3 - Being Green & new Overclocking features

Going Green(er)

To pre-face this review we'll let you know that we were a little short on time to do all the testing. But what I wanted to make you aware of is that the board is pretty power consumption aware, we'll show you some wattage numberd later on though. The 790GX incorporates four power-saving improvements that you supposedly don't have on the 780G boards

• A deep sleep on the side-port memory, yielding up to 1.7 W of savings.
• Driver and BIOS enhancements made to AMDs PowerPlay technology -- save up to 3.1 W as well.
• Onboard voltage scaling --  another 900 mW
• Support for the C1e power state approaches 6 W of savings.

AMD has made some power savings enhancements with the 790GX, offering a deep sleep mode for the sideband memory, voltage scaling, enhanced PowerPlay features, and a new lower power CPU state. As you can see power management at work. In idle the 2400 MHz CPU clocks down to 1250 MHz, one of the many energy aware functions.

AMD Overdrive -- overclocking

Key to the new 790GX feature set is AMD's Overdrive interface that allows effortless overclocking of the Phenom Black Edition processors. The significant performance increase the platform can deliver to gamers using Black Edition processors is thanks to what AMD calls Advanced Clock Calibration technology. The new B3 Phenom processors can complement the 790GX chipset's overclocking capabilities very well, and AMD reports that Phenom Black Edition processors running at 2.5GHz stock can be pushed to 3.2GHz and over thanks to its new Advanced Clock Calibration.

ACC, short for Advanced Clock Calibration, was planned to enhance the overclocking potential of Phenom processors. AMD hasn't revealed exactly how the technology works, even at a recent AMD technology summit the details were not handed out. But one fact is that the Southbridge has a dedicated link to the CPU. We think it boils down to ACC's ability to keep clock frequencies in sync and stabilize inter-chip communications between the CPU, Northbridge, Southbridge and memory. Mind you that this trick only works for Phenom processors, particularly for the Black Edition processors actually.

We obviously gave it a try and were able to reach much higher clocks frequencies perfectly stable on the fly.

AMD's Overdrive software overclocking the Phenom X2 towards 3100 MHz easily

Reportedly around the people have been able to reach much high results. I also gave overclocking the HT frequency combined with a higher multiplier and boosted the CPu voltage a little. Again we were pretty easily able to hit 3.1 GHz on a stock Asaka air cooler.

In this review we'll consistently show you results with a tweaked environment as well. Some more Overdrive features then:

Advanced Memory control

Monitoring features