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.
Value -Value is another very subjective topic. What is expensive to some might be a deal to others. You can look at this topic in multiple ways. One is raw price and the other is what you get for the money. Each is accurate and both are correct ways to look at price/value. We tend to look at features, performance and real-property when we discuss value. However, we also take into account the raw cash cost of the item.
$245 is about what you can expect to pay if you are looking into the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7. This is about $15 more than its nearest competitor. Of course with the 890FXA you get the option for Quad Crossfire at x8 while most other boards in this range will only give you three-way crossfire. That all on its own should be worth the extra $15. Of course there are other items like the extra cooling options (water and extended passive air Via the Silent Pipe II) that will add to the value of this board. It really does balance out with some features on the 890FXA-UD7 helping to make the higher price tag worth the stretch if you are in the market for an AMD AM3 motherboard.
Conclusion -I like Gigabyte’s 890FXA-UD7, it does pack quite a bit into a fairly clean package. I can see this board as relatively inexpensive base for a workstation/gaming rig. With 8GB of DDR3 2000 and a pair of HD 5870s plus a Phenom II X6 1090T this would be quite the station for 3D Animation along with great gaming potential. I would have to recommend getting an add-in audio card though to complete the set as the existing Realtek, while nice, just does not match up to my tastes in audio. In terms of overclocking I had some minor success with overclocking, I think if I play around with this board more I might see what I can get from a lower clocked CPU (as well as trying out the auto unlocker utility). I have to say that while I was tinkering around with the 890FXA-UD7 I did not even think about the On/Off Charge. I know that Gigabyte sees this as a major feature, but to be honest it is not one that most consumers (especially enthusiasts) are going to go for. Still there is plenty to like about the 890FXA if you are looking into getting an AMD CPU. It is one of the better boards out there and with its extra cooling is one that will be sure to last you a while. As for the small performance anomalies we saw, I have a feeling that mush of this will be addressed in BIOS updates as Gigabyte has been improving in their time to market with updates and fixes for their products.
To wrap things up; I think that Gigabyte’s new push back into the enthusiast component market (especially motherboards) is in full swing. They are quickly learning what works and what does not. The 890FXA-UD7 is an example of what works. We hope to play around with this board more in the next month or so to see what it can do under different CPU, and GPUs. For now I will say that if you are looking into an AMD AM3 CPU then you will want to take a long hard look at the 890FXA-UD7.
