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Gigabyte 880GMA-UD2H review

Gigabyte 880GMA-UD2H
Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £76
inc VAT

One of the cheapest USB3 and SATA III enabled motherboards we've ever reviewed and a great choice for building a capable and compact PC.

Specifications

AM3, microATX, AMD 880G chipset, supports: Phenom II, Athlon II

http://www.ebuyer.com

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.

Gigabyte 880GMA-UD2H

At the back there are two USB3 ports and four USB ports – up to six more USB ports on brackets or front panel connectors can be added via three onboard headers. There’s also an eSATA port and a FireWire port, along with an internal FireWire header. A PS/2 port means that you don’t have to connect both mouse and keyboard to one of your precious USB ports. The onboard ATI Radeon HD 4250 graphics processor has DVI, VGA and HDMI outputs, while the Realtek audio processor can output 7.1 surround sound from six analogue stereo ports or an optical S/PDIF output.

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.

Basic Specifications

Rating *****
Processor socket AM3
Form factor microATX
Processor support Phenom II, Athlon II
Processor external bus 260MHz (2.6GHz HyperTransport)
Chipset north bridge AMD 880G
Chipset south bridge AMD SB850
Passively-cooled north bridge yes
Integrated graphics Yes
Supported memory type DDR3 1066/1333/1800
Maximum memory speed PC3-14400
Memory slots 4
Maximum memory 16GB
Dual-channel support yes

Buying Information

Price £76
Supplier http://www.ebuyer.com
Details www.gigabyte.com.tw

Internal Ports

Power connectors 1x 24-pin ATX, 1x 8-pin ATX
PCI-E x16 slots 2
Dual graphics architecture Hybrid CrossFireX
PCI-E x4 slots 0
PCI-E x1 slots 0
PCI slots 1
Fan headers 3
Floppy ports 1
IDE ports 1
Serial ATA ports 5
RAID chipset (max disks) AMD SB850 (5x SATA III, RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5)

Features

Wired network ports 1x 10/100/1000
Sound (ports) Realtek ALC892 (6x analogue out, optical S/PDIF)
USB2 ports / headers 6/3
Firewire ports / headers 1/1
Legacy ports 1x PS/2, serial header
Other ports 1x eSATA, VGA, DVI, HDMI
Cables included 1x SATA, 1x IDE
Brackets included N/A
Software included drivers, EasyTune System Enhancement 6, Smart Recovery, Q-Share

Setup and Overclocking

Voltage adjustment CPU/RAM/Chipset
CPU clock max adjustment 500MHz

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