As you saw with our recent coverage of the Gigabyte Open Overclocking Competition (GOOC) North American Finals Gigabyte is pushing their way back into the fore front of the enthusiast scene. It was not that long ago when their mindset seemed to be one of just maintaining the status quo and building boards for the average consumer. But something changed their minds and they decided to refocus on the enthusiast and the upper end of the consumer market (the upper-mid-range?) We began to see Gigabyte (or GB for short) drop things in like 2 ounces of copper into each board. They shifted away from standard capacitors and move to all solid caps. They beefed up their power phases and even added in a hardware/software phase switching capability for better energy efficiency. GB seems to be willing and able to push the envelope of the enthusiast’s needs and even some of their crazed wants with their newest additions to the Ultra Durable line up. They have shown us great promise with their Intel based boards, so how about something from AMD? Not that long ago we took a look at the 890FXA-UD7 with AMD’s flagship CPU the Phenom II X6 1090T just to see if Gigabyte can maintain the same performance levels with AMD as they have shown with Intel’s CPUs.
The Box and Goodies -Well, I guess I will just come out and say it. Gigabyte, please get rid of the reflective surface on your motherboard boxes. It is not needed and it really makes them look cheap. There truly is no need for that extra flash on the product box. There is plenty to catch the eye on them already. Just looking at the front of the box there are no less than five major selling points and two secondary selling points. When you lead with items like SATA 3.0, 4-Way Crossfire, USB 3.0, Auto Unlock (to unlock those Extra CPU Cores) and GB’s new ON/Off Charge there really is no need for the extra flashy surface.
Under the front side of the box we find more selling points hidden on the inside of flap. Many of these are repeats from the front (with a little more information attached), but there are a couple of new ones here for you as well. One of the more intriguing ones (for us and most enthusiasts) is the Precision OV; with precision OV you get a finer stepping on the voltage adjustment as well as real-time adjustment. We will be taking a closer look at this later in our coverage. Once you are finished reading all of this wonderful information you will get a glimpse of the 890FXA-UD7. Alright, you probably saw that first and then, maybe, you read the selling points on the inside of the front flap.
The back of the box takes you in for an even closer look at what is going on with the 890FXA-UD7. GB has included a board shot with some detailed bullet points on major features. They also go into an explanation of the 2 ounce Copper PCB and its advantages to you.
Inside the box is a decent selection of goodies for use. GB has included their favorite e-SATA bracket (complete with Molex connection) for you to attach non-enclosed drives. There are also two Crossfire Bridges for that Quad Crossfire setup you have been dreaming about.
