The AMD Phenom II X6 1055T six-core desktop processor is a real bargain at the current asking price of just $205 US, making it very hard to refuse. Given the competition at this price point, the Phenom II X6 1055T stands out as a well rounded processor providing excellent gaming performance, while also performing extremely well when tackling more serious tasks such as video editing and 3D modeling.

Those looking to build the ultimate AMD Phenom II X6 computer no doubt have an AMD 890FX motherboard somewhere on their wish list. Gamers in particular will be after an 890FX motherboard, as they provide true CrossfireX support, meaning that most manufacturers will reserve this chipset for their most extreme motherboards.

This has been the case with the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7, which is by far their most extreme AMD motherboard yet. All the stops have been ripped out for this motherboard, and with an asking price of $240 US, it is actually more expensive than the vast majority of AMD’s desktop processors, which can be had for less than $200 US.

So then the 890FXA-UD7 really is a serious motherboard, but with most 890FX motherboards priced at under $200 US, what makes this Gigabyte version so special? After all, their flagship 890GX motherboard, the 890GPA-UD3H, which we just recently reviewed and was extremely impressed by, was very competitively priced. Despite its impressive feature set and build quality, the Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H is one of the cheaper 890GX motherboards available.

However the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 is the most expensive 890FX motherboard that we know of, as it is more expensive than even the Asus Crosshair IV Formula. The flagship MSI 890FXA-GD70 motherboard is around $40 cheaper, while Gigabyte’s own 890FXA-UD5 is priced at just $180 US, along with the Asus M4A89TD Pro, making them a whopping $60 US cheaper. So read on as we try and discover what makes the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 so special...

The 890FXA-UD7 features four DDR3 memory DIMM slots, with official support for 1866 (OC)/1600/1333/1066 memory (non-ECC, un-buffered), though DDR2-1866 memory support can only be achieved through overclocking. Gigabyte claims that the board can support up to 16GB of memory, for which you would need four 4GB memory modules.

The board also features an impressive six PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots, providing the 890FXA-UD7 with impressive multi-GPU capabilities. However please note that only two of these six slots are wired for full x16 bandwidth, while another two work at x8 and the other two at x4. Because the slots are wired this way they cannot be adjusted in the BIOS, so it is important to make sure you place your graphics card(s) in the correct slot(s).

The high definition 7.1-channel audio is supported by the Realtek ALC889 HD Audio codec, featuring optical S/PDIF support via the I/O panel. The Realtek ALC889 audio codec has been heavily used by many motherboard manufacturers in the past, and we are quite accustomed to finding it on high-end motherboards.

Gigabyte has gone with a dual Realtek 8111D Gigabit Ethernet controller configuration, which uses the PCI Express bus for maximum throughput. There is no wireless LAN support included on the 890FXA-UD7, though this is not uncommon for a motherboard, so users will have to look to include this feature using an expansion card.

The network controllers support teaming, along with a Gigabyte feature called “Smart Dual LAN”. Gigabyte Smart Dual LAN technology features intelligent LAN port auto-switching between the 2 physical Gigabit LAN chips; offering hassle free, zero downtime, high speed network connectivity.

Although wireless network may not exist, Firewire certainly does, thanks to the inclusion of the T.I. TSB43AB23 controller supporting three IEEE 1394a ports, two of which are located on the I/O panel. Along with Firewire, the typical USB 2.0 support also exists, with a total of 14 ports on offer, while the NEC D720200F1 chip has been thrown in to provide a pair of USB 3.0 ports.

An interesting feature that Gigabyte has added to all of their new AMD 8-series motherboards is called “3x USB Power Boost” which is designed to deliver greater compatibility and extra power for USB devices. This unique USB power design is also able to efficiently regulate output over the full voltage range, which greatly enhances USB device compatibility. In addition, dedicated lower resistance fuses ensure lower voltage drops, and provide more stable and plentiful power delivery.

