Review: Gigabyte AMD 790GX mobo under the spotlight

by Michael Harries on 8 September 2008, 08:30

Tags: GA-MA790GP-DS4H, DG45ID, 790GX Chipset with ATI Radeon HD 3300 Graphics (IG, GA-MA78GM-S2H, Gigabyte (TPE:2376), Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), AMD (NYSE:AMD), PC

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Gigabyte MA790GP-DS4H Layout

Gigabyte's MA790GP-DS4H is a full-sized ATX board, offering the connectivity and features of a mid-range to high-end product.

Clearly, it's not competing solely with the value-orientated mATX IGP boards we're used to seeing, but also mainstream enthusiast boards - which is reflected in the online price of ~£110.

Board layout is decent, with power connectors generally located in the ideal locations.

There are two 4-pin fan-connectors labelled CPU and System 1, and a single 3-pin labelled System 2. The system fan-headers, in the bottom-left of the above picture, are inconveniently located for attaching a rear chassis fan, meaning the use of a fan extension cable will likely be required.


The CPU area is pretty clear, and shouldn't pose too many compatibility problems when installing most aftermarket coolers, although our AKASA AK-876 cooler did sit flush with Corsair DOMINATOR memory modules. 

Power regulation is more robust than we saw on most 780G motherboards, and, as such, full compatibility with 125W and 140W Phenoms quad-core CPUs is now guaranteed.



The 790GX northbridge features an integrated Radeon HD 3300 graphics core running at 700MHz, compared to the 500MHz clock speed of the 780G's HD 3200 core.

Gigabytes implementation also features 128MB DDR3-1333 as a dedicated SidePort memory for the IGP. SidePort memory was a feature available with the 780G chipset but left unused on the majority of boards. AMD promises that uptake of the feature will be much greater with the 790GX.

The bump in clock speeds and addition of dedicated memory should boost performance over the 780G, which itself was the fastest IGP we had tested.


With the board supporting all AM2+ processors, there's native provision for DDR2 memory up to PC2-8500 (1,066MHz) dependant on your processor's capability. During preliminary testing the board seemed to work fine with DDR2-1066 modules running at 1066MHz with 2.1V, which is something a number of other AMD boards failed to do - even when support was listed.

Underneath an unassuming heatsink lies the second part of the new platform upgrade: the SB750 southbridge. Aside from adding a feature you usually associate with the southbridge, namely RAID5 support, the SB750 also promises a very un-southbridge-like feature: increased overclocking headroom, via Advanced Clock Calibration (ACC), using AMD's Overdrive utility.

The fine details of quite how a southbridge is able to increase the overclocking potential of a processor are still somewhat unclear, but in essence AMD is focussing on tuning the platform as a whole, and the SB750 features a direct link to the processor which is able to assist in tuning the CPU to the specific system environment. This, AMD says, opens up the way for higher overclocks. We'll put it to the test later.

The board features six SATA2 ports, although none of them are front-facing, which may cause issues when full-length expansion cards are used.


Speaking of expansion cards, the MA790GS-DS4H features dual PCIe 2.0 x16 physical slots, with the first providing the full 16 lanes in single-card mode, and the two offering x8 in two-card scenarios. There are also three PCIe x1 and two PCI slots, making the board extremely scalable, and therefore suitable for either IGP-based HTPC use, or high-end gaming when paired with discrete cards.

Hybrid CrossFire, where a low-end Radeon HD 2- or 3-series card is placed in the x16 slot and coupled up to the on-board graphics for more performance, is another feature carried on over from 780G.


Rear connectivity is provided by VGA, DVI and HDMI display outputs (although the digital connectors cannot be used simultaneously), PS/2 keyboard and mouse, four USB2.0 (which is a little on the low side for some), one FireWire, one Gigabit Ethernet and analogue multi-channel audio jacks supplied via the Realtek ALC889A codec. There's also the provision of an optical S/PDIF-out for hooking up an AV receiver for home theatre PC use, and both Dolby Digital Live real-time encoding and Dolby Home Theatre are supported.

Summary

A feature-laden board with Gigabyte's trademark dual BIOSes, pricing is a little steep at £110.