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- Date:
- Wednesday, August 27, 2008
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Gigabyte MA790GP-DS4H
Gigabyte is known for making solid overclocking and feature rich motherboards at virtually every possible price point. We've been very pleased with the Gigabyte boards we've reviewed and hopefully this trend continues with Gigabyte's latest AM2+ mbo, the MA790GP-DS4H.
Introduction
Gigabyte has been in the motherboard business for some time now. They produce a wide range of products from motherboards to computer cases, video cards etc. However Gigabyte is certainly best known for their enthusiast motherboards. They have boards that cover a wide range of price points and feature sets. As a result Gigabyte has really gained quite a following in the enthusiast market and for good reason. We have been quite pleased with the Gigabyte boards we've seen in the last year or so. Gigabyte has had more than their share of solid motherboard offerings.
The Gigabyte MA790GP-DS4H is a feature rich motherboard. It is based off ATI's latest 790GX chipset and incorporates ATI's Radeon 3300 IGP as well as AMD's newest SB750 south bridge. According to the packaging of the Gigabyte MA790GP-DS4H the Radeon 3300 IGP is capable of accelerating Blu-Ray and HD-DVD playback as well as other high-definition content smoothly. The MA790GP-DS4H is also equipped with 128MB of Sideport memory for the 3300 IGP so that it has its' own dedicated memory rather than sharing the system memory as so many integrated video solutions tend to do.
With the exception of the integrated 3300 IGP the 790GX isn't really any different than the 790FX chipset. Except that it is billed as a better overclocker due to the southbridge. The MA790GP-DS4H is equipped with AMD's new SB750 south bridge which offers support for six SATA ports and 12USB ports. RAID 5 is now supported as well. This puts it on par with other south bridges from Intel and NVIDIA as far as features go. This is a welcome improvement as the previous SB600 was lacking in features and wasn't exactly impressive performance wise. Performance is precisely one of the areas AMD addressed with SB750. It is supposed to be on par with their competition in regard to USB and general storage performance. From AMD's own mouth the SB750 is supposed to add a new feature called ACC (Advanced Clock Calibration). This is the most anticipated feature as its' supposed to improve Phenom overclocking headroom by as much as 300MHz. While the SB750 technically supports this feature not all motherboards equipped with SB750 necessarily make use of it. This feature makes SB750 one of the most anticipated south bridge releases of all time. Phenom overclocking has always been lackluster and anything that could improve it is going to be welcomed by the community with open arms. The MA790GP-DS4H 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 MA790GP-DS4H; 1 ATA 133 port, 1 floppy port, 6 SATA ports, 12 USB ports (4 on the IO panel, 8 via USB headers), 1 GigE Ethernet port, 6 mini-headphone jacks, 1 optical port , 1 S-VGA port (D-Sub), 1 HDMI port, 1 DVI-D port and standard keyboard and mouse ports.
Main Specifications Overview:
Detailed Specifications Overview:
Packaging
The MA790GP-DS4H comes in a basic retail package. The box is small and inside it the board is protected by an anti-static bag and a cardboard insert. Included are drive cables, a manual, USB I/O bracket, driver DVD, and an I/O shield.
Board Layout
I've got a couple of issues with the layout of the MA790GP-DS4H. First off Gigabyte chose to use the normal SATA connectors on the board instead of the right angled ones. This can often lead to the cables sticking up too high and causing clearance issues for video cards and other peripheral cards. Also the USB headers are in probably the worst location I've ever seen. They are roughly in the middle of the PCB and are in between the PCI-Express x16 slots. In fact the USB ports are more poorly positioned than the IEEE1394 ports are which is something I've never seen before. These issues aren't too bad overall and are certainly not deal breakers but I feel that these are two things that could have been avoided when this board was designed.
The CPU area is clear of obstructions and this is in fact one of the cleanest CPU areas I've ever seen on a recent AMD processor compatible motherboard. The memory slots are a little too close for comfort, but unless you are using really tall memory modules, it shouldn't pose too much of a problem to use larger CPU cooling solutions.
The MA790GP-DS4H has 4 DDR2 DIMM slots that are color coded yellow and orange. What's nice about the memory module slot placement is that it is far away from the PCI-Express card slots. This allows for easy installation of additional memory modules with a video card installed. It sounds minor, but nothing is more annoying than having to pull your video card out for a RAM upgrade.
The north bridge is placed in the usual area to the left of the CPU socket. As is common practice these days the chipset is cooled by a heat pipe system connected to the heat sinks attached to the PWMs. There is nothing exceptional about the cooling solution and in fact it doesn't even connect to the south bridge which is something you don't see very much these days as most south bridges require a lot of cooling. The cooling is for the most part adequate but could use some improvement. On an open test bench with ambient room temperature of approximately 75 degrees I found the chipset’s heatsink almost too hot to touch when using the onboard video. Inside a case the heat would be more difficult to deal with. While the board seemed fine running with the chipset being that hot, I can't help but feel that the board would benefit from better chipset cooling. The 790FX normally runs quite cool and as such there is little doubt that the increased temperature is a result of the Radeon 3300 IGP. When the integrated video was disabled the chipset still ran hotter than the regular 790FX boards do but still didn't run as hot as I've seen other chipsets run.
The south bridge is placed directly in between the two PCI-Express x16 slots. The south bridge is cooled by a very basic heat sink that is held in by two push pins and springs. To the left of the south bridge are the SATA ports, and just behind the south bridge are the USB port headers.
The MA790GP-DS4H supports the PCI-Express 2.0 specification and supports Crossfire X and Hybrid-Crossfire X. The slot layout is decent for multi-GPU configurations or single video card setups alike. There are two PCI-Express x16 slots (16x8 mode for Crossfire/Crossfire-X), additionally there are 3 PCI-Express x1 slots and two legacy PCI v2.2 slots.
The MA790GP-DS4H has the following on the rear I/O panel: PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, IEEE1394 port, four USB ports, one RJ-45 LAN port, one VGA port, one HDMI port, one DVI port, and six mini-stereo headphone jacks.