ASRock 990fx Fatal1ty Killer on going review

[bob4933]

We're just gonna ignore my.. *cough* "error", and I will proceed as planned haha.



Initial impressions ->

Board is incredibly well packaged. Sturdy box, and an even more impressive foam mounting solution. High density foam that is zip tied to the board. Pair of scissors and the board is free from its polyurethane prison.

Removing the motherboard from the foam was a real shock. It is incredibly heavy compared to other boards I've experienced. Its the weight of a small laptop, not exaggerating. Significantly heavier than its m5a97/99 counterparts.

Components are very well laid out on this. In fact, one of the best I've seen for this form factor. The ONLY slight complaint is the ram could be moved over just a hair more to help removal of first sticks of ram.

Of note ->
- Power supplies are in a VERY logical position, on the outside of the board
- the sata ports are incredibly well organized, being "stacked" instead of scattered around the board
- all external controls exist on the bottom, which means no fumbling around to find a certain control, its all there in one spot
- in fact my only complaint is the fan power locations. They are kind of strewn about in a fashion that doesn't make a lot of sense to my eyes, but I will explore this further as I add more fans.


Installation of drivers and components is going to fare about the same as any motherboard. Nothing special about this thing.

LAN driver is nifty, I will report back on that one as I game.

Aesthetically, this mobo is very pleasing to the eye. If you don't like black with red contrasts, well, sorry. Its very tasteful to me. I thought the gold capacitors would look "gaudy" and out of place, but they are much more subdued in actual lighting than under a flash from a camera.

 

[bob4933]

Initial run impressions ->

First thing I noticed, is how ridiculously fast windows 7 loads. Its pretty outstanding, especially with me being on a mechanical drive. I will be upgrading to a SSD soon, so I will report back on gains from that.

UEFI Bios is pretty annoying honestly. I like black and red, but the deep contrast was a little painful on the eyes. If theres a way to change the colors, I will be doing that.

All the functions and overclocking features are there that you would expect. Initially, I can only see you have to manually scroll to find the voltages and settings you want, which is annoying. I prefer to press the "+" on my keyboard, not spend 2 minutes scrolling for each setting. There are some additional functions I don't recall seeing on the m5a97 board, and I don't believe they will be impacted by my scope, so I will ignore them for now.

For the first test, I disabled all the standard overclocking settings (cool n quiet, things like that), and set manual control to the voltages. I bumped up voltage to 1.3250 volts from 1.31xx, and set 200 and 20 for 4.0 ghz. As expected, system boots fast, and I will performing some tests and benchmarking and comparing them to scores I received with the m5a97 at same overclock. I will also be reporting back voltages required on this processor for both boards (I kept a data log of all voltage changes).


So far...

 

[Mandrake4565]

bob I agree with you the Asrock BIOS took a little getting used to compared to my Asus boards. I never liked the way it controlled the fans and also didn't like only having 3 Overclock profiles that I could set, I'm a bit spoiled by my Asus boards.

 

[bob4933]

I let prime 95 run for a couple hours, stable at 4.2 @ 1.3625 volts.

Something about this setup feels a lot more "fluid" than with the m5a97. That board went "Fast", but it was always choppy compared to my intel. This setup is much more natural and I am enjoying it much much more.

@ 4.2ghz, my geekbench3 score is 12358. My 4.2ghz score on the m5a97 was 11916. Strange difference, considering same core at the same speed.

edit: I believe I will be getting a modular 700+w PSU as well as a 240+ gb ssd, depending on how bad I get destroyed on taxes this year. I think with a SSD, this setup will be absolutely perfect for my needs.

 

[RGone]

Reviews have bios pics. At least of the ones related to voltages, Buss speeds and ram settings. You are the only one right now on the Fatlady Killer board and we need the full meal deal review. You have to scroll to get to all the settings per page and the F12 at bios saves to Usb stick in Fat 32 at about 2Mb file size. Will n0t attach to the forum as we desire. So you need to do a batch change of all the F12 bios pic saves to Usb stick with this tool I linked for Z__U. Let me get link to that post.
RGone...

EDIT:
Link to post in Z__U thread.
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7610965&postcount=125
Batch Image Converter, Resizer
END EDIT.

 

[bob4933]

Reviews have bios pics. At least of the ones related to voltages, Buss speeds and ram settings. You are the only one right now on the Fatlady Killer board and we need the full meal deal review. You have to scroll to get to all the settings per page and the F12 at bios saves to Usb stick in Fat 32 at about 2Mb file size. Will n0t attach to the forum as we desire. So you need to do a batch change of all the F12 bios pic saves to Usb stick with this tool I linked for Z__U. Let me get link to that post.
RGone...

