- Phenom
- AMD Phenom Quad-core
- DDR2-1066
- CrossFireX
- Certified for Windows Vista
- ATI CrossFireX
- Side Port Memory
- Motherboard Intelligent BIOS
- HT 3.0
- ATI Hybrid Graphics Technology
- Over-Clocking
- HDCP
- PCI Express 2.0
- HDMI
- RAID 0,1,5,10
- Gigabit LAN
- 8 Channel High Definition Audio
- SPDIF Out
- USB 2.0
| A790GXM-A Black Edition Spec Sheet |
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| Part Number | A790GXM-A Black Edition |
| Manufacturer | ECS |
| Price Check | Find Best Price |
| Downloads | BIOS
Drivers
Manuals |
| Chipset | AMD 790GX |
| North Bridge | 790GX |
| Socket | AM2+ |
| Processor Types | Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core / Athlon 64 / Sempron, Phenom |
| Number of CPUs | 1 |
| Front Side Bus | 1066/800/667/533/400 |
| Memory Type | DDR2 |
| Memory Channels | Dual |
| Maximum Memory | 8GB |
| External Graphics | PCI Express x16 x2 |
| IGP | HD3300 |
| South Bridge | AMD SB750 |
| Audio | 8-channel |
| IDE | 133/100/66/33 |
| SCSI | None |
| SATA | 3.0 GB/s |
| RAID | 0, 1, 5, 10 |
| LAN | 10/100/1000 |
| Firewire | None |
| USB | USB 2.0 |
| Expansion Slots | |
| BIOS | AMI |
| Form Factor | ATX |
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ECS's motherboard has the AMD 790GX Northbridge and the SB750 Southbridge combination giving the best of AMD's current chipset and Southbridge to the A790GXM-A board. The 790GX chipset supports Hybrid CrossFireX and CrossFireX, HyperTransport 3.0, support for the new 9950 and earlier AMD Phenom X4 and X3 CPUs, and integrated graphics in the form of the HD 3300 graphics chip.
CrossFireX is the ability of a motherboard with either an Intel or AMD chipset to support more than one ATI graphics card working together to improve gaming performance. Two ATI dual-slot graphics cards can be installed nearly doubling performance of a single card. Hybrid Crossfire allows the ATI HD 3300 integrated to work with a discrete graphics card like the HD 3450 to improve gaming performance over that of the single card.
AMD Phenom CPUs can support DDR2 memory up to 1066MHz speed. The memory controller is on the CPU and not the chipset, meaning that while the motherboard may support 1066MHz memory, the CPU may not, forcing the memory to run at a lower clock speed. DDR2 533/667/800/1066 is supported by the Phenom X4 CPU meaning that the 790GX in combination with a 9850 or 9950 supports it.
HyperTransport 3.0 is the latest version of the AMD equivalent of Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) or the earlier FSB (Front Side Bus) on the Intel platform. The HT 3.0 protocol has a bandwidth of 51.2GB/second compared to earlier HT 2.0 solutions which had a bandwidth of 22.4GB/second. Again as the earlier CPUs support the slower HT 2.0 standard, the motherboard will support the fastest HT that the CPU allows, meaning that an AM2 CPU such as the Athlon X2 5200 would run at the slower HT 2.0 standard.
The integrated graphics on the A790GXM-A Black Edition are based upon the AMD HD 3300 GPU, which is a shrunk down HD 2600. The specs on the HD 3300 are similar to the earlier HD 3200 on the 780G series, but with a much higher clock speed 700MHz for the core versus 500MHz on the older chipset. The number of ROPs is the same at 4 on the HD 3300 as the earlier integrated graphics of the HD 3200 but up to 128MB of Side Port memory can be added to a motherboard to improve performance by using that memory in addition to the system memory.