As mentioned previously, the SB850 south bridge chip improves upon storage, offering support for six SATA 6Gb/s devices. Furthermore, support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID5, RAID 10, and JBOD is also included, providing users with a great deal of flexibility. Other than the SATA support provided by the SB850 south bridge chip, Gigabyte has also included the Gigabyte SATA2 and JMicron JMB362 chips.

The Gigabyte SATA2 (Re-labeled JMicron JMB363) controller offers an IDE connector and a pair of SATA (3Gb/s) ports. Meanwhile the JMicron JMB362 chip serves up an additional two SATA 3Gb/s connectors, which have been used to provide the motherboards eSATA support.

Finally, like most motherboard manufacturers, Gigabyte has created a way to unlock the dormant cores of certain AMD processors, a feature that was denied by the SB850 south bridge. Using the Gigabyte Auto Unlock technology, users now have the ability to turn a Phenom II X2 into a full blown quad-core processor.

As you would expect from a tier 1 board maker, the design of the 890FXA-UD7 is very neat and tidy. For example, the PCI Express x16 graphics card ports are well clear of the four DIMM slots. This means it is possible to install/remove memory with a full size graphics card installed. Motherboards that place the DIMM slots too close to the PCI Express x16 port, force users to remove the graphics card first before installing/removing memory modules.

The first of six PCIe 2.0 x16 ports is wired for full x16 bandwidth while the second, which will most likely be unusable as it will be blocked by a dual slot graphics card, is only wired for x4 bandwidth. The third slot, which is usable, is wired for x8 bandwidth, and then the fourth x4 bandwidth. The fifth slot provides the full x16 bandwidth, while the sixth slot at the very bottom of the motherboard provides x8 bandwidth.

This configuration means that it is very possible to install four Radeon HD 5870 graphics cards for example, and have two working at the full x16 and the other two at x8, which should still be sufficient. Of course spending at least $1600 US on graphics cards is not for the faint hearted, but for those willing to, Gigabyte provides a means to the madness.

Moving on, the SATA ports are placed together in the bottom right corner where they are easy to access and are also mounted on a 90-degree angle to avoid interfering with long graphics cards. The CMOS battery is also well placed in the bottom right corner of the motherboard, along with the CMOS clear jumper. Since there is no CMOS reset switch located on the I/O panel, it was imperative that Gigabyte got the battery placement right.

The I/O panel is well stocked and includes just a single legacy post, being a PS/2 port for older keyboards and mice. Also found on the I/O panel is six USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, six audio jacks, coaxial/optical S/PDIF out connectors, dual Firewire ports, dual eSATA ports and dual LAN connectors.

Those seeking additional USB ports will be happy to learn that another six can be supported using headers. Surprisingly, Gigabyte did not include any USB expansion brackets with this motherboard, though we have found this to be the case with almost all motherboards we have come across in recent times. There is a single SATA bracket included in the package, along with some CrossFireX connectors and the Hybrid Silent-Pipe module.

Out of the box the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 features a water-cooling block over the north bridge for extreme overclocking. However for those not interested in water-cooling, Gigabyte has included a huge passively cooled heatsink that can replace the water-block. This is a feature we have seen Gigabyte implement on their high-end motherboards in the past, and we feel it is a nice touch for the 890FXA-UD7.

In the main menu of the MB Intelligent Tweaker, we have many overclocking related options, such as CPU clock ratio, CPU north bridge frequency, CPU host clock control, PCIe clock, HT link width, HT link frequency and DRAM frequency.

There are basic voltage options available that allow the user to adjust the CPU, memory, and north bridge voltages. So really there are enough of the right options to allow for a decent overclock using any AMD Phenom II processor.

The DRAM configuration sub-menu allows the user to get up close and personal with the memory timings. Something that we really liked about this menu was that it clearly lists what timings the BIOS is using when testing to auto as well as the programmed SPD settings of the modules. This makes fine tuning the memory modules very easy and the user can opt to just change the settings that they desire.

When playing with the voltage options we found a similar situation to that of the memory, as the BIOS clearly states what voltage the system is currently using so the user has a good idea of how much they are increasing or decreasing certain voltages. In total there are eight tweakable voltage options, that will allow overclockers to fine tune their system for best results.

