ASRock 890GX Extreme3

Introduction

Published: 22nd June 2010 | Source: ASRock | Price: £94.37 | Author: Milind Chidrawar

Introduction

ASRock are a brand that you don’t tend to see here at Overclock3D very much. Founded in 2002 as the budget arm of Asus many of the motherboards sold were sub £50 no frills efforts that were not made to break records but merely just to “get the job done”. Aside a couple of Frankenstein products such as the popular AGP and PCI-Express compliant ASrock 939Dual SATA2, this was pretty much what ASRock was about. Times do change though and they certainly did for this low cost child.

From 2007, ASRock saw great levels of growth most notably from it’s independent floatation on the Taiwan stock exchange and dare I say it, has also meant multiple attempts at breaking into the performance sector of DIY systems. Today we will be looking at ASRock’s latest attempt; the 890GX Extreme3.

We tend to raise an eyebrow when the word “Extreme” is used overzealously. Perhaps we live in a world of exaggeration but Extreme is most certainly a word that describes something to the “furthest degree” and no less. It’s very much akin to today’s vehicle market, which is now flooded with cars with aggressive lines, huge wheels, bright lights and you guessed it... an underpowered diesel engine. That’s right, you in the BMW 116D M-Sport. There is nothing “Motor-Sport” about your £20,000 oil burning hatchback.

To the point, what I’m referring to is the terrible amount of “all show and no go” in a number of consumer industries today. Is the ASRock 890GX Extreme3 just another case of this or has it got what it takes to really impress us? Without prejudice, we will put the board through it’s paces but first, here’s a more comprehensive specification list to digest.

Specifications

Form Factor	ATX, 12" x 9.6" (30.5cm x 24.5cm)
Processor Support	AMD Socket AM3 Sempron 100/Athlon II X2/X3/X4 and Phenom II X2/X3/X4 Processors
Chipset	AMD 890GX / SB850
Memory	4 x DIMM, Max. 16 GB 1600/1333/1066 Non-ECC,Un-buffered Memory Dual Channel memory architecture
Expansion Slots	3 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (8x/8x Dual CrossfireX mode 8x/8x/4x Tri CrossfireX mode) 1 x PCIe 2.0 1x 3 x PCI
Multi-GPU Support	ATi CrossfireX Supported
Onboard Video	ATi Radeon HD 4290 w/ 128MB GDDR3 Sideport Supports Hybrid CrossfireX with Radeon HD 2400/34xx/42xx series graphics cards
Storage	AMD SB850 Southbridge 6 x SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports 1x e-SATA 6.0Gb/s
LAN	One Realtek RTL8111E 10/100/1000 Gigabit LAN
Audio	VIA VT2020 7.1 Channel Audio
USB	AMD SB850 Southbridge - 12 x USB 2.0 ports (4 x Rear, 8 x Internal) NEC USB3.0 Controller - 2x USB 3.0 ports
Firewire	2 x 1394a ports (1x Rear I/O, 1x Internal)
Back Panel I/O	1 x PS/2 Keyboard 1 x e-SATA 1 x DVI 1 x VGA 1 x HDMI 1 x LAN 2 x USB3.0/2.0/1.1 ports 4 x USB2.0/1.1 ports 1 x IEEE1394a port 1 x Clear CMOS switch