ECS A890GXM-A Motherboard
The Motherboard
Contents
So far ECS released three models based on AMD 890GX: A890GXM-A, which is the model we are taking a look; A890GXM-AU, which is identical to A890GXM-A but featuing USB 3.0 ports; and IC890GXM-A.We created a table showing the main differences between these products. As you can see all are ATX-sized motherboards with basically the same features, with A890GXM-A and A890GXM-AU being more complete because they have three PCI Express x16 slots, two Gigabit Ethernet ports and more video connectors. Also A890GXM-A and A890GXM-AU use only solid capacitors, while IC890GXM-A uses solid capacitors only on its voltage regulator circuit, using regular electrolytic capacitors on the rest of the board. A minor difference is on the voltage regulator section, where IC890GXM-A uses a simpler 3+1 phase configuration, while the other two boards use a 6+1 config.
| IC890GXM-A | A890GXM-A | A890GXM-AU | |
| Form Factor | ATX | ATX | ATX |
| Memory | 4 sockets | 4 sockets | 4 sockets |
| PCI Express x16 slots | Two | Three | Three |
| PCI Express x1 slots | Two | Two | Two |
| PCI slots | Two | One | One |
| SATA-600 | 5 ports, 1 eSATA | 5 ports, 1 eSATA | 5 ports, 1 eSATA |
| USB 3.0 | No | No | Yes |
| Audio Codec | ALC892 | ALC892 | ALC892 |
| Networking | 1 Gigabit Ethernet port | 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports | 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports |
| Video Outputs | VGA, DVI-D | VGA, DVI-D, HDMI, DisplayPort | VGA, DVI-D, HDMI, DisplayPort |
In Figure 2 you can have an overall look from ECS A890GXM-A.
Figure 2: ECS A890GXM-A motherboard.
As mentioned, this motherboard has 128 MB video memory soldered on the motherboard. In Figure 3, you can see the 1 Gbit GDDR3-1600 chip (1 Gbit = 128 MB) in charge of this feature.
Figure 3: 128 MB GDDR3-1600 memory chip.