GIGABYTE 880GMA-UD2H Review

•            6 core CPU support

•            On/off charge support

•            AMD AM3 Phenom II/ Athlon II support

•            140W CPU Support

•            4+1 Power Phase design

•            Auto Unlock Support

•            SATA 6 Gb/second support

•            USB 3.0 Support

•            3x USB Power Boost

•            Ultra Durable 3 Classic

•            AMD 880G Integrated graphics chip

•            ATI Hybrid Graphics Technology support

•            Dual Channel DDR3-1800MHz memory

•            Easy Energy Saver

•            EasyTune6

•            HDMI 1.3 certification support full HD 1080P

•            Dolby Home Theater Support

•            Norton Internet Security

•            Qualified for Windows 7

•            ErP Lot 6 support

The GIGABYTE 880GMA-UD2H motherboard is based upon  AMD’s  880G chipset which is the mainstream integrated video chip on AMD’s lineup. The HD 4250 that is on the Northbridge chip is clocked at a 560MHz core clock speed, compared to the 700MHz found on the HD 4290 of the 890GX chipset, a RV620 based RS880D chip. This chip is manufactured on TSMC’s 55nm process  and has 205 million transistors.

The HD 4250 has 40 Stream Processors which is a miniscule number compared to the 1600 found on the HD 5870 video cards but sufficient for integrated video which is designed for casual gamers and users not needing the sheer 3D horsepower of the DirectX 11 cards in ATI’s lineup. It is also beneficial for those HTPC users that don’t want a lot of heat or size on their video cards to add to the heat in their systems.

GIGABYTE has been stressing their Ultra Durable 3 technology for a while now with their motherboards. They pioneered the use of 2oz of Copper on their Power and Ground PCB layers with most other motherboards on the market supporting 1oz of copper. They also were one of the first companies to use 100% Japan made capacitors with up to 50000 hours of lifetime. GIGABYTE introduced their DualBIOS technology years ago.

GIGABYTE has been one of the pioneers of the motherboard industry in their True 333 technologies. 333 represents USB 3.0, SATA 3.0 and 3x Power. USB 3.0 is the latest implementation of the Universal Serial Bus standard. This offers up to 10x the bandwidth over USB 2.0 (from 480Mbits/second to 5 Gigabits/second), 900 micro Amps of power to connected devices and backwards compatibility to the old standard.  Hand in hand with the USB 3.0 are GIGABYTE’S 3x Power technology. This means that the GIGABYTE 880GMA-UD2H board can offer up to 2700 micro Amps of power to connected devices. SATA 3.0 (6 Gb/second) is the newest drive standard. AMD introduced support for this standard on their SB 850 Southbridge. SATA 6 Gb/second is native to the AMD 8 series, meaning that it does not take PCI Express lanes from the graphics cards nor the Northbridge, nor does it require a bridge chip like other solutions on the market. GIGABYTE’s board supports all three of these technologies with their 890GMA-UD2H motherboard.