Date:
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Author:
Morry Teitelman
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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GIGABYTE 890GPA-UD3H Motherboard Review

GIGABYTE's latest AMD based board uses the AMD 890GX chipset in order to deliver a feature rich solution packing a lot of promise. Is this the board that will usher in a new performance era for AMD?

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Overclocking

I was impressed with the overclocking potential of the 890GPA-UD3H. While I seem to have hit a hard wall with the CPU I used at 3.90GHz, I did manage to get the system booting at 4.1GHz. However, the system was not stable enough in Windows to even get spec screenshots. Similarly, the memory would not go above a 1600MHz speed, with any faster causing a non-POST'ing system. At an impressive 300MHz FSB, the system was fully stable with a CPU speed of 3.9GHz, memory at 1600MHz, Northbridge running at a cool 2700MHz and HyperTransport bus at 2100MHz. To measure the overall system stability, I used our standard suite of stress applications, including Prime95 running on all cores and the OpenGL based benchmarking program Furmark, running in Stability Test mode. Both programs ran simultaneously on the system overnight at the stated settings. I used the following to achieve the mentioned overclock: an AMD Phenom II x4 965 Black Edition CPU, 2 x 2GB Patriot VIPER PVV34G2000LLK memory modules, a Koolance 345 CPU water block, and a tri-fan radiator. The following BIOS settings were instituted for the overclocking: memory timings left set to Auto in the BIOS, 1.50V CPU voltage (+0.10V in BIOS), 2.90V CPU PLL voltage, 1.695V memory voltage, 1.50V HyperTransport voltage (+0.40V in BIOS) , 1.44V Northbridge chipset, 1.70V SidePort memory voltage, and 2.10V for the Northbridge chipset and PCI based voltage regulation circuitry.

The screenshots below detail the overclocking performed.

3.9GHz CPU speed with 1600MHz memory speed and 300MHz FSB

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Conclusion

Morry's Thoughts:

Overall, I'm impressed with the job GIGABYTE did in designing the 890GPA-UD3H board. I had my reservations going in to the review due to the Northbridge chipset's integrated GPU, but those reservations turned out to be unfounded. The board performed very well in both stock and overclocked scenarios. I had no problems setting up or using the board, and even the overclocking was not that hard to get going.

The one thing that annoyed me with the board was the BIOS. More specifically, the "hidden" advanced features in the BIOS requiring the key combination Ctrl-F1 to access. We have griped about this for YEARS now. It just seems counterintuitive to us to "hide" these features on an enthusiast class motherboard.

The 890GPA-UD3H is definitely a great board with great performance to back it up. Given its feature set and the overall price point of AMD CPUs and solutions, this is definitely a good proposition for budget minded enthusiasts...

Kyle's Thoughts:

I am not going to get into the whole "AMD vs. Intel" discussion here but to say that our readers are intelligent enough to know if an AMD Phenom II based solution is right for their computing needs. AMD certainly still offers good value in the marketplace and an alternative to the juggernaut Intel if you are looking for one.

First and foremost what the Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H offers to AMD users is [URL=http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/12/11/usb_30_preview/ ]USB 3.0 and SATA 6gbps technology on an AM3 socket motherboard. USB 3.0 is powered by the same logic we have seen on other motherboards, the NEC chip solution, as it is pretty much the only one in retail use as of yet. And in all honesty, it is probably the one advanced technology that will come in use on this motherboard quickly. USB 3.0 devices are already on the market.

The other advanced feature of the Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H is that it offers SATA 6Gbps, which is nothing terribly new until you get around to the fact that AMD's new SB850 southbridge will natively support up to six SATA 6Gbps channels. Since Intel does not yet support this feature in its hardware the most SATA 6Gbps connections I have on an Intel-based motherboard is two. Certainly that is great for the end use that wants it, but like we have shown in the article, you will need some stiff RAID arrays to show off the speed, and that is just what we did. If you check out our motherboard preview here, you can see where we used the SATA 6Gbps technology is a four-wide striped RAID array. We have embedded the video below. The RAID goodness starts at about the 9 minute 30 second mark.

We did stability the Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H for a 24 hour period. We incubated the board and running full CPU, RAM, and GPU loads, we were able to get our ambient temperature up to a scorching 58C. So, while this board did not run "cool" it also handled the stress without an issue.

The Bottom Line

Gigabyte has done a great job with the 890GPA-UD3H motherboard. You can purchase this motherboard at Provantage for a mere $127.33 plus shipping. It supports the newest USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps technologies and does not even require a video card since it has integrated graphics supporting HDMi, and DVI out. It will also support CrossFire with an x8/x8 physical connection. It is a very solid overclocker, and very stable to boot. The Gigabyte the 890GPA-UD3H looks to be a very good value in a socket AM3 motherboard.

GIGABYTE GA-890GPA-UD3H ATX AMD Motherboard

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Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H Motherboard

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