AMD’s 890GX Chipset: Low-End Price, High-End Features

The Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H 890GX Motherboard Overview

Lately, Gigabyte has done a good job in shying away from the complicated naming schemes many other manufacturers use for their boards. Basically, the 890G denotes the chipset, the “A” shows us that there is USB 3.0 installed and the UD3 is the Ultra Durable namesake followed by the product category. This board will be marketed for around the $110 - $130 USD mark which could vault it right into the lead in the price / performance segment.


As with many other motherboard boxes, this one from Gigabyte is literally chalk full of information and marketing mumbo jumbo. Naturally, mentions are made about the 2oz copper PCB, Gigabyte’s 3 year warranty and the inclusion of both USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb/s.


Once again we see a near-perfect layout from Gigabyte on a board that holds all the usual hallmarks of their design team. Blue, white and yet more shades of blue take over the colour scheme and while this may bother many people, at least Gigabyte has done away with the oddball green and pink colours they were using less than a year ago.


The area around the CPU socket is relatively clear of any obstructions which would impede the installation of larger coolers but it is still interesting to see Gigabyte going for such a large heatsink over the northbridge. The power layout on this board shows us a 4+1 phase design which may seem a bit anaemic by today’s lofty standards but it should be more than enough for current and upcoming AMD processors.


The southbridge heatsink is remarkably small and next to it lie eight right-angle SATA 6Gb/s connectors. Meanwhile, the expansion slot layout on this board is perfect and no, you don’t need a switch to change the PCI-E configuration like on the ASUS product as we saw before. It also looks like Gigabyte went with three PCI-E 1x connectors to give users perfect placement for the installation of aftermarket sound cards.


The backplate on the 890GPA-UD3H is relatively simple but it provides all of the connectors you could possibly want. Much like the ASUS board, the two USB 3.0 connectors are finished in a blue colour to differentiate them from the others.