Gigabyte launches the GA-890GPA-UD3H AM3 motherboard with SATA3 and USB3 support.

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The GA-890GPA-UD3H is a mainboard that comes with the '333' logo for SATA3, USB3 and 3x the power supply for USB devices.




There is CPU Support for 140w TDP processors, which means the upcoming six core Phenom II X6 CPUs will be supported.

The 890GPA-UD3H is equipped with a 4+1 phase Voltage Regulator Module, overclocking will probably be a bit less than the 'high-end' AM3 boards like the GA-MA790FXT-UD5P that has an 8+2 phase (Split Power Plane) VRM.




The South Bridge SB850 has a native SATA3 storage interface with superfast 6Gbps link speed (SATA3) and has six! connectors.

The USB3 has no native support, but is done by the NEC D720200F1 chip and you'll find the 2 connectors on the back panel.


The 890GX with Integrated ATI Radeon HD 4290 graphics (DirectX10.1) has not been tested yet, but probably it will not differ that much from the HD 3300 (790G chipset) that is also clocked @700MHz, the HD4200 (785G chipset) was clocked @500MHz. According to Gigabyte you will be able to easy overclock the HD4290 up to 1150MHz for a 3DMark06 score of 3300 3Dmarks or above, we are a bit sceptical about this though.

There is even a 'legacy' floppy disk drive connector.




Most important Specs:

CPU Socket ANM3 -- support for 140w TDP CPUs.
Chipset AMD 890GX/SB850
DDR3 up to 1866MHz (OCed)
PCIe2.0 x16 - 2 slots (x16 or x8, x8) with (hybrid) CrossFireX™ support.
SATA 3Gb/s 2 connectors
SATA 6Gb/s 6 connectors
SATA RAID 0/1/0+1/5/JBOD
Onboard Video
IGP ATI Radeon HD 4290
Onboard Audio includes optical out
Video Ports VGa, DVI, HDMI -- (No DisplayPort)




Gigabyte News

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Mainboard Review Round-Up

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1. GIGABYTE P55A-UD4P




bjorn3d.com compared the GIGABYTE P55A-UD4P with the GIGABYTE P55-UD4 and ASUS Maximus 3 Gene.
They were unable to test the SATA III capabilities of this mainboard because they could not get hold of a SATA III device.





2. Asus P6TD Deluxe
   
   bit-tech.net had a core i7 overclocing test and tried to reach the 4GHz barrier, but their sweetspot was the 3.8GHz mark, not a bad result.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Intel DH55TC
   
   
   
   motherboards.org tested a Core i5 661 CPU, but in the process they also had a look at the the Intel DH55TC, also have a look here for more reviews.
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. Asus Maximus III Formula
   
   
   xbitlabs.com tested the most complex P55 mobo the Asus Maximus III Formula, in their February 17, 2010 updated version they discovered one very annoying issue: after each power down the board assumed that there was a new processor installed more..
   
   
   
   
   

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EVGA P55 FTW reviewed and overclocked

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The EVGA P55 FTW is made for hardcore enthusiast, 12 Phase PWM will guarantee that the board will not be the limiting factor in case of overclocking, the CPU power supply is something special it has a 2x8pin connectors for 600 watts!!



Long-life capacitors in the VRM and the unique Triple BIOS support are some of the extras this mainboard has.

Power consumption:

min: 93 Watts max: 174 Watts




Overclocking:

With a voltmeter you can read the voltage levels when connected to EZ Voltages read points, there are several dedicated read points

EVGA has windows software that is called the E-LEET tuning utility and next to that there's the EVbot, a handheld unit to connect to the BIOS that allows overclocking from within windows.
The EVbot is able to read the onboard temperatures, the voltages as well as the frequencies can be altered in real-time.


pcper reached 4.12GHz (206x20) with a core i7-860, the vCore was set to 1.352 volts.

hitechlegion reached 4239.4MHz with an Intel Core i5 750, the vCore was set to 1.45 volts.

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Asrock A330ION motherboard reviewed

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This review is originally in French. (Google Translation)



The Asrock A330ION was compared to the Intel N330, Gigabyte N270, Via NANO, Intel GM45 with E2160 and the ASRock Nettop ION330.




The benchmarks that were tested are PCmark 2005, 3Dmark05/06, WinRAR and Street Fighter 4.



The A330ION can be overclocked as well, the CPU-Z result for the atom 330(stock speed 1.6GHz) was 2004MHz (12x167), more than 20% !




In the WinRAR bench it proved to be better than its competitors the ASRock A330 with 112 seconds was ahead of the Intel N330 with 139 seconds,the gigabyte N270 with 170 seconds and even ahead of the ASRock Nettop ION330 that comressed the files in 114 seconds, this is because the the Nettop has DDR2-800 memory while the Asrock A330ION has DDR3-1066 memory.

In the Windows Experience Index it had a score of 4.0 which can be considered quite good.




PROS:
Layout, overclocking, power consumption and performance.

CONS:
Noisy fan, Price.

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ECS H55H-M Linux Review

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First Linux tests of the ECS H55H-M and Core i3 530.




Actually phoronix made two tests, one about the ECS H55H-M dealing with the BIOS, board and test setup, the other is about the core i3 530.




