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Despite being a compact microATX board, Gigabyte’s 880GMA-UD2H packs in plenty of features. As well as USB3 and SATA III, it has two PCI-E x16 slots, but they’re so close together that inserting a dual-height graphics card in one will prevent you from putting anything in the other. There’s also a PCI-E x1 slot and a PCI slot.
Typically for a microATX board, everything’s a little cramped, so you’ll need to take care and plan your build carefully. There are five SATA III connectors and an IDE connector for PATA hard disks.
A score of 102 in our benchmark tests is about what we’d expect from an AM3 board. At £76, the 880GMA-UD2H isn’t as much of a bargain as Asus’s M4A785D-M Pro, which performed a little better in our tests and costs £20 less, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find an AM3 motherboard with SATA III and USB3 for less. However, unless you’re building a compact system, the extra upgradability of the Asus M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 ATX board wins it by a hair.
