Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 Motherboard

On-Board Peripherals

The AMD 990FX chipset is a two-chip solution. The south bridge chip is an SB950 chip, which is a renamed SB850. This chip supports six SATA-600 ports, supporting RAID (0, 1, 5 and 10).  The 990FXA-UD5 has two additional SATA-600 ports, controlled by a Marvell 88SE9172 chip, supporting RAID 0 and 1. These ports are located on the motherboard edge rotated 90°, so video cards won’t block them.

Figure 4: SATA-600 ports

The portrayed motherboard also has two eSATA-600 ports, controlled by another Marvell 88SE9172 chip, supporting RAID 0 and 1. There is no support for a floppy disk drive controller or an ATA-133 port.

This motherboard has 14 USB 2.0 ports, eight soldered on the rear panel and six available through three headers located on the motherboard. It also has four USB 3.0 ports, controlled by two EtronTech EJ168A chips. Two ports are located on the motherboard rear panel, and two are located on a front panel header.

The 990FXA-UD5 has two FireWire (IEEE1394) ports, one at the motherboard rear panel and one available at a header on the motherboard. These ports are controlled by a VIA VT6308P chip.

This motherboard supports 7.1+2 audio format, i.e., eight channels plus two independent channels for audio streaming. On this motherboard, the audio is generated by the chipset using a Realtek ALC889 codec, which is an outstanding solution, providing an impressive 108 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog outputs, 106 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog inputs, and up to 192 kHz sampling rate for both inputs and outputs. This means you are able to capture and edit analog audio (e.g., converting LPs to CDs or MP3, converting VHS to DVDs or any other digital format, etc.) with this motherboard without adding any background noise.

The portrayed motherboard comes with independent analog audio outputs and an optical SPDIF output. You can add a coaxial SPDIF output or route digital audio to your video card to have digital audio in the HDMI connector using the available “SPDIF_O” header.

This motherboard has one Gigabit Ethernet port, controlled by a Realtek RTL8111E chip.

In Figure 5, you can see the motherboard rear panel, with PS/2 keyboard and mouse shared connector, eight USB 2.0 ports, optical SPDIF connector, FireWire port, two eSATA-600 ports, one Gigabit Ethernet port, two USB 3.0 ports (blue), and independent analog 7.1 audio outputs.

Figure 5: Motherboard rear panel