EDIT:
Link to post in Z__U thread.
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7610965&postcount=125
Batch Image Converter, Resizer
END EDIT.

yes yes I promised

I'll take care of you. This definitely has a unique bios. Im enjoying myself at the moment though haha. Going from an intel e5800 to an OC fx8320 = lots of fun activities


LET THE KID OPEN HIS CHRISTMAS PRESENT DAMNIT!!!!




edit: Ok, I took some pics (cant find usb drive right now, ill post better pics later), but I restarted, and windows literally took 10-15 seconds tops to load completely. Im assuming this is a motherboard feature, and if so, HOLY CRAP. It feels SSD fast, I cant imagine how fast an SSD will be (instant?)

 

[bob4933]

I WILL POST PROPER USB PICS TOMORROW. I PROMISE. ALL SETTINGS, ETC.

I will say, ASUS smokes ASROCK on their bios interface. This one isn't "difficult" but isn't as nice. Colors and arrangement are the primary culprits.

POST screen, simple, no frills.

system data screen

OC tweak screen

tools screen

rest of the bios is pretty much standardized with any other bios

 

[RGone]

Yes that is not too far off from the bios look that is used in my Asrock 990FX Fatal1ty PRO mobo. If your Fatlady Killer works as well as my older style FatLady board...it will be just fine and is capable of some very high overclocks with 'monster' water cooling.
RGone...

 

[ATMINSIDE]

All you guys saying "UEFI Sucks", all my boards still have a blue and white BIOS!!!

OP, nice writeup. Subbed for further opinions.

 

[Johan45]

@ 4.2ghz, my geekbench3 score is 12358. My 4.2ghz score on the m5a97 was 11916. Strange difference, considering same core at the same speed.

.

I'd just like to add that Geekbench scoring is pretty inconsistent to start with so you could get 400 pts. spread easily just by re-running a few times on the same set-up.

 

[bob4933]

I'd just like to add that Geekbench scoring is pretty inconsistent to start with so you could get 400 pts. spread easily just by re-running a few times on the same set-up.

Right on.



After some mild tweaking today, I am wondering if that m5a97 was just faulty all around. I was able to 4.6 all day with "great" temeperatures, however, using a better compound, at 4.4 I am getting pretty hot. I probably won't go above 4.4, and will most likely go back down to 4.2 as that seems to be the "sweet spot" for performance vs heat with this set up.

I have it stable at 4.4ghz @ 1.425 volts. Temps are over 60, got a spike to 63, but it seems to stabilize to 61c after about 20 minutes. Let it run for a couple hours today, no issues other then heat. GB score was 12850

NOW, Im using the "CPUTIN" not "PACKAGE" to gauge temps here. If I am backwards, I have a LOT of room to move up, as core package temps were in the mid 50's tops, stabilized around 53c.

 

[bob4933]

And for mr rgone... As you guys can see, the ASUS bios is a tad more on the "user friendly side", while this one is more "tweakable". Its a bit of an eye sore for myself, but I can get passed that.


Things severely lacking from ASROCK's bios in my opinion
- No real time core control. Break out the calculator to see what 204 x 21.5 is instead of a convenient display on the screen
- Core control is **** poor. On ASUS you can actually turn off cores, here you are limited to "core control" or "nothing", and Im not sure what that even means
- no "easy interface" like asus has. I don't care, but others might
- power controls are pretty limited, but given the nature of this board "gaming, power, overclocking", I don't think "going green" was on the list!

Compared to ASUS



and gigabyte is smashing both of them ...

 

[RGone]

Yes that bios looks similar to the FatLady 990FX PRO board. Been awhile since I have looked in it though. Seems even though the Fatal1ty Killer is aimed at gamers more so than hard core overclockers, that the choices in the bios are pretty much there for some overclocking.

I did see 4400Mhz next to the multiplier choice. Maybe it comes up after a 'save and exit' though. Not while choosing the multiplier. Seems I do remember something odd about speed display though as you mention.

And if I remember correctly, the Egg just sold those boards for $134.00 which is a dang good deal for the VRM circuit compared to the M5A97 board. Price back up some now, but was a smoking deal at $134.00 for what one gets today.

Thanks for the pics man. At least we know APM enable/disable is there and CPU_NB is called just that. Overall fairly adequete bios for an FX 8 core to do pretty fair with really good cooling.
RGone...