Other menus of interest will include “Integrated Peripherals”, where the user can enable or disable various onboard features, as well as alter storage related settings. The “PC Health Status” is another useful menu that allows the user to quickly and accurately monitor voltages as well as temperatures. This menu also houses a number of fail safe and warning settings, along with the smart fan controls.

Something that was lacking from the 890FXA-UD7 was the ability to save BIOS profiles, which was also missing from the 890GPA-UD3H and is a feature we have come to accept as being quite standard. This is a little disappointing, as we find having the ability to save profiles makes overclocking much easier and have come to depend on this feature. Still, despite this, when it came time to overclock our AMD Phenom II X4 965 processor, this Gigabyte 890FX motherboard did not disappoint.

In the past we have struggled to reach 4.0GHz with our Phenom II X4 965 processor. However this was not the case with the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7, which did achieve a stable 4.0GHz overclock, matching our previous best attempts, including that of the 890GPA-UD3H.

Hardware - Intel Core i7 930 - x3 2GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-12800 (CAS 8-8-8-24) - Seagate 500GB 7200-RPM (Serial ATA300) - Radeon HD 5870 (1GB) Crossfire - Asus P6T Deluxe (Intel X58) Software - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit) - ATI Catalyst 10.3

Hardware - Intel Core i5 750 - x2 2GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-12800 (CAS 8-8-8-24) - Seagate 500GB 7200-RPM (Serial ATA300) - Radeon HD 5870 (1GB) Crossfire - Asus P7P55D-E Premium (Intel P55) Software - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit) - ATI Catalyst 10.3

Hardware - AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition - AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition - x2 2GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-12800 (CAS 8-8-8-24) - Seagate 500GB 7200-RPM (Serial ATA300) - Radeon HD 5870 (1GB) Crossfire Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 (AMD 890FX) Asus Crosshair IV Formula (AMD 890FX) Gigabyte 890GPA-UD3H (AMD 890GX) Asrock 890GX Extreme3 (AMD 890GX) Asrock 870 Extreme3 (AMD 870) Software - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit) - ATI Catalyst 10.4

Whether using the Phenom II X4 965 or the new Phenom II X6 1090T, we find that similar memory performance is achieved with the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7. When looking at the SiSoftware Sandra 2010 results we found that the 890FXA-UD7 matched the Asus Crosshair IV Formula, while this was not the case when testing with EVEREST Ultimate Edition. Here both motherboards produced the same write performance, while the Crosshair IV Formula provided considerably stronger read performance, which is interesting.

The Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 performs very well in the SPECviewperf test, as it delivered the highest frames per second score in Maya of any AM3 motherboard when paired with the Phenom II X4 965 processor.

The Povray results were also impressive, as the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 paired with the Phenom II X4 965 processor delivered our best result. When paired with the Phenom II X6 1090T the 890FXA-UD7 matched the Asus Crosshair IV Formula.

The CINEBENCH processor scores are very much what we were expecting, with the six-core Phenom II X6 1090T configurations delivering the best results. The Asus Crosshair IV Formula did slightly edge out the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7, though the margins were minimal.

When testing with Microsoft Excel 2007 we find that the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 performs very well. Also, for the first time we find evidence of the Phenom II X6 1090T outperforming the Phenom II X4 965 by a meaningful margin. When paired with the Phenom II X6 1090T the 890FXA-UD7 was a fraction faster than the Asus Crosshair IV Formula.

The WinRAR application does not really take advantage of more than four cores and as a result the Phenom II X6 is of little benefit here. Still the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 performed quite well, though when paired with the Phenom II X6 1090T it was noticeably slower than the Asus Crosshair IV Formula in our 720p HD video file test.

While the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 may not have been as impressive when testing with WinRAR, the Photoshop CS5 results are most impressive. Here the 890FXA-UD7 easily outperforms the Asus Crosshair IV Formula when using the Phenom II X6 1090T, while it also delivered the best result when paired with the Phenom II X4 965.

