Review: Gigabyte GA-F2A85XM-D3H

Final Thoughts and Rating

...this is very much how the FM2 platform should be presented - as a cheap, do-it-all solution that's competent in all areas.

Gigabyte aims to provide fresh impetus to AMD's A-series APUs by retailing a cost-effective motherboard based on the premier A85X chipset. Dubbed GA-F2A85XM-D3H and sporting eight SATA 6Gbps ports, a quartet of USB 3.0, three video outputs, and opportunity for Dual Graphics and two-card CrossFire, this is very much how the FM2 platform should be presented - as a cheap, do-it-all solution that's competent in all areas.

The layout could do with a tweak and the BIOS would certainly benefit from being a little more user-friendly, but priced at £55 and offering practically all the features of boards costing 50 per cent more, Gigabyte's got it pretty much spot-on.

We'd couple the board up with an energy-efficient A10-5700 CPU and some el-cheapo 8GB DDR3 RAM, thereby providing a solid foundation for a competent PC build. Recommended if you're in the market for a no-frills PC that's laden with modern connectivity.

The Good

Impressive price-to-features ratio
Competitive performance
USB 3.0 and eight SATA ports
Comparatively power efficient

The Bad

Layout could do with a tweak
BIOS could be more enthusiast-friendly

HEXUS Rating

Gigabyte GA-F2A85XM-D3H

HEXUS Awards

Gigabyte GA-F2A85XM-D3H

HEXUS Where2Buy

The Gigabyte GA-F2A85XM-D3H motherboard is available from Dabs.com

HEXUS Right2Reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

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Thanks,for reviewing one of the cheaper A85 motherboards!!

indeed. was not aware there were such good smaller size & price options for Trinity.

Thanks.

Are you sure that the pcie slots operate at x8/x8 when two discrete cards are being used? I'm currently looking for a new a85x board and all the online retailers list the board as x16/x4. Of course, I'm kind of hesitant to buy an FM2 board with more than one pcie slot anyways. The biggest appeal for me is the onboard graphics being so good already and then being able to do the hybrid crossfire with one discrete card if I want a little extra boost. You don't need two pcie slots to do that. Unless Richland will enable 3-way crossfire hybrids (onboard + two discrete cards) I don't really see much value in that second pcie slot. Has there been any word on if 3-way crossfire hybrid will be possible with Richland?

Nice review,
my question is more in genreal though. Why would you need 8 SATA ports anyway?
This doesn't look as a NAS motherboard nor a server board, can't use it with ESXi (RAID controller is probably software based as usual). SO in normal use, why you would need eight SATA ports on budget PC?

darcotech
Nice review,
my question is more in genreal though. Why would you need 8 SATA ports anyway?
This doesn't look as a NAS motherboard nor a server board, can't use it with ESXi (RAID controller is probably software based as usual). SO in normal use, why you would need eight SATA ports on budget PC?

because 8 is better than 3 or 4 = normal itx provision.

Bitfenix prodigy see here has room for 5x 3.5 drives or 9x 2.5

It's not a server class motherboard, yes, but as a storage place with the random HDD's i have lying around it'll be alright.