 

[bob4933]

Yes that bios looks similar to the FatLady 990FX PRO board. Been awhile since I have looked in it though. Seems even though the Fatal1ty Killer is aimed at gamers more so than hard core overclockers, that the choices in the bios are pretty much there for some overclocking.

I did see 4400Mhz next to the multiplier choice. Maybe it comes up after a 'save and exit' though. Not while choosing the multiplier. Seems I do remember something odd about speed display though as you mention.

And if I remember correctly, the Egg just sold those boards for $134.00 which is a dang good deal for the VRM circuit compared to the M5A97 board. Price back up some now, but was a smoking deal at $134.00 for what one gets today.

Thanks for the pics man. At least we know APM enable/disable is there and CPU_NB is called just that. Overall fairly adequete bios for an FX 8 core to do pretty fair with really good cooling.
RGone...

yes sir. Its not real time updating. To see changes you must restart. Takes 10 seconds, but its still kind of an irritation after using the ASUS board.



One point of annoyance with this board. They proclaim the sound chip on it is "top notch", blah blah. It has true 5.1 hardware support, which is great, however, its lack luster over all. The board simply can not drive my higher end headphones. For those using gaming headsets, this will be satisfying, but for those with "real" headphones will find its performance lacking.

Not surprising honestly, and I didn't buy the board for the "audio quality". That said, its quiet and noise free, which is great. Its not bad, its just "not great", but I have a pretty high sense of audio quality as well.

 

[bob4933]

Absolutely rock solid at 4.2 ghz. This is probably the "sweet spot" right now.

http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/365046

I will be tweaking today, and posting some results. I will say, none of the voltages compare to the m5a97, as they are all higher across the board (no pun intended), and I believe this board to be more "accurate" and stable.

For example, I was running 4.4ghz on 1.38 volts on the m5a97, but I really don't think it was accurate at all, potentially why the board died.

 

[bob4933]

I would not be using geekbench for your rock solid stability testing. For that I would use Prime95 or IBT. Most of your benchmark software won't load up your CPU the way P95 does.

I only use P95 and IBT for stability testing... simply posting the score

Im noticing this board doesn't particularly like FSB overclocking.

 

[RGone]

FSB clocking may want some more CPU_NB Voltage, since raising FSB raises CPU_NB also and ram and well you get the idea. I have just gotten in the habit of settting my CPU_NB voltage to about 1.25V for just plain old stability sake.

 

[bob4933]

Man I feel like Im gonna break something. I don't feel I can get a good 4.5 overclock. Thats my "ideal goal" honestly, but I keep adding voltage and nothing happens. I got up to 1.425 volts, does that just mean "keep going"?

 

[RGone]

This is what we need to see of LAST stable cpu speed...

Makes answering about overclocking an AMD cpu easier.

In bios disable C1/E, C6, Cool N Quiet, TurboCore (if there), Disable APM and in windows power manager set to "performance mode". Then do as below.

CPU Tab in CPUz from CPUID com

Memory Tab in CPUz from CPUID com

SPD Tab in CPUz from CPUID com

And this is screen capture of HWMonitor (free version) from CPUID com
HWMonitor has been scrolled enough and large enough to show Min/Max of Voltages and includes the CPU Core Temps; which are n0w called Package Temps, fully visible.

This capture is made of HWMonitor after it has been open on the desktop logging Min/Max temps and voltages while Prime 95 was running Blend Mode test on all cores for at least 20 mins and then the capture of HWMonitor was made and it shows the Min/Max temps and voltages before P95 Blend was started and while running P95 Blend mode and gives much greater insight into how the system is performing without guessing.

In order to attach screenshots of INDIVIDUAL images as suggested, first crop and capture the images with Snipping Tool found in Windows Accessories or equivalent. Then click on Go Advanced, a button at the bottom of every new post window. Then click on the little paperclip tool at the top of the Advanced post window when it opens. Clicking on the paperclip tool brings up the file browser/upload tool and the rest is fairly obvious.

How to actually attach images to the forum and not use a link to some outside location where image is stored. Store the image within the forum.

You can attach more than 3 pics at one time by going back up to browse another file and uploading it.

 

[bob4933]

Heres what I have goin on

In bios, I have it set to normal over clock settings ( all that stuff disabled), and manual control over most things.

Vcore is set to 1.4 volts in bios
CPU-NB is 1.20 due to standard 200 fsb.

This is VERY stable at 4.2ghz, and very fluid feeling. I can move up to 4.3-4.4, but it doesn't feel very smooth no matter how much voltage I put in. Also fails p95 pretty quickly.

I am noting its 1.36 volts in cpu-z vs the 1.4 I have bios settings at. Any reason for this?