Mainboard Features and Functionality

I would like to say right away that Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P mainboard is equipped with a Socket AM3 and DDR3 DIMM slots. It means that this mainboard supports only Athlon II and Phenom II processors (except Phenom II X4 940 and 920). Taking into account that most similar mainboards are based on AMD 790FX and 790X chipsets, the main distinguishing features of Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P is the use of a low-cost AMD 770 chipset for it. Since the memory controller in systems built around AMD processors is integrated into the CPU, the only noticeable difference between the North Bridge of the AMD 770 chipset and North Bridges of other more expensive discrete core logic solutions is the number of supported PCI Express 2.0 lanes. AMD 770 has 20 of them. Besides, this chipset doesn’t allow implementing more than one graphics card slot per board. Therefore, there is only one PCI Express x16 slot on Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P mainboard and that is in fact one of the main factors determining low price of this solution. Today, if a mainboard doesn’t support dual-graphics card configurations, it cannot possibly get anywhere close to the high-end segment.

The South Bridge on Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P is also a not very typical solution for contemporary AMD platforms – AM D SB710 chip. It delivers support for six SATA-300 ports, one PATA-133 channel and twelve USB 2.0 ports. As we see, SB710 doesn’t really differ from the more familiar SB750 chip in the number and variety of supported interfaces. The difference is in the limited RAID functionality: cheaper South Bridge version implemented on GA-MA770T-UD3P supports only RAID 0, 1 and 0+1 arrays.

In addition to the above listed features, the board also supports three IEEE1394 ports provided by TSB43AB23 controller and a network Gigabit port implemented via Realtek RTL8111D chip connected to the PCI Express x1 bus. The sound integrated onto Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P is represented by Realtek ALC888 HD codec. I would like to stress that even though this mainboard is considered an inexpensive solution, it has an eight-channel codec with 97 dBA signal-to-noise ratio. In other words, it is far from being a budget solution, even though it doesn’t support Dolby Home Theater technology.

Overall, Gigabyte engineers didn’t take a straightforward approach to the mainboard design here. It is especially nice to see that they didn’t try to save on everything and a number of technological solutions on GA-MA770T-UD3P are just as good as on its more expensive relatives. For example, the mainboard has all the features of an Ultra Durable 3 product. All electronic components used on this mainboard boast extended reliability. It uses only Japanese solid-state capacitors with polymer electrolyte, only Low RDS(on) MOSFET and only ferrite core chokes.

But electronic components, is just the beginning. Moreover, Gigabyte didn’t try to lower the coasts at the expense of the PCB quality either. Even when you simply hold Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P in your hands it feels nice and heavy, which is not typical of other manufacturers’ solutions from the same price range. The secret behind this heaviness is in the PCB design that uses twice as thick conductive power and ground layers. This engineering solution allows Gigabyte not only to lower the EMI. Doubling the thickness of these copper layers lowered the mainboard impedance and in the end improved the signal quality. And besides, thicker conductors improve heat dissipation for the onboard chips.

Nevertheless, Gigabyte Socket AM3 mainboards also have an obvious feature indicating if the product belongs to a specific price range. It is the cooling system. While top solutions are equipped with several large heatsinks or even water blocks connected into a single contour by several heatpipes, the chipset and processor voltage regulator circuitry of lower-end solutions come equipped with smaller heatsinks. Moreover, the number and length of heatpipes in this case is also minimal. Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P is an example of extremely economical design in this respect: the cooling system over the chipset and processor voltage regulator does not have any heatpipes at all.

The chipset North Bridge is cooled with a small stand alone aluminum heatsink with a sophisticatedly shaped profile, while the South Bridge is covered with a small ribbed aluminum plate, each rib being only 2-3 mm tall. These heatsinks are not fastened very securely: each is pressed against the chip surface with a pair of plastic push-pins with springs. Nevertheless, despite relatively low cooling efficiency of this system, the board working in nominal mode doesn’t get overheated: the heatsinks temperature remains within acceptable range.

The attempt to lower the production costs for the Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P found its way not only in the chipset heatsinks: the processor voltage regulator circuitry has no cooling of any kind at all. And although the voltage regulator has Gigabyte’s brand name four-phase design (plus one phase for the North Bridge built into the CPU) with twice the power components in each phase, this doesn’t prevent voltage regulator MOSFET from running really hot during work. Especially, if the system works with an overclocked quad-core processor.

I would like to point out that although Gigabyte claims that processor voltage regulator supports Easy Energy Saver technology, it doesn’t at all mean that the board can dynamically disable idle voltage regulator phases under low work load, which is a pretty popular feature these days. Although this approach has become very popular lately, Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P can only dynamically change the processor Vcore and is bundled with a special utility for that. However, none of the Gigabyte mainboards for AMD CPUs, even the most expensive ones, support dynamic adjustment of the active processor voltage regulator phases. So far this technology remains an exclusive prerogative of mainboards for Intel Core i7 and Core 2 processors.

Unfortunately, we can’t praise Gigabyte engineers for well thought-through components layout. The thing is that for cost-lowering reasons the board uses a “narrow” PCB and the missing 2.5 cm of board space have messed things up a little. In our opinion, the most inconvenient location has been picked for the 8-pin 12 V processor power connector. It has been moved towards the center of the PCB forcing you to wrap the power cable around the processor cooler. The onboard USB pin-connectors are also located in very unusual spots – right in front of the PCI Express x1 slots. In other words, when you put together a Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P based system it may be pretty challenging to perform cable management properly. Quite a few small things have also turned out pretty upsetting. There is not a single LED indicator on the board, the PCI Express x16 slot lock is extremely hard to reach if you install a card with dual-clot cooling system, the Clear CMOS jumper is hidden between the slots and is also quite hard to reset.

At the same time, you shouldn’t have any problems installing large CPUU coolers and video cards with massive cooling systems onto your Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P mainboard. There is enough free room around the processor socket as well as around the PCI Express x16 graphics card slot. But even despite this fact, compared to more expensive Socket AM3 mainboards Gigabyte MA770T-UD3P truly deserves the title of the “system assembly nightmare”. Since there are no brackets with additional ports included with the board, it is really nice to see that there are quite many on the connector panel already.

There are eight USB 2.0 ports, two IEEE1394 ports, Gigabit network port, six analog audio-jacks, optical and coaxial SPDIF connectors, PS/2 connectors for keyboard and mouse. If you feel that you need more, you can always use onboard pin-connectors to get additional four USB 2.0 ports, one IEEE1394 port, serial COM and Parallel LPT ports.