Gigabyte 890FXA-UD7 Motherboard

On-Board Peripherals

As explained earlier, the AMD 890FX chipset is a dual-chip solution using the SB850 south bridge chip. This chip natively supports six SATA-600 ports (with RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10). These ports are placed on the motherboard edge rotated 90°, so video cards won’t block them, as you can see in Figure 4 (blue connectors). This motherboard has one ATA-133 port controlled by a JMicron JMB363 chip, that also provides two SATA-300 ports (white connectors). A JMicron JMB362 chip controls two eSATA-300 ports at the motherboard rear panel. You have to pay extra attention because on this motherboard the SATA-600 connectors are blue and the SATA-300 connectors are white, while all other motherboards use the opposite color scheme.

As we mentioned in the last page, there is also a floppy disk drive controller.

In Figure 4, you can also check the two-digit POST diagnostics display, allowing you to discover through a two-digit code what is wrong with your computer if it is not turning on. There is also a "clear CMOS" button protected by a plastic cap.

Figure 4: SATA ports.

This motherboard has 14 USB 2.0 ports, eight soldered on the rear panel (two of them are shared with the eSATA ports) and six available through three headers located on the motherboard. Two USB 3.0 ports (blue connectors) are available on the motherboard rear panel, controlled by a NEC μPD720200 chip.

Three FireWire (IEEE1394) ports are provided (controlled by a Texas Instrument TSB43AB23 chip), two soldered on the rear panel of the board (one standard and one micro size), and one available through a header on the motherboard.

Eight-channel audio is generated by the chipset using a Realtek ALC889 codec, which is a professional-grade component, with 24-bit resolution, 192 kHz sampling rate (both numbers for the inputs and outputs), 104 dB
signal-to-noise ratio for its analog inputs and 108 dB signal-to-noise ratio for its outputs. These numbers mean that you can work professionally with audio mixing/editing (e.g., converting VHS tapes and vinyl records to digital format) with no background noise (white noise). The motherboard provides on-board optical and coaxial SPDIF connectors and you can route digital audio to your video card to have it available on an HDMI connector by installing the required cable on the “SPDIF_O” header available on the motherboard. The analog audio connectors are independent, so you won’t have to “kill” the line in or mic in jacks if you decide to install an analog 7.1 speaker set.

The MSI 890FXA-GD70 has two Gigabit Ethernet ports, controlled by two Realtek RTL8111D chips, each one connected to the system using one PCI Express x1 lane.

In Figure 5, you can see the motherboard rear panel with one shared keyboard or mouse PS/2 connector, coaxial SPDIF output, optical SPDIF output, eight USB 2.0 ports, two FireWire ports, two eSATA-300 ports (shared with USB 2.0 connectors), two Gigabit Ethernet ports, two USB 3.0 ports (blue ports), and independent analog 7.1 audio outputs.

Figure 5: Motherboard rear panel.

This motherboard supports one legacy serial port and one parallel port through headers, but it doesn’t come with the I/O bracket required to use them.