A79A-S Software, BIOS, and Accessories
Like all recent AMD chipset products, the A79A-S supports AMD’s overclocking utility. Foxconn also includes its Fox One utility for viewing and changing various BIOS settings from within Windows. Fox One has several optional skins, so we tried to show a different skin for each menu.
Fox One is reasonably comprehensive and works fairly well, but we prefer to adjust our BIOS settings from within the BIOS GUI to reduce the likelihood of a crash affecting our Windows installation.
BIOS
Foxconn’s “Northbridge Voltage Control” is completely different from Asus’, and we believe it’s because Foxconn is referring to the actual 790FX northbridge rather than the processor’s on-die memory controller.
| CPU Reference Clock | 190 - 400 MHz (1 MHz) | |
| Clock Multiplier Adjustment | Yes | |
| DRAM Ratio | All CPU On-Die Memory Controller Ratios | |
| PCIe Clock | 90 - 250MHz (1 MHz) | |
| HT Link Multiplier | 1x - 13x CPU Reference Clock | |
| CPU Vcore | Stock - +0.60 Volts (0.024 Volts) | |
| CPU PLL Voltage | 2.30 - 3.25 Volts ( 0.06 V) | |
| HT Link Voltage | 1.776 - 2.640 Volts (0.048 Volts) | |
| Northbridge Voltage | 1.68 - 2.355 Volts (0.045 Volts) | |
| DRAM Voltag e | 1.80 - 2.20 - 2.70 Volts (0.05, 0.10 Volts) | |
| CAS Latency Range (DDR2-1066) | ||
| tCAS: 3-7; tRCD: 5-12; tRP: 5-12; tRAS: 15-30 |
Foxconn’s BIOS is fairly limited by performance motherboard standards, yet still contains AMD’s Advanced Clock Calibration settings, which can help tremendously in overclocking a Phenom processor.
As usual for Foxconn, CPU core voltage is adjusted in steps, requiring tuners to do the math and calculate the actual target voltage. A little more confusing, however, are Foxconn’s CPU FID and DID controls, which we had to experiment with in order to find the actual ratios we sought.
Accessories
| Documentation & Software | Motherboard Manual |
| Motherboard Driver DVD | |
| Hardware | 6x SATA Data Cable |
| 1x 80-conductor Ultra ATA cable | |
| 1x Floppy Cable | |
| 1x Port Breakout Plate (2x USB, 1x IEEE-1394) | |
| 1x I/O Panel Shield | |
| 6x 4-pin to SATA power adapter |
Foxconn keeps Windows XP users in mind by supplying a floppy cable in the A79A-S installation kit, since floppies are handy for installing RAID drivers. The six SATA power adapters probably aren’t needed, however, since power supplies for its market already have several SATA drive connectors.
I don't know about you guys, but I haven't had a flash going wrong since a P2B board from the stoneage
Call it paranoia from a guy who changes BIOSs on an almost daily-basis on one board or another (me, not Thomas, though he does his fair share of updating, too).
Sadly, this is going to be tough hill to climb for AMD to become competitive again. I wish them luck though, the consumer is always the winner when corporations compete :)
Ive got a phenom x4 9950 placed on a ASUS m3a32 mvp deluxe motherboard.
With stock voltage and stock cooling ive cranked it up to 3.2ghz and it runs perfectly stable. (this was done by only adjusting the multiplier)
A friend of mine have the same setup as me but an aftermarket cooler (noctua nh-u12p) and hes overclocked it up to 3.4ghz, again running stable.
On Overclocking forums i read about people cranking this CPU up to 3.6ghz on air (noctua nh-u12p) without any wizardry.
This test is flawed and im very dissapointed about tomshardware and what i feel is an effortless test of this setup.
Im an Intel guy myself but at least im honest about intels oponents, and in this case the review should end up with AMD being amazing value for money and that the future is a bit (not alot) brighter for AMD.
and the 9950 is cheaper then the q6600 its cheaper then about every intel processor out there (even the dual cores such as e8400 etc).
Im not saying it is a better processor then what intel has lined up, what im saying is that it is amazing value for money. and much better at overclocking then tomshardware managed to get out of it thats all :D
Obviously Tom wasn’t interested in doing this review!……..
But I game at 1080P res. wiht a 4870 and I get over 30FPS in most of my games At max setting.
Good Review.