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- Date:
- Friday , January 18, 2008
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DQ6
Gigabyte brings us AMD’s Spider Platform in the form of their GA-MA790FX-DQ6. This board sports an impressive array of features among the main attractions are Phenom and Crossfire-X support.
Introduction
Gigabyte used to be a manufacturer that I never gave a second look to. Over the last year or so, Gigabyte has built a reputation for building solid enthusiast boards in every price point imaginable. We’ve been very pleased with virtually every model reviewed here at the [H]. The Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DQ6 was mentioned briefly in the AMD Phenom & Spider vs. Intel QX9770 article. Today we do a proper review of the Gigabyte MA790FX-DQ6 motherboard itself and evaluate it on its’ own merits.
The Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DQ6 supports the latest AMD Phenom processors, Athlon 64/X2/FX and Sempron socket AM2/AM2+ processors. As with all newer motherboards few additional components are required to complete a functional machine. The required components are a socket AM2/AM2+ compatible CPU, DDR2 memory, video card, power supply and drives. Gigabyte integrated the following components into the MA790FX-DQ6; 1 ATA 133 port, 1 floppy port, 8 SATA ports (4 SATA ports provided by the SB600, 4 via the GB36x controller chip 2 of which are eSATA and 2 are regular SATA), 10 USB ports (6 on the IO panel, 4 via USB headers), 2 GigE Ethernet ports, 6 mini-headphone jacks, SPDIF/out, 1 optical port, 1 RS232 port, and standard keyboard and mouse ports.
Main Specifications Overview:
Detailed Specifications Overview:
Packaging
The packaging is pretty standard these days. The MA790FX-DQ6 comes well protected by a hard plastic container and all the accessories are contained in a basic white cardboard box. Inside the box are drive cables, driver DVD, quick start installation guide, IO shield, and user’s manual.
Board Layout
The layout of the Gigabyte MA790FX-DQ6 is one of the worst I’ve seen in awhile. To be fair there has to be some give and take with motherboards this high end and complex as the engineers are have the problem of getting all the needed components onto a standard ATX motherboard PCB. The CPU area is a little crowded. I had some slight difficulty mounting a cooling solution to the CPU for the simple fact that the memory slots are way too close to the CPU socket. The auxiliary power connector is poorly placed at the bottom of the boards’ edge underneath the last expansion slot. The SATA ports are fairly badly placed as well. Those are directly in front of the video card slots. It’s easy to see that a full length video card will create some fitting issues. You can work around this issue to a degree with right angled cables so I wouldn’t call that a deal breaker. Still this isn’t a great layout, but it isn’t the end of the world. All solid state capacitors were present on the board which should allow for great longevity and excellent stability. The PCB version was 1.0.
The CPU area is really crowded and fitting larger coolers here is something that may be very difficult. My test cooler, a Zalman CNPS8000 fit with only millimeters to spare between the memory and the heat sink. There is also the usual Gigabyte gold colored plate on the bottom of the motherboard. It is easily removed for installing your own cooling solutions and doesn’t interfere with the installation of standard AMD compatible heat sinks.
The MA790FX-DQ6 has the standard 4 DDR2 DIMM slots but they are color coded in a slightly odd fashion. The yellow slots and red slots are together instead of in an alternating pattern as most boards do. Unlike some other boards I’ve worked with, the colors do match the proper method for installing memory in dual channel mode.
The north bridge is located in the usual spot to the left of the CPU socket. The north bridge is cooled by a passive heat pipe which connects to the south bridge and heat sinks covering the voltage components behind the CPU socket. As is normal with AMD/ATI motherboard chipsets, the 790FX stayed only moderately warm to the touch even when overclocked.
The south bridge is located in front of the lower PCIe slots. This is also cooled by the same heat pipe that the north bridge is cooled with. The SATA ports are awkwardly placed in front of the third PCIe slot. This would make clearance between the video card and the SATA ports difficult as I’ve already stated.
The MA790FX-DQ6 has four PCIe x16 slots, two of which are only x8 in terms of electrical capability. The board can operate with the slots in a 8x8x8x8 configuration or a dual 16x16 configuration. These slots are all PCIe 2.0/1.0a/1.0 complaint. There is one PCIe x1 slot and two legacy PCI slots. The slots are laid out ok, but they could be laid out better in my opinion. The way they are configured now, it would be impossible to install four high end dual slot cooled video cards on the board or even three. They could have spaced them so that at least two cards could have been installed without blocking the other PCIe slots.
The MA790FX-DQ6 has 2 PS/2 ports, 2 RJ-45 ports, 1 IEEE1394 port, one SPDIF port out port, six mini-stereo jacks, 6 USB ports, one optical port, one RS232 port and two eSATA ports.