so with the release of AMD's six core processors obviously there's a whole lot
of motherboards to go with them and while AMD's done a great job of making
sure that you can use older motherboards with their six cores obviously for the
best possible updated feature set you're going to want to use a new 800 series
chipset board so this is gigabytes 890
gpa-3 so the 890g stands for 890 GX P I
think is a more like a series and then a
means USB 3.0 as well as SATA 6 gbit per
second Ultra durable and then 3H um okay
so basically they've got support for all am3 CPUs including Phenom 2x4 Phenom 2x3
aflon 2x4 and Phenom 2x6 all of that
good stuff you got support for Crossfire okay then you also have a 4 plus one
phase power design they've got benchmarks on here for the Onboard video
so because this is a GX chipset it does have Onboard video G has got a
three-year warranty in US and Canada they've got a sticker on here to tell us
about that and then there are 3 three3 onboard acceleration so USB 3.0 USB
power time 3 and what that means is that every USB port on a Gigabyte 333
motherboard can deliver up to three times the power so if you're using a hub
you can plug in three full USB 3.0
powered devices without actually using a powered Hub then it also has SATA 3.0 or
6 gbit pers second and that is is supported natively by AMD's latest
chipset on the back I don't know that we've got a whole lot they're talking
about their easy energy saver a little bit as well as the benefits of a 2 O
copper PCB so uh lower temperature lower impedance lower Emi uh better power
efficiency better overclocking all that good stuff okay so let's have a look at
what is included with the ud3h here first of all we have the users manual
which has a utility and chipset driver
Etc DVD and don't use this download the latest off
the Gigabyte website also inside is the io shield for whatever reason okay so
the manual is in all English and it's about that thick there you go next we
have the multilingual installation guide book the installation guide book shows
you how to install a CPU and CPU Cooler RAM install a case and power supply
basically it's a little guide on how to build a PC and it's in like 300 million
different languages here next we have
four SATA cables two right Le two straight and then one IDE cable after
that we will find a couple of stickers one of which is Gigabyte and the other
is Dub home theater that is it for accessories that is a fairly bare
accessory package for um for a board at
this sort of a price point but it looks like Gigabyte has focused more on using
a higher-end chipset for one thing and on delivering sort of the important the
important value ads because this does not look like a value board the first
thing you'll notice about it is that it has huge cooling on both the North
Bridge and on the voltage regulator modules which are up here so these are
made of what appears to be aluminum they've got a heat pipe connecting them
here and they look incredibly beefy for like a a GX series or more value
oriented board the first thing you'll notice obviously in the center of the B
did I already say first thing I think I did second thing you'll notice is this is an am3 socket means you got support
for all am3 CPUs including the new X6
CPUs you got your power connectors in their ideal locations up at the top left
for the eight pin and then over on the right hand Edge for the 24 pin you've
got support for dual Channel DDR3 they're colorcoded so if you have a dual
Channel kit you're going to install it first in the two blue modules and then
if you want to add another kit you'll install it then in the two white slots
not modules next we've got an IDE connector and what that's still doing on
a board it's very hard to say and then uh under that we will find some more
SATA ports or some SATA ports we have six SATA 3 6 gbit per second ports those
are the blue ones and those are running off the AMD Southbridge and then we have
two more and these are running off the gigabit chipset that's also providing
IDE support so those are SATA 2 and the blue ones are SATA 3 okay then we have
our front panel connectors four USB
front headers so that means you can run up to eight USB ports off of these
headers two fire wire headers then you've got a floppy connector of all
things and then moving on from there our front audio I've never liked this
location for front audio I realize it probably makes life a little bit easier
for the uh for the routing as far as the internal uh wiring is going so you got
your ports here you got your audio chipset here you got your header here
but I really do prefer it down here cuz it's a little bit tricky to run a
connector over there from the front of some cases either way it's uh it's
usually doable so it's not that big of a deal first of first I keep saying first of
all I can't imagine why next we have our PCI Express 16x slot followed by another
PCI Express 16x slot this one however you can see from the internal connectors
runs at 8X speed so if you're running two graphics cards they're going to run
at PCIe 8X speed for both of them which
doesn't really impact performance anyway next we've got three PCIe 1X slots and
two PCI slots so that means that if you've got two dual slot graphics cards
you've got access to one two PCI e1x and one PCI slot over around the back of the
board we will find all of our connectivity options here we've got one
PS2 keyboard/mouse Port we have four USB
2.0 ports VGA HDMI and then what appear
did I say HDMI wow I'm off today
DVI and HDMI sure enough then we have
optical audio out fire wire gigabit landan and 7.1 audio thank you for
checking out my unboxing of the g890 GPA
ud3h