GIGABYTE 785GMT-USB3
A new machine graced my humble desk today and after spending six long years with my AMD Opteron 175 and the Asus A8N-E. (Yep! Mine lasted 7 years!) It is time to move on to a newer machine.
INTRODUCTION:
The board in question today is the Gigabyte GMT 785-USB 3. The tagline for the board should have been “785 on steroidsâ€! The 785 chipset has been around for quite some time now and as we all know it’s the HTPC builder’s preferred chipset for all the amazing features it offers. Gigabyte’s 785 line-up comprises of DDR2 as well as DDR3 based boards. The model reviewed today is the most expensive of the 785 series micro atx boards and probably the most feature-packed of the lot. Any AM3 processor will work in either a DDR2 or a DDR3 motherboard; however, I prefer the DDR3 version because DDR3 offers slightly better memory performance due to its faster clock-speed. Also, DDR3 based boards would be better suited for future upgrades.
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS:
Here are the technical specifications from Gigabyte’s website:
GA-785GMT-USB3 (rev. 1.0) - GIGABYTE
BUNDLE:
Gigabyte GMT 785-USB 3 motherboard
Motherboard I/O Shield
Driver and Software Disk
Dolby Sticker
Two SATA cables (1x 900 + 1x Normal)
One IDE cable
One User Manual
One Quick Installation Guide
The motherboard bundle is sparse to keep the costs down.
The motherboard comes in an anti-static bag which is packed in a nice sturdy box. Plenty of marketing information has been given behind the box with information such as 2oz of copper used, DualBIOS, and 3 year warranty, etc.
MOTHERBOARD DESIGN AND LAYOUT:
The motherboard is a standard micro atx board. The dark blue PCB with white and light blue ports and slots look good. Solid capacitors have been used throughout the board and Gigabyte of late has pretty much manufactured all of their motherboards with 2oz of copper to help lower the impedance and board's temperature.
The board uses a 4+1 phase power design to provide stable voltage to the processor. AM3 Phenom processors up to 140W are supported by this board, so it should not have any issue with any of the existing or upcoming socket AM3 processors. Gigabyte uses the 8-pin ATX auxiliary power instead of the 4 pin. The CPU socket area is free from any major obstruction with no capacitors jutting out so there should not be any problem even with large after market heat sinks.
Just underneath the CPU socket are four DIMM slots. The four DDR3 memory slots are colour coded for easy installation. Gigabyte has rated that the board will support DDR3 800/1066/1333/1666/1800 MHz, despite the fact that AM3 processor's memory controller has officially been limited to 1333 MHz, I tested the board with the 4 GB OCZ Platinum DDR3-1600MHz kit and had no issue booting up at that speed. A small problem users may face with the memory slot placement is that of the proximity of the slots to each other. There is little gap between the memory slots and this might cause a slightly tight fit for people using memory sticks with heat-sinks or heat-spreaders.
Gigabyte has placed a single heatsink on the Northbridge and a small low height heatsink on the South-bridge. However no additional cooling is provided on the MOSFETs, a feature that would’ve been welcome.
Beside the main ATX power is where you will find the floppy connector and the single IDE connector supporting up to two devices. Five SATA ports are located near the lower left corner of the board. The ports are not angled which can be a problem with larger video card as the width of the card will block three of the five ports. This has caused me a big headache as I use 2x1 TB hard drives as well as 1x500GB and 1x640GB along with my SATA DVD writer. Now the only solution here for me was to dump the 500GB drive in lieu of another 1TB drive. Although Gigabyte has provided a SATA data cable with the connector rotated at 90 degrees, it still interferes with the GPU as there is hardly any space between the SATA port in question and the GPU. Check the pictures below for more details. Gigabyte scores a negative point here.
Three USB headers, as well as the front panel connectors next to the SATA ports. The CMOS battery and the clear CMOS jumper are located just next to the South bridge. A Fire-wire header, SPDIF, and CD-IN can be found on the upper right hand corner. Sitting behind the external audio connector is the internal audio header.
The board supports one PCI-E x1, one PCI-E x16, 2 PCI slots. The North Bridge heat sink extends over the PCIE x16 slot. The proximity of the Northbridge heat sink and the PCI-E x16 slot will cause users of large cards with custom cooling solutions, major problems if your card has protruding components or an extended heat sink at the rear.
