ASUS F1A75-V Pro vs. Gigabyte GA-A75-UD4H – Llano at ~$120
by Ian Cutress on November 7, 2011 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Gigabyte
- Asus
- A75
Overview of the Gigabyte GA-A75-UD4H
After having this board on the review test bed for a few days now, nothing immediately strikes me from the Gigabyte board. The overclock capability was quite good, despite the lack of overclock options.
The PCIe layout is a good one from which some other motherboard manufacturers can learn, and the IO panel is nicely full of USB ports. The position of the SATA port sticking out of the board, and the fan header next to it, is such that a second GPU will not hinder them. This also shows that some thought has gone to this area of the board!
I am quite disappointed by the fan control, especially compared to the ASUS board, which on this GA-A75-UD4H is limited in the BIOS and not expanded thoroughly by software in the OS. The BIOS is also still the old non-graphical style, and we’ll have to wait until X79 to get our hands on what Gigabyte has done in that respect.
At $115, the GA-A75-UD4H represents a board of good design, a three year warranty, but is let down by the options offered by software.
Visual Inspection
In terms of visuals, the GA-A75-UD4H sports a blue and white livery indicative of Gigabyte’s non-high end motherboards.
The 8+2 PWM design powers the large AMD socket, with VRM heatsinks which rock fairly easily under pressure. Around the socket are three fan headers, a SYS fan on the top left, a CPU fan in the top right and a PWR fan to the right of the DIMM slots. The socket area is fairly clear, allowing for large air coolers as required.
The GA-A75-UD4H sports a TPM header, and five SATA 6 Gbps ports. Four of these ports are at 90º to the board, and the other sticks out of it. The position of this port is such that if the user has two large PCIe cards in the board, this port is still accessible, as well as the SYS fan next to it.
The PCI/PCIe slot layout is a good choice for this board, with a PCIe x1 at the top, then a PCIe x16, two PCIe x1, another PCIe x16 (down to x8/x8 in dual GPU mode), and two PCI slots at the bottom. This allows sufficient space between dual GPU setups, as well as the top PCIe x1 for a first x1 card.
The IO panel is full of ports, namely 4 USB 3.0 (blue), two USB 2.0 (yellow), a PS/2 port, VGA, DVI-D, HDMI, DisplayPort, a S/PDIF optical output, an eSATA 6 Gbps port, FireWire, a Realtek gigabit Ethernet port, and typical audio jacks. I would have liked to see a Clear CMOS button, but with the IO this packed, I do not think there is space for it, unless they removed some features. It should be noted that, according to the Gigabyte website, the DVI-D does not support D-Sub by adaptor, and that when on integrated graphics, the connector cannot be changed while the motherboard is powered up.
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Mitch89 - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
A proper sound card definitely sounds better than the integrated ones that come on every motherboard, no question about it.As for PCI slots, I still have a few devices in use in my machines including a few DVB-T digital tuners and a soundcard.
When building my latest Media Centre, however, I purchased a PCI-e DVB-T tuner, so the legacy slots we're something I was looking for.
knedle - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
not really, the funny thing is that if you are interested in perfect sound, it's better to buy a board with integrated sound card and connect it with digital cable to amplifier, this way you are using amplifier as D/A Converter and you get way much better sound, than any sound card bellow $500 you can buycjs150 - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
It is interesting to see what people use the old legacy PCI slots for. As mentioned in my first post I still use a TV card in one but to be honest there are better PCIex1 cards for that now (do not get me started on USB TV tuners - useless is the nicest description). I havent used a PCI sound card for at least 5 or 6 years. Last time I had an external card (bundled with an ASUS motherboard) it also used a PCIex1 slot.Now I am all for recycling old bits of kit to keep build costs down but there does come a point when it is time to wave good bye to legacy slots. Motherboards do not often come with a floppy drive port and IDE socket has basically gone the way of the dodo as well. PCI surely is the next to go. But maybe posters here have convinced me that there is at least a little bit of time left in it
DanNeely - Tuesday, November 8, 2011 - link
The only card I have that's legacy PCI is a BIOS POST code reader that I've been unable to find a PCIe1x replacement for; but with UEFI replacing BIOS it's about to become obsolete anyway.Googer - Sunday, November 13, 2011 - link
Sounds like you ought to keep an old legacy system for TV Tuners, SCSI, etc along side your new-fangled PC; both on the network so you can easily access the older equipment.Second, all of those devices listed are available in PCI-e, Quality Network Cards are available from Intel in PCI-e flavor. Creative makes X-Fi in PCI-e, and LSI (and adaptec?) Made a SCSI card in PCI-e. Serial Parallel ports can also be had with PCI-e and I agree that USB emulators for RS232/IEEE1284 are garbage.
Edgar_Wibeau - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
From the screenshots I can see, the BIOS/UEFI version used with the Asus board is 0902. Yet, their current version is 1502, which dates 2011/10/21, and in between 1103 (2011/10/07) and 1102 (2011/08/26). Did you flash a more current UEFI after taking the shots? Or if not, why?See
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_Socket_FM1/F1...
jan.peralta - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
i would love to see gaming benchmarks for HD6670 with the A6, especially for the ASUS boardthanks!
Dug - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
I second that!Dug - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
I must be out of the loop.What does One 580 mean?
silverblue - Monday, November 7, 2011 - link
A single 580 as opposed to two of them.