Gigabyte A75M-UD2H Motherboard

On-Board Peripherals

The AMD A75 chipset is a single-chip solution and is also known as an FCH (Fusion Controller Hub). This chip supports six SATA-600 ports with RAID (0, 1, and 10). On this motherboard, one of these ports was routed to the motherboard rear panel and is available as an eSATA-600 port. The SATA ports are located on one of the corners of the motherboard. While a video card installed in the first PCI Express x16 slot won’t block them, a video card installed in the second PCI Express x16 slot will block at least one of them.

Figure 4: SATA-600 ports

There is no support for a floppy disk drive controller or an ATA-133 port.

This motherboard has eight USB 2.0 ports, four soldered on the rear panel and four available through two headers located on the motherboard. It also has four USB 3.0 ports, two available on the motherboard rear panel and two available through a front panel connector, controlled by the chipset.

This motherboard has two FireWire ports, one soldered on the motherboard rear panel and one available through a header on the board. 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 a professional-grade 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 MP3s, 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, meaning that you won’t need to use the line in or mic in jacks when connecting an eight-channel analog speaker set and an optical SPDIF output. You also can add a coaxial SPDIF output using the available “SPDIF_O” header.

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

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

Figure 5: Motherboard rear panel