An array of connectors can be found on the back that should satisfy anyone. Here you get four USB 2.0 ports and two USB 3.0 ports, a PS/2 for keyboard or mouse, a DVI, VGA, and HDMI port, digital audio out, and six channel audio out. The board uses Realtek ALC889A audio chip, which supports high quality DAC (Digital to Analog Converter) with 106dB SNR, high quality full rate lossless audio for content protected media, and Dolby Digital Live. It is one of the better audio chips for integrated audio. In addition, there is a single Gigabit LAN port, a FireWire port, and an eSATA port.
I believe Gigabyte has a fixed design template for all its 785 chipset based boards because all the boards sport the same layout and possess an extra feature or two like the USB 3.0 and DDR3 up to 1800 MHz in the case of this board. Gigabyte should have listened to the consumers for their feedback on the layout of their previous boards and corrected it in this board. Gigabyte, you have been lazy with the design of this board. This is something enthusiasts don’t expect from you! The board scores 3/5 for design.
BIOS:
The board was shipped with the Bios version v.F1. This bios version caused me a lot of problems. My C3 stepping based cpu was supported from bios versions v.F2 onwards. Hex-core, X-6 cpus are supported with bios version F3. Gigabyte should consider selling boards with the latest bios versions so that users get better out of the box support for a wider and newer range of hardware. The initital bios version caused a lot of system freezes and erratic temperature reporting. The OCZ 1600 Mhz platinum ram was not supported properly. The OCZ platinum ram was detected at 1066 Mhz but then these OCZ memory sticks were dumped for G-Skill RIP JAWS 1600 MHZ DDR 3 modules. the G-Skill ram was properly detected at 1333 Mhz. Memory speeds have to be changed in the BIOS by the user if he intends to run the memory at 1600 Mhz.
The OCZ ram being detected at 1066 Mhz :
Apparently Gigabyte boards are extremely picky about the ram. Below are the Qualified Vendor Lists for memory which was obtained from Gigabyte’s official site.
Back to the updated v.F3 BIOS now!
The AWARD BIOS used in the board should be familiar to a lot of users. The BIOS in this board is extremely feature packed. Although this board is priced on par with other mid-range offerings , the BIOS offers all the features that a high end board would offer.
These are some images of the BIOS:
Right at the top of the list is the MB Intelligent Tweakter (M.I.T). This is where all of the overclocking options are located. Gigabyte puts the most common adjustments on the main MIT page and more advanced options are placed in sub-menus within the MIT. Next to each adjustments, Gigabyte
has listed the actual frequencies and voltages information. The number will automatically update after a value has been changed. This is a very nice touch as it makes overclocking much simpler by letting the user know what the current readings are and what expected result would be eventually. I really liked this board's BIOS layout.
The memory speeds can be changed in the M.I.T page. Gigabyte uses ratio rather than actual speed for the adjustment. Users can set it to x4, x5.33, x6.66, x8.00, which corresponds to 800, 1066, 1333, and 1600 MHz. Although the official specification states that the board supports 1800MHz memory speed, there was no setting to show 1800Mhz was supported.
The DRAM Configuration menu is where all of the advanced settings for the memory such as the memory timings are located. Here users can set the memory to run "Ganged" for dual channel or "Unganged" for single channel. The Gigabyte 785GMT-USB-3 offers adjustment for the basic memory timings, such as CAS (4T~12T), RAS to CAS R/W Delay (5T~12T), Row Precharge Time (5T~12T), Minimum RAS Active Time (15t~30T), Command Timing (1T/2T), TwTR Command Delay (4T~7T), Trfc0 (90ns, 110ns, 160ns, 300ns, 350ns), Write Recovery Time (5T~8T, 10T, 12T), Precharge Time (4T~7T), Row Cycle Time (11T~42T), and RAS to RAS Delay (4T~7T). Bank Interleaving and Channel Interleaving options can also be enabled/disabled here.
