipset finalized, the motherboard layouts and features aren't perfect?

I'm starting to wonder if the mobo manufacturers are just going off a marginal reference design, and are waiting for MCP68 to release so they can just take their existing boards based off MCP61 and just make a new spin off MCP68 features.

With as modern as this 690G should be, I'm just amazed at expansion slot layout undersight, lack of Firewire in most, and lack of Optical out in all but one or two.

The Abit X1250 board is almost a perfect solution, it could be used as a reference standard* for mATX, if only they'd have included an onboard Firewire port...

*I'd still like to see the DVI port onboard, with a DVI to HDMI connector provided that had an audio-in port molded into it somehow...or, a HDMI cable that had a HDMI port on it that you could screw into the case like older serial and parallel ports used to be, and the other end goes to a HDMI header on the motherboard.

These onboard HDMI ports are nice, but, the physical DVI connector is a much more secure connection physically.

JMHO's...

Chuck

 

[compwarez]

The X1250 does NOT support HD-DVD or Blu-ray decoding. The GPU core is just not fast enough to handle the H.264 off loading and as such I feel the HDMI and HDCP support is really just fluff.

 

[Skott]

Just a update. A third person over at HardForum has claimed his mobo died after 2 days of use. Reason yet unknown. :-(