The video encoding program HandBrake is able to utilize the extra cores of the Phenom II X6 1090T processor and as a result the AMD 890FX motherboards, which includes the Asus Crosshair IV Formula and Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7, averaged 75fps in this test. Meanwhile the 890FXA-UD7 delivered 61fps when configured with the Phenom II X4 965.

The x264 HD Benchmark fails to fully utilize the Phenom II X6 1090T processor and as a result it is only a fraction faster than the Phenom II X4 965. Still the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 performed rather well in this test, delivering strong results using both processors.

TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress also failed to utilize the extra cores of the Phenom II X6 1090T processor and in fact as a result the six-core configurations were the slowest tested. However when paired with the Phenom II X4 965 processor the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 did show very strong performance.

First up we have Unreal Tournament 3, and here we find that the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 delivered similar performance to the 890GPA-UD3H when using the Phenom II X4 965 processor. While this made the 890FXA-UD7 faster than the majority of AM3 motherboards, it was still quite a bit slower than the Asrock 890GX Extreme3. When paired with the Phenom II X6 1090T the 890FXA-UD7 delivered similar performance to the Asus Crosshair IV Formula.

The Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 showed very strong performance when testing in Company of Heroes, delivering the best 1920x1200 result of any AM3 motherboard using the Phenom II X4 965 processor. When paired with the Phenom II X6 1090T the 890FXA-UD7 was a fraction slower than the Asus Crosshair IV Formula.

The Phenom II X6 1090T processor does not fare well in Far Cry 2 and as a result the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 and Asus Crosshair IV Formula configurations delivered our poorest results. However when teamed up with the Phenom II X4 965 processor the 890FXA-UD7 provided the best results of any AM3 motherboard.

Something we found interesting about the power consumption results is that the Asus Crosshair IV Formula used considerably less power than the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 at both idle and under load. The 890FXA-UD7 also proved to be quite power hungry when using the Phenom II X4 965 processor, consuming more power than any other AM3 motherboard.

Furthermore, when using just a single graphics card you can expect all motherboards using one of the AMD 8-series chipsets to deliver pretty much the same performance. However the key feature of the 890FXA-UD7 is its multi-GPU support, as it will allow gamers to use four Radeon HD 5870 graphics cards with CrossFireX. Sadly this is not a feature we were able to test, given we own just two Radeon HD 5870 graphics cards, but with two PCIe x16 slots with full bandwidth and two more at x8, rest assured that it will work.

The other key feature is the Hybrid Silent-Pipe design, which can support either water-cooling or a massive passively cooled heatsink. However, if neither the ability to utilize more than two graphics cards or water-cool your motherboard appeal to you, then the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD5 might be more what you are looking for. Priced at just $180 US the 890FXA-UD5 is $60 US cheaper, which is 30% of that new Phenom II X6 1055T processor you have always wanted.

So clearly the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 is a motherboard for those going all out on their gaming rig, with a no expenses spared kind of attitude. For the rest of us, the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD5 is the exact same motherboard that provides all the same essential features and overclocking abilities.

More over, the 890FXA-UD5 costs the same amount as the Asus M4A89TD Pro and MSI 890FXA-GD70 motherboards, while we preferred it to the Asus Crosshair IV Formula. The Asrock 890FX Deluxe3 is the dark horse of the 890FX motherboards and although it lacks many of the features found on the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD5, it also costs a fraction of the price.

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Budget orientated board’s aside, Gigabyte look to be offering the most extreme AM3 motherboard right now in the 890FXA-UD7. Still, despite its enthusiast focus, we cannot help but feel at this price users are better off making the jump across the pond to Intel’s camp with an X58/Core i7 920 combo. Not only is this processor and motherboard combination considerably more powerful than the 890FX/Phenom II X6 1055T, but it also allows gamers to utilize either SLI or Crossfire technology.

Still, if you are sticking to the AM3 platform and want to get your hands on the very best, most extreme motherboard, then we have to say that the Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 is it. The 890FXA-UD7 will certainly impress with its rich feature set, highly tweakable BIOS, excellent performance, and build quality. For those seeking the ultimate AM3 motherboard regardless of the cost, we highly recommend the 890FXA-UD7.