Foxconn Destroyer nForce 780a Review

ajmatson - November 11, 2008
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Testing:

To put the Foxconn Destroyer to the wall I will be running a series of scientific and video benchmarks which will push this motherboard to its limits. I will then compare the Destroyer against other boards in its class including the Foxconn A7DA-S which is another 790GX based motherboard and the ASUS M3N78 Pro which is based on the latest GeForce 8300 chipset. To keep any variables from interfering with the scores and comparisons all of the boards will be run with the same hardware setup and everything will be set at their stock speeds, timings, and voltages unless noted as in the overclocking section.

Test Setup:

Processor: AMD Phenom 9850 "Black Box" (200x12.5)
Motherboard: Foxconn Destroyer 780a SLI
Memory: Mushkin Redline XP2 8000 2 x 2 GB 5-5-5-12
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 w/ Catalyst 8.8
Power Supply: Mushkin 800w Modular Power Supply
Hard Drive: Seagate 7200.11 1TB SATA
Optical Drive: Lite-On 8x DVD+/-RW
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate Edition

Comparison Motherboards:

Comparison Motherboard 1: Sapphire PC-AM2RX780
Comparison Motherboard 2: Foxconn A7DA-S
Comparison Motherboard 3: ASUS M3N78 Pro

Overclocking:

Overclocked settings:

Processor: AMD Phenom 9850 "Black Box" @ 203x16 = 3.250GHz
Memory: Mushkin Redline XP2 8000 2 x 2 GB 5-5-5-15 @ 812MHz

Although Foxconn provides the Aegis Panel overclocking utility the options with the utility are limited. For true overclocking you have to get down to the nitty gritty in the BIOS and make the changes you need. I have found in my trials when testing AMD hardware that you can either push the CPU speed or push the multiplier but when you push both you run into problems. For overclocking the Foxconn Destroyer I pushed the multiplier first in half increments until I became unstable. Then I backed off until I could boot and run with no problems. Next I pushed the CPU speed by one megahertz at a time until I hit a wall at 203MHz. This gave me a total speed of 3.250GHz (203x16) which is what the overclocking tests will be run at.