GA-MA790FXT-UD5P layout and BIOS

Board layout

Gigabyte’s really done a fine job with the layout of the GA-MA790FXT-UD5P. On the board you’ll find a plethora of SATA ports (10 to be exact), and they’re all oriented parallel to the edge of the PCB, so you can house all 10 SATA ports with drives if you wish while also running a long dual-slot GPU like the Radeon 4870 X2 without any of the components interfering with each other. A lot of times motherboard manufacturers stick with the standard SATA ports that can get in the way of long GPUs like the 4870 X2.

The IDE and floppy drive connectors are tucked behind the RAM slots too; again, excellent choices on Gigabyte’s part in our opinion. You’d really be surprised how often manufacturers get the location of these connectors wrong and don’t really care, assuming most users are running SATA drives by now anyway. Not so with Gigabyte’s GA-MA790FXT-UD5P.

The motherboard cooling Gigabyte has implemented is good too. A heatpipe is used to cool the board’s power circuitry as well as the North and South Bridge of the system chipset. Gigabyte’s cooling here isn’t overly large or ornate, but this is honestly because AMD’s 7-series chipsets are known for being very low on power consumption, and thus also generate very little heat. There’s really no reason to go overboard with multiple heatpipes and/or copper cooling, as it simply isn’t needed to keep the chipset cool. This chipset is known for its ability to get by with simple passive cooling.

While the GA-MA790FXT-UD5P may not have four PCI Express graphics (PEG) slots, Gigabyte wisely places two x1 PCIe expansion slots between the motherboard’s PEG slots, giving you plenty of room to run two dual-slot cards like the Radeon 4890. This is yet another good move on Gigabyte’s part. Obviously some users will be disappointed with having just two PEG slots when most high-end 790FX boards ship with four, but we honestly don’t know anyone running 4-Way CrossFire with Radeon 4850s right now anyway: besides, as hot as ATI’s single-slot reference boards run, we’re not even sure how long you could keep a 4-Way setup running stable at any rate.


Another nice touch Gigabyte includes on the GA-MA790FXT-UD5P are its buttons. Gigabyte integrates physical buttons for power, reset, and clearing BIOS. The power and reset buttons are backlit with a blue LED, allowing them to also function as a power LED also. Simply press the button to turn the system on or reset it, or if you just unsuccessfully attempted to OC the board and you aren’t getting a video signal, you can press the clear CMOS button to reset the board’s BIOS to its default settings. This button in particular definitely came in handy for us when OC’ing.


Our only real gripe with the board takes us north, to the area surrounding the AM3 CPU socket. The area immediately surrounding the CPU is fine, with plenty of room for oversized coolers. The problem is the AM3 socket is located too close to the DDR3 RAM slots. Large CPU coolers like our Zalman CNPS9700-Cu bump into equally tall RAM modules like Corsair’s Dominator modules or OCZ’s Reaper HPC when the first memory slot is occupied. You can run the two components together just fine, but that first RAM module must be bent ever so slightly in order to get everything to fit. It’s fine in the short term, but over time this slightly bent module could get damaged. In order for everything to fit properly you’ll have to trade down to a memory module with a more conventional heatspreader like the OCZ Platinum line or Corsair with traditional XMS3 black heatspreader.

We should point out that this problem isn’t unique to Gigabyte’s GA-MA790FXT-UD5P. It’s a problem we’ve encountered on all the AM3 motherboards we’ve seen so far. It looks like AMD loosened the keep out space a hair too much for the AM3 socket spec, as this wasn’t a problem for AM2+ motherboards.

BIOS

The BIOS of the GA-MA790FXT-UD5P won’t disappoint enthusiasts planning to OC their processor. Gigabyte includes all the major settings you’ll need to get up and running in no time. All the speeds and feeds you’ll need for OC’ing the processor can be found in one handy menu, with little scrolling and flipping from page to page to get to the settings you’ll need. All the clock speeds, multipliers, and voltages can be found on one large page.

For less experienced users who have no clue how far to experiment when it comes to clock speeds and voltages, Gigabyte color codes everything. This is important, as applying to much voltage in BIOS can damage or even kill components if you’re too aggressive. Safe settings are colored with the stock white lettering, while intermediate settings are colored yellow. Finally, red is used to indicate settings which are dangerous and could potentially lead to damage if you’re not careful. We actually feel Gigabyte’s a bit aggressive with some of their decisions when it comes to voltages and speeds, AMD recommends voltages don’t exceed 1.55V when OC’ing on air, yet the Gigabyte board suggests voltage above 1.65V are safe.


Another feature we also like about the GA-MA790FXT-UD5P is that the BIOS includes the target frequencies for the CPU, HT link, DRAM, and memory controller. As a result, when you dial up the CPU multiplier, or the HT frequency for example, you can see the target clock speed of these vital components before you actually apply them in BIOS. It’s especially handy for the multipliers in particular, as you don’t have to whip out a calculator to get these values beforehand.


The following chart summarizes the key settings available in BIOS:

GA-MA790FXT-UD5P BIOS Features
HyperTransport Speeds	200-500MHz in 1MHz increments
PCI Express Speeds	100-200MHz in 1MHz increments
DDR3 Memory Multipliers	4.0x, 5.33x, 6.66x, 8.0x (800-1600MHz)
HT Link Multipliers	x1-x13 (200-2600MHz)
CPU Clock Multipliers	x5.0-x35.0 in 0.5X increments
CPU NorthBridge Multiplier	x5-x20 (100-4000MHz)
DDR3 Voltages	+0.05V-+0.75V (1.65V-2.35V) in 0.05V increments
SB/HT Voltage	+0.1V, +0.2V, +0.3V
NB/PCIe/PLL Voltage Control	+0.1V, +0.2V, +0.3V
CPU PLL Voltage Control	2.5V-3.1V in 0.04V increments
DDR VTT Voltage Control	0.8V-1.1V in 0.025V increments
CPU Voltages	-.60V - +.60V in 0.025V increments
NB Voltages	1.10V-1.60V in 0.02V increments

One feature that the GA-MA790FXT-UD5P BIOS lacks is profiles. It would be nice if you could save your own custom BIOS profiles, say for instance you want a BIOS profile that undervolts the CPU for HTPC use, and another gaming profile that OCs the CPU for maximum performance.

Speaking of profiles, the other surprising feature missing from the GA-MA790FXT-UD5P BIOS is support for Black Edition Memory Profiles. This feature was just recently added to the latest version of AMD Overdrive and requires proper motherboard BIOS support in order to function properly. Fortunately this is something Gigabyte can easily add to the board in the future, but for the time being you’ll have to manually dial in the timings, speeds, and voltages if you plan to use high-speed DDR3 memory modules.

Overclocking

We decided to use our Phenom II X4 955 sample for all of today’s testing, as it’s AMD’s highest performing processor and also happens to OC better than other chips we’ve received. Our particular sample was able to run at speeds up to 3.7GHz with complete stability at stock voltage – this is the max speed we achieved with the ASUS M4A79T Deluxe also. When going all-out with unlimited voltage, we hit a max speed of 3.826GHz at 1.53V. That’s comparable to the speed we hit with the M4A79T Deluxe also.

The maximum HT link speed we could hit with complete stability was 232MHz.