The board has extensive voltage adjustment settings which is more than enough to bring a smile on the face of a hard core overclocker. The board allowed DDR3 voltage adjustment up to 2.35V at 0.05V increment. The default voltage for the memory is actually set as 1.6V. Northbridge and Southbridge both can be increased by 0.1V to 0.3V at 0.1V increment. The NB VID control and CPU Voltage control can be increased by -0.600V to +0.600V at various increments. I reduced the CPU V-core by -0.125V. Two thumbs up to Gigabyte for offering these options!
The Advanced Clock Calibration menu allows customers to select the EC firmware version. Two options are available, Normal and Hybrid. When it is set in Hybrid mode, it would allow certain processor core to be unlocked. At the time of testing, I unfortunately did not have a CPU that could be unlocked so I could not test this feature and cannot comment on the percentage of success the board offers in unlocking the CPU. The Advanced Clock Calibration allows adjustments per core or for all cores with settings from -12% to +12% in increments of 2%.
Moving on to the more standard BIOS settings, which are nothing special as they are offered in every other system BIOS.
The Standard CMOS features.
The PC Health Status.
The Advanced BIOS features. A unique feature with the Gigabyte's board is the Backup BIOS Image to HDD option. This option allows users to copy the BIOS image file to the hard drive. In the event that the BIOS is corrupted, the BIOS can be recovered from the image created. On a side note, this motherboard also features the DUAL BIOS technology.
The Power Management Setup.
Integrated Peripherals Setup.
TEST SETUP:
The motherboard was tested with the following components:
People reading the review will notice some major changes in the test setup pictured here and the final test setup on which the system was actually based and reviewed. While the system was being tested, the OCZ Platinum 1600 MHz DDR3 ram died and so did the HD4870 which was replaced by my 3 year old 8800 GT which was then replaced by the Ati 5850 which finally showed up.
There was a fair bit of CPU overheating due to the stock V – core of the CPU being above 1.47 V. Initial boot up temperatures gave me 50-55 Degrees. The stock AMD heat-sink was used in the initial testing to see if it provided any improvement to the thermal setup. The late arrival of parts meant the actual testing of the system was further delayed.
Pictures of the new setup on which the actual testing and benchmarking was carried out:
BENCHMARKS:
A series of benchmarks were run to asses the performance of the test setup. First Up Synthetic Benchmarks.
[1] 3D Mark Vantage :- The settings used here were custom in the first test as my LCD doesn't support the resolution of 1920 x 1200, with the default test resolution being 1920 x 1080. The second test was run in the high performance mode @ 1680 x 1050.
[2] PC Mark :-
[3] LAVASYS Everest Ultimate Edition :-
Cache and Memory Benchmark
Memory Read
Memory Write
Memory Copy
Memory Latency
CPU Queen
CPU Photoworxx
CPU ZLib
CPU AES
FPU Sinjulia
FPU Mandel
FPU Julia
For the real world tests (Games), the FPS benchmarks were generated by FRAPS v.3.2.
[1] Crysis - The game was run at 1920x1080 with all settings at Enthusiast level.
[2] Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2 - The game was run at 1920x1080 with all settings at maximum.
[3] Battlefield Bad Company 2 - The game was run at 1920x1080 with all settings at maximum.
[4] FarCry 2 - The game was run at 1920x1080 with all settings at maximum.
OVERCLOCKING:-
The motherboard will fulfill every overclocker's dream with its vast array of settings. However, due to the lack of a good, aftermarket heat sink and fan , I decided not to overclock the machine. Ram timings were changed, as shown above in the BIOS section.
CONCLUSION:-
AMD's 785G chipset has always been a very potent all rounder. The Gigabyte 785-GMT-USB 3 certainly is a board worth considering for HTPC builds or a Mid-range all purpose desktop but as I have maintained, the SATA port placement will cause a lot of problems.
The board retails for Rs.5500-Rs.5700 depending on the location. It is a very good, solid platform to build a powerful system and at its selling price it does seem like a value for money proposition considering the features it offers. If you can live with the SATA port placement issue (consider getting 2-3 right angled SATA cables for your drives!) then it is a very good motherboard and definitely worth a look.
RATING:
BUNDLE - 4/5
BOARD LAYOUT - 3/5
BIOS FEATURES - 5/5
PERFORMANCE - 5/5
OVERCLOCKING - 4/5
VALUE FOR MONEY - 4/5
OVERALL - 4.2/5
