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AMD 790FX Mobo Shootout
[Abstract]
The Spider AM3 Makeover Launched initially along with the original AMD Phenom as part of the Spider platform, AMD's enthusiast chipset, the 790FX remains the only one capable of supporting quad...
[Content] PCDigitalMobileGame
Features and Layout - Gigabyte
Gigabyte has relied heavily for its Ultra Durable feature in recent times, with practically all of its newer boards touting it, which means having twice the amount of copper in the motherboard's PCB in order to improve cooling efficiency. While we believe that this feature does work as advertised, it tends to make these Gigabyte boards rather heavy, especially when combined with the solid heft of the passive heatsinks on the Gigabyte MA790FXT-UD5P.
Gigabyte's recent color scheme has been dominated by whites and blues, a far cry from its formerly colorful designs. This is also an Ultra Durable 3 model, which has double the amount of copper in its PCB, making it slightly heavier. |
Of the three AMD 790FX motherboards, only the Gigabyte surprisingly could not do quad CrossFireX, with Gigabyte preferring PCIe x1 expansion slots instead. |
The one thing we noticed immediately about this board is that it only has two PCIe 2.0 x16 slots. This means that quad CrossFireX is ruled out. It is a rather strange decision since that takes away one of the major advantage of a 790FX motherboard (though you'll still get a pair of 16 lanes for full bandwidth two-way CrossFireX). Gigabyte has replaced the additional PEG slots slots with PCIe x1 slots; three of them in fact and given the trend of beefing up the motherboard onboard components, it's hard to imagine what Gigabyte thinks enthusiasts will use these PCIe x1 slots for.
It's ports galore at the back of the motherboard, with two Gigabit LAN ports, six USB 2.0 ports and even 2 FireWire ports. |
With eight USB 2.0 ports at the rear I/O panel, along with dual Gigabit LAN controllers and two FireWire ports, the Gigabyte MA790FXT-UD5P has quite a few more I/O ports than the ASUS M4A79T Deluxe we saw previously.
Gigabyte adds four more SATA ports to the six available from the AMD Southbridge. If you collect hard drives as a hobby, this is the board to get. |
This Gigabyte board comes with a massive ten SATA 3.0Gbps ports. That is four extra from the standard six found on the Southbridge and they come from the two JMicron JMB322 chips that are onboard. A eSATA bracket kit is included to convert those SATA ports to get two eSATA. It will require one of your expansion slots however. With so many SATA ports, it's looking like a board for storage freaks.
Besides these surprising design choices, Gigabyte has gotten its layout right for the most part. The outward orientation of the SATA ports for one is our preferred choice while other connectors like floppy and IDE are rightly found at the edge of the board. Unlike the ASUS, there was no issue with installing or removing the CPU heatsink fan while the dual PCIe 2.0 x16 graphics slots were spaced apart sufficiently to accommodate a graphics card with a triple slot cooler. At least some good came out of reducing the graphics card expansion slots.
The Gigabyte heatsink was about as close to the CPU socket as the ASUS but thanks to its design, it did not interfere with our CPU heatsink. |
Perhaps Gigabyte heard the feedback of enthusiasts about the 'danger' of having a Clear CMOS button readily available because this button here has a plastic cap over it to prevent accidents. |
We initially assumed that Gigabyte did not include the onboard power and reset buttons but it turns out that they are hidden here in a rather unconventional location. It's slightly less convenient no doubt but nothing serious. |
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