Gigabyte 890FXA-UD5

[Rob Williams]

In the market for a dual-GPU capable AMD motherboard, and one that's capable of achieving some huge overclocks? Gigabyte has you covered, with its 890FXA-UD5. In addition to having native SATA 3.0 support, USB 3.0 support can also be found, along with 4 PCI-E x16 graphics slots, a near-perfect board design and good pricing.

You can read the rest of my review here and discuss it here!

 

[Greg King]

Solid read. I don't know if I could personally justify shelling out almost 200 dollars for an AMD board but it does look like a good mobo. Gigabyte makes quality boards and if you're an AMD guy, with the price of their processors, I suppose this purchase could be a no brainer and the 890 chipset appears to be a good one.

 

[Doomsday]

one st00pid question! If i buy a sata 3.0 mobo, will i be able to use my current HDDs on sata 3.0s and get the benefits of sata 3.0?!?

 

[Tharic-Nar]

one st00pid question! If i buy a sata 3.0 mobo, will i be able to use my current HDDs on sata 3.0s and get the benefits of sata 3.0?!?

Nope . You can use a SATA 1 or 2 hard drive in a SATA 3 socket, but it won't increase your bandwidth. Mechanical drives can only just stress a SATA 1 socket... and that's with the help of the on-board cache. SATA3 is purely for SSD's and high speed HDD cache.

So yes, you can use your drives in the slots, but no, you won't get a speed increase.

 

[Anon]

Poor OC

You needed 1.6v to reach 3.9GHz?!? This says nothing about the chip or the board, just that this reviewer knows nothing about overclocking. Terrible!

 

[Greg King]

You needed 1.6v to reach 3.9GHz?!? This says nothing about the chip or the board, just that this reviewer knows nothing about overclocking. Terrible!

Issuing a blanket statement like yours, that the reviewer knows nothing about overclocking, isn't quite fair. He clearly states that this is his first foray into overclocking with the 890FX chipset. Even if you disagree with the overclocking results, perhaps even the methodology, there are still plenty of benchmarks in this review to point out the general performance of this board, it's merits and short falls. You can't discredit the 40+ motherboard reviews by this reviewer simply because you don't like the way he got to those clocks.

 

[Rob Williams]

I don't know if I could personally justify shelling out almost 200 dollars for an AMD board but it does look like a good mobo.

It's true, $200 is a lot to ask for when the CPU costs about the same, or less. But, it is filled to the brim with features, so for those who <em>want</em> AMD, it's a great choice.

SATA3 is purely for SSD's and high speed HDD cache.

Agreed, and even then the difference is going to be hard to see, except with synthetic benchmarks. I think we're reaching a point there where an SSD is "too fast"... where we can't tell the difference between 300MB/s and 600MB/s. Of course, that will change once SSD's replace HDD's for storage purposes, at which point the higher speeds <em>would</em> be noticeable, given we'd be copying files all over the place.

You needed 1.6v to reach 3.9GHz?!? This says nothing about the chip or the board, just that this reviewer knows nothing about overclocking. Terrible!

There's a difference between my 3.9GHz and another site's 4.2GHz... mine is stable. I am willing to bet that the majority of 4.0GHz+ overclocks out there are -not- LinX stable, and whether I'm right about using it or not, that's all I care about. If a CPU craps out during a LinX run, which is about as hardcore as it gets, then I don't consider it stable. I -could- have reached a clock higher than 4.0GHz, but what's the point when it you might BSOD during a game or something else?

I'm still willing to believe that our sample is less-than-stellar, so I might hit up AMD for a fresher one. The problem with engineering samples is that they sometimes aren't entirely on par with retail chips. I saw that even with the Core i7-980X, where many people are going well beyond 4.0GHz, our max stable was 4.05GHz.

Issuing a blanket statement like yours, that the reviewer knows nothing about overclocking, isn't quite fair.

It might not be fair, but what would you expect from someone who's likely never visited the site before, nor read the words around the overclocking screenshot that explained the situation?

If all people want to see are unstable overclocking reports, they're going to have to go elsewhere. I firmly believe that stable is what matters, and if we can't achieve a stable overclock at over 4.0GHz, then we're not going to pretend that we did.

 

[Anon]

Poor OC

Sorry Rob but anyone who has OC'd a Phenom II knows that they scale better with temperature than voltage. Literally every C3 stepping chip I have worked with (20+) has been able to reach 3.8GHz using 1.4v or less, and those were all 955s and 965s. Thuban scales even more easily than this. You fail, and your silly "stability" argument doesn't hold water - I can run any test you'd like on my 965 C3 at 4.2GHz using the same voltage you needed for 3.8 and pass it - this is just pathetic, you clearly don't know what you're doing.

 

[Rob Williams]

First, there are few things quite as lame as out-right flaming someone while cowering under an anon tag.

Second, your argument has a gaping hole in it. You are comparing quad-core overclocks to that of a six-core processor. Anyone with real overclocking experience would realize that as the core count increases, so does the difficulty in receiving a high-end stable overclock. Why? Because some of the cores might not be quite up to par as the others. We saw this especially when moving from dual-cores to quad-cores, and like-wise, from quad-cores to six-cores. We see the effect less today, though, thanks to improved build processes.

Are you familiar with LinX? It's a benchmark that's designed to stress a CPU even harder than it needs to be. In some regards, it's an unrealistic benchmark, but I like running it so that I can tell our readers with absolute certainty that our overclock was 100% stable. Have you run LinX on your 4.2GHz overclock? Not that I don't doubt it might succeed. As I mentioned, six-cores have proven a bit of a challenge to achieve high overclocks and retain stability. I had that even with Intel's six-core, topping out at 4.05GHz.

Regardless, if all you're going to do is come around and flame the results, and me, why not get a life and take your elite overclocking self somewhere else? You're the first person I can recall that's come around to flame our overclocking results, so I think we're doing something right.

 

[Anon]

Poor OC

Not really a gaping hole when Thuban clocks much easier than Deneb C3 on the same cooling and motherboard quite consistently for anyone who knows what they're doing. Take a look at some results by *real* overclockers before you spout off your ignorance. I'm Anon because I didn't deem your shitty forum worthy of taking 30 seconds to sign up. I will now leave as you have requested since you can only repeat the same ridiculous 'arguments', have a nice life with your pretend 31337 skillz and knowledge.

 

[Rob Williams]

I'm Anon because I didn't deem your shitty forum worthy of taking 30 seconds to sign up.

If "I didn't deem your shitty forum worthy of taking 30 seconds to sign up." is equivalent to "I'm a major pussy", then sure, that's understandable. But the fact of the matter is, the default name for those who haven't registered is "Unregistered", which means you chose to remain anonymous. So, don't go acting like you would have had to go out of your way to use a real name, or even a moniker that you likely use on a bunch of other forums. You're a coward, plain and simple.

People like you do make me feel a lot better about myself, though, because I can only imagine that you are unhappy with yourself and want to take out the hatred on others. Why else would you be so nonconstructive and just flame people because their results don't quite live up to your ultra-high levels? You wouldn't... it wouldn't make sense to.

I've stated my case, and you've continued to flame and be rude. It's absurd, and childish.

But, I'm wasting my breath. You left, so you're not going to see this anyway.

*rolls eyes*