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Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DS5 Review & Overclocking - PAGE 1
William Henning - Tuesday, July 1st, 2008


 

Today we are looking at an AMD790FX based board - the Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DS5.

This is a great looking board with plenty of expansion capabilities - two PCIe 2.0 16x slots, three PCIe 2.0 1x slots and two PCI slots give plenty of room for expansion cards; six internal SATA2 and two eSATA connectors, 10 USB 2.0 channels, three FireWire channles and a Gigabit ethernet - not to mention the audio ports - give you many I/O options.

The solid state capacitors, plenty of ferrite cores and low RDS MOSTFET design contribute to a beefy power section that should have no problem running Phenoms without letting loose the 'magic grey smoke.'

 

But the real question is: how will it perform?

 

 

 

 

Specifications

CPU Support for Socket AM2+/ AM2 processors:
AMD Phenom™FX processor/ AMD Phenom™ processor/ AMD Athlon™ 64 FX processor/AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual-Core processor/AMD Athlon™ 64 processor/AMD Sempron™ processor
Hyper Transport Bus 5200/2000 MT/s
Chipset
  1. North Bridge: AMD 790FX
  2. South Bridge: AMD SB600
Memory
  1. 4 x 1.8V DDR2 DIMM sockets supporting up to 16 GB of system memory (Note 1)
  2. Dual channel memory architecture
  3. Support for DDR2 1066(Note 2)/800/667 MHz memory modules
  4. Support ECC Memory(Note 3)
Audio
  1. Realtek ALC889A codec
  2. High Definition Audio
  3. 2/4/5.1/7.1-channel
  4. Support for DTS (dts NEO:PC)
  5. Support for S/PDIF In/Out
  6. Support for CD In
LAN
  1. Realtek 8111B chip (10/100/1000 Mbit)
Expansion Slots
  1. 2 x PCI Express x16 slots supporting ATI CrossFireX™ technology (The PCI Express x16 slots conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
  2. 3 x PCI Express x1 slot
  3. 2 x PCI slots
Storage Interface South Bridge:
  1. 1 x IDE connector supporting ATA-133/100/66/33 and up to 2 IDE devices
  2. 4 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (SATAII0, SATAII1, SATAII2, SATAII3) supporting up to 4 SATA 3Gb/s devices
  3. Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 0+1
2 x GIGABYTE SATA2 chip:
  1. 2 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (GSATAII_1, GSATAII_2) supporting up to 2 SATA 3Gb/s devices
  2. 2 x eSATA 3Gb/s ports on the back panel supporting up to 2 SATA 3Gb/s devices
  3. Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, and JBOD
iTE IT8718 chip:
  1. 1 x floppy disk drive connector supporting up to 1 floppy disk drive
IEEE 1394 T.I. TSB43AB23 chip
  1. Up to 3 IEEE 1394a ports (2 on the back panel, 1 via the IEEE 1394a bracket connected to the internal IEEE 1394a headers)
USB Integrated in the South Bridge
  1. Up to 10 USB 2.0/1.1 ports (6 on the back panel, 4 via the USB brackets connected to the internal USB headers)
Internal I/O Connectors
  1. 1 x 24-pin ATX main power connector
  2. 1 x 8-pin ATX 12V power connector
  3. 1 x 4-pin PCIe 12V power connector
  4. 1 x floppy disk drive connector
  5. 1 x IDE connector
  6. 6 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors
  7. 1 x CPU fan header
  8. 2 x system fan headers
  9. 1 x power fan header
  10. 1 x North Bridge fan header
  11. 1 x front panel header
  12. 1 x front panel audio header
  13. 1 x CD In connector
  14. 1 x S/PDIF In header
  15. 1 x S/PDIF Out header
  16. 2 x USB 2.0/1.1 headers
  17. 1 x IEEE 1394a headers
  18. 1 x parallel port header
  19. 1 x power LED header
  20. 1 x chassis intrusion header
Back Panel Connectors
  1. 1 x PS/2 keyboard port
  2. 1 x PS/2 mouse port
  3. 1 x serial port
  4. 1 x coaxial S/PDIF Out connector
  5. 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector
  6. 6 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
  7. 2 x IEEE 1394a ports
  8. 1 x RJ-45 port
  9. 2 x eSATA 3Gb/s ports
  10. 6 audio jacks (Line In / Line Out / MIC In/Surround Speaker Out (Rear Speaker Out) / Center / Subwoofer Speaker Out / Side Speaker Out)
I/O Controller
  1. iTE IT8718 chip
H/W Monitoring System voltage detection
  1. CPU/System temperature detection
  2. CPU/System/Power fan speed detection
  3. CPU overheating warning
  4. CPU/System/Power fan fail warning
  5. CPUfan speed control
BIOS
  1. 2 x 4 Mbit flash
  2. Use of licensed AWARD BIOS
  3. Support for Dual BIOS™
  4. PnP 1.0a, DMI 2.0, SM BIOS 2.4, ACPI 1.0b
Unique Features
  1. Support for @BIOS
  2. Support for Download Center
  3. Support for Q-Flash
  4. Support for EasyTune (Note 4)
  5. Support for Xpress Install
  6. Support for Xpress Recovery2
  7. Support for Virtual Dual BIOS
Bundle Software
  1. Norton Internet Security (OEM version)
Operating System
  1. Support for Microsoft Windows Vista/XP
Form Factor
  1. ATX Form Factor; 30.5cm x 24.4cm
Note (Note 1) Due to Windows XP 32-bit operating system limitation, when more than 4 GB of physical memory is installed, the actual memory size displayed will be less than 4 GB.
(Note 2) Whether 1066 MHz memory speed is supported depends on the CPU being used.
(Note 3) Use of a CPU that supports ECC is required if you wish to install ECC memory.
(Note 4) Available functions in Easytune may differ by motherboard model.
next: The Board »

Article Index

1.Introduction
2.The Board
3.The BIOS
4.More BIOS
5.Test Setup & Benchmarks Used
6.Business Winstone & Content Creation
7.WinRAR & HDTach
8.LAME MP3 & TMPGEnc
9.Call of Duty & Commanche 4
10.Doom 3 & Quake 4
11.Halo, Jedi Knight & UT4K
12.Sandra
13.RightMark Read & Write
14.RightMark Latency & Bandwidth
15.Overclocking & Conclusion
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