This board not compared to another board, instead the core i3 530 is compared to the Core 2 Duo E8400 and the Phenom II X3 710 in the benchmarks, and it runs fine with Linux distributions employing a recent Linux kernel.




7zip benchmark results with the Core i3 "Clarkdale" show 7127 MIPS, the Core 2 Duo E8400 reached 4949 MIPS, while the Phenom II X3 710 ended up with 4213 MIPS.

This motherboard has no DisplayPort or HDMI, which can be considered a disadvantage, besides that the expansion capabilities are few.

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Gigabyte launches the GA-P55A-UD7

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Gigabyte launches its high-end mainboard in the P55 lineup for motherboard enthusiasts. Next to three-way Nvidia SLI support it has more bandwidth and power stability.


The 24 phase Voltage regulator module takes care of stability in case of (extreme) overclocking, the VRM is cooled by the Hybrid SILENT-PIPE 2 with liquid cooling. Benchmark results with SuperPi had a result of 5.944 seconds with a core i5 670 that reached an incredible 7098MHz, the cpu cooling they used was the liquid nitrogen ln2 cooler.


The Nvidia nForce 200 bridge chip takes care of the extra PCIe lanes, so you will be able to use USB3 and SLi/CrossFireX at the same time.

Allthough the SATA6 drives are scarce, with the 2 SATA6 connectors you're ready for future SSD Drives.




More on gigabyte.com.tw

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Gigabyte H57M-USB3 and Pentium G6950

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Chinese site coolarer.com has tested the Pentium G6950 together with a Gigabyte GA-H57M-USB3 mainboard.


This 'test/review' starts with some images of the CPU and board, there are also images of a Falcon USB3 2.5 inch superspeed drive and a picture of the test setup with the NV120.


The screenshots with the HyperPi Calculation indicate a speed of 4200.5 MHz, a BCLK of 200MHz and QPI link of 2800.4 MHz. The cooling was done with a Zerotherm Nirvana NV120.



The IGP results with 3D mark 2006 were 1909 3Dmarks, there's also a BIOS screen were the input in MHz(max 1200 MHz) is shown for the for the Internal Graphics Clock.




The HDTune testing of the Falcon USB3 2.5 drive resulted in an average read of 94.8 MB/s which is app. twice the max speed of USB2 (theoretically 50MB/s), the burst rate was 125.0 MB/s.

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ASUS has launched the P5G41TD-M PRO with DDR3 memory.

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Asus claims that with a new series of cheap AMD 7025/630a and Intel G41 mainboards it has the Lowest Electromagnetic Emissions in the Industry.

1. Elimination of Harmful Electromagnetic Rays with Low Radiation Design: electromagnetic radiation exposure for users is reduced up to 50%.
   
   
2. Enhanced Component and System Longevity with Anti-Surge Design: protects you from thunderstorms andf unstable grid power.
   
   
3. Superb Efficiency and Eco-friendly Operations with EPU Energy Saving Design: Power consumption will be reduced up to 80.23%.

The reduction of Harmful Electromagnetic Rays is not mentioned in the P5G41TD-M PRO specs,
it was announced in an official news item on 2010/01/29 by ASUS on their website.


The P5G41TD-M PRO has an onboard EPU chip but has no additional software like EPU4/6 that is usually shipped with more expensive boards.

We wonder what the PRO means, usually his indicates better overclocing capabilities but the vCore voltage can still not be altered, only the Base Clock (FSB tuning) can be tuned from 200MHz to an 'incredible 800MHz'.




Official Specs: ASUS site

P5G41 Review: motherboards-reviews.com

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ECS H55H-M reviewed

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Two major sites reviewed this mainboard with the H55 chipset.



ECS is well known for its cheap motherboards, a while ago they merged with PCChips that sells extremely cheap boards.


From a H55 motherboard you would expect the latest connectors like DidplayPort and HDMI, but this motherboard lacks both.


If you're looking for any overclocking results both reviews are a bit disappointing because they did not produce anyof those results, they have some screenshots of the BIOS and that's it. You'll have to wait for more reviews who will hopefully tackle this subject. A close look at the images shows a 4 phase power supply (VRM) without any heatsinks, so don't expect to much.

Clarkdale processors have their own IGP called GMA HD, the H55 routes the IGP via the Flexible Display Interface (FDI) to the connectors.

Official Site : ECS

Reviews : guru3d motherboards.org

ASRock H55DE3 Motherboard

The ASRock H55DE3 is a new Intel H55 mainboard with a full ATX factor. It Supports ATI CrossFireX, but the second slot runs at x4 mode.

When compared to the H55M Pro, Gigabyte H55M UD2H, Intel DH55TC and the MSI H55M E33 in Cinebench R10 the H55DE3 had about the same speed as the pro, but was about 4% faster than the other mainboards with a Corei5 661.



The ASRock site advertises the Turbo 50 feature as follows: Simply click the Turbo 50 button in BIOS, the system performance will boost up to 50% increase by automatically overclocking CPU, Memory, GPU frequency and all related voltage settings!

With a Core i3 530 an increase of 36.66% was reached for the CPU, and the GPU(IGP) was even boosted to 50.2% in 3D mark06, all this was done with the H55M Pro, but the results for the H55DE3 should beabout the same.


If you take into consideration the the H55DE3 has a 4 + 1 Power Phase Design, than the 36.66% increase for the CPU is quite remarkable.