Computer Gaming Hardware

The other board that I want you to meet is the Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DQ6, it is new flagship boards from the AMD chipset as a new enthusiast board, to jack in with PCI-e 2.0 bandwidth and multiply with 4 PCI-e 16x, you get what AMD, wants you to think, a bad ass, of a board. Gigabyte adapted to new AMD chipset with odd configurations to the lay out, the four PCI-e slots way too close together, which constricted you with only single slot ATi radeons like the HD3850 in single slot design, plus to add, the SATA ports are awkward places, two purple ones in the bottom of the board and four near the Southbridge, and can be obstructed by a long video card, like the radeon HD3870 X2, in the third slot.

Their problem is place issues with chips and slots. As they have a physical issues, the other problems with the software and their so called “Quad BIOS” with problems to the functionality of the motherboard to communicate with other applications like the CPU and, most important, the graphics card(s). However, this board, has some neat, and functioning, offers from the board, like hyper transport 3.0, that can transfer information, to the CPU to the Bridge and to other hardware at a frequency of 3000MHz, DDR2 memory with native 1066FSB, that can tell that AMD tries to lower their cost of their board, by just using the cheaper DDR2 memory to the more expensive DDR3. 10USb connectors, Dual LAN sockets and, I have to add, an extended cooling in the back of the board, to the CPU and the Northbridge, to efficiently dispense heat in many places, as in this board, at the back.

The test are a mixed result, with a low benchmark on the rendering audio and video encode, but a faster result at CPU performance and a good result in the power consumption about 10% better to the core 2 duo E8400, with a Phenom 9850. And to add in a bad result, it has a below average mark on Crysis at high resolutions with a single card, but when you add two or more, the performance increased dramatically, but in the middle of game, the game froze, it may be an old Southbridge, that they used, in the 790FX, for profit reasons, which can slows the performance of the board, and over-clocking the baby, can have a risk of instability, there goes high frames in games.

Well Gigabyte, turned out to be a disappointment, don’t blame it to them all about the board, AMD also gets the blame with stripping the board with vital components, which affects the stability of the board, like not making a better Southbridge, but just place a Southbridge from a board in 2004! While the board layout is a hassle, the crossfire four 3870X2 into this board is now merely a dream, I can just imagine four cards producing fast frames, and the noise, that can keep me awake for the night, with the noise.

Four PCI-e slots make you restricted to single slot video cards: