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Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD7
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Gigabyte GA-880GMA-UD2H
source: http://www.bit-tech.net
The second 890FX board that we've seen is from Gigabyte. If you missed the first one last week, check back to the MSI XPower X58 preview. Compared to the MSI board, the Gigabyte offers an extra 16x PCI-E slot, although as expected, the bandwidth is less: two 16x, two 8x, two 4x. There is a fair distance between the main 16x graphics slots to allow air between a pair of dual-slot graphics cards. In addition to the AMD 890FX Northbridge, the SB850 Southbridge provides six SATA 6Gbps ports, and the ability to create RAID 0, 1, 10 and 5 volumes, plus a couple of extra USB 2 ports over the previous SB750 Southbridge.
Gigabyte GA-880GMA-UD2H
The 880GMA-UD2H is Gigabyte's update to its very capable and popular 785G. Stemming from the original 780G that featured an AM2+ socket and DDR2 memory sockets, the updated 785G and 880G chipsets use the same RV620 DirectX 10.1 GPU with the same 40 stream processors as before.
In fact, the 880G itself is pretty much identical to the 785G, minus an as yet-to-be determined clock bump: where the 785G graphics chip ran at 500MHz and was called a Radeon HD 4200, the 890GX has an identical GPU clocked at 700MHz and called a Radeon 4290. The 880G chipset has a GPU named Radeon HD 4250, so expect a frequency of between 500MHz and 700MHz. After some size comparisons we also think that ATI is still using the TSMC 55nm process too.
The SB850 Southbridge is the biggest update over the 785G chipset, giving the 880G native SATA 6Gbps support that includes the full complement of RAIDs 0, 1, 10 and 5, as well as a couple more USB ports. We also expect to see the CPU core unlocking to feature with this Gigabyte board, despite the chipset not officially offering it.
Gigabyte continues the general trend of bolting a USB 3 chipset to almost everything possible, and includes the NEC chipset for an additional two USB 3 ports. The rear I/O doesn't see any more than the six USB (2 or 3) ports that equivalent boards of previous generations have had though. That's mostly because the on-board video outputs for DVI, D-Sub and HDMI take up most of the space. Given the lack of evidence for a digital switch on the PCB behind the display outputs, we can safely assume that both digital outputs cannot be used at the same time, as is the case with every 890GX and 880G board we've seen.
In fact, the 880G itself is pretty much identical to the 785G, minus an as yet-to-be determined clock bump: where the 785G graphics chip ran at 500MHz and was called a Radeon HD 4200, the 890GX has an identical GPU clocked at 700MHz and called a Radeon 4290. The 880G chipset has a GPU named Radeon HD 4250, so expect a frequency of between 500MHz and 700MHz. After some size comparisons we also think that ATI is still using the TSMC 55nm process too.
The SB850 Southbridge is the biggest update over the 785G chipset, giving the 880G native SATA 6Gbps support that includes the full complement of RAIDs 0, 1, 10 and 5, as well as a couple more USB ports. We also expect to see the CPU core unlocking to feature with this Gigabyte board, despite the chipset not officially offering it.
Gigabyte continues the general trend of bolting a USB 3 chipset to almost everything possible, and includes the NEC chipset for an additional two USB 3 ports. The rear I/O doesn't see any more than the six USB (2 or 3) ports that equivalent boards of previous generations have had though. That's mostly because the on-board video outputs for DVI, D-Sub and HDMI take up most of the space. Given the lack of evidence for a digital switch on the PCB behind the display outputs, we can safely assume that both digital outputs cannot be used at the same time, as is the case with every 890GX and 880G board we've seen.
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