Full ATX?
Makes sense. It’s the proper tower PC shizzle. Mini-ITX? Yup, it’s what you
need for a tiny PC. But microATX? At best, it’s a niche form-factor.
GIGABYTE
FM2+ series motherboards based on AMD A88X chipset
Of course,
any chassis that can take a full ATX board will also swallow microATX, but it
is a bit betwixt and between in terms of size. Then again, there are a few
small form-factor chassis optimised for it.
What’s more,
you could argue that microATX is the best compromise of all. In theory, it
allows for a much smaller chassis than full ATX, but sufficient board space to
avoid limiting features and functionality. That, surely, is the remit for the
Gigabyte F2A88XM-DS2.
Or it would
be if this wasn’t such a budget-oriented board. For just $73, it’s unrealistic
to expect the F2A88XM-DS2 to pack anything like a full atx feature set. And so
it proves. The first thing you’ll notice is the stingy SATA setup. Just four
SATA 6Gbps ports are provided. There’s no eSATA on the back panel either, or
mSATA support.
Designed
to leverage the awesome potential of
the latest AMD Fusion A-series APUs
As we’ve
mentioned the back panel, you’ll notice the video-out options are limited to
DVI and VGA. The DVI port is dual-link, thank goodness, but the lack of HDMI
makes this less attractive as a proposition for a cheap home theatre rig or
living room game box. The analog audio-out doesn’t offer full surround, if you
care about that sort of thing, and there’s no digital S/PDIF either.
Budget limitations
That said, if
we’re honest, nearly all of those objections are non-critical. For an SFF PC,
four SATA ports are probably enough. Most people only need analog stereo audio
out, and the DVI port will actually drive most 1080p HDMI displays with an
adapter. Like we said, for $73 you have to keep your expectations in check.
What the
extra board size does buy you, however, is a single lane PCIe slot and an
old-school PCI port. Depending on your needs, both could be either very welcome
or entirely irrelevant.
Either way,
it’s probably performance that’s going to make or break the Gigabyte
F2A88XM-DS2 as a budget proposition. Perhaps not surprisingly, this isn’t a
great overclocking board. All the options are there in the bios, but we hit the
wall at 4.1GHz – well down on the 4.5 GHz achieved with the same APU by ASUS’
full-ATX A88X-Pro.
GIGABYTE
motherboards feature GIGABYTE DualBIOS™, an exclusive technology from GIGABYTE
that protects arguably one of your PC's most crucial components, the BIOS
Elsewhere,
the news is mostly better. The F2A88XM-DS2 has no problem running the
integrated GPU at over 1,000MHz, with memory at 2,400MHz for much improved
bandwidth. The performance of the SATA implementation is nice and solid too,
albeit nothing special. Likewise, there’s little to choose between any of these
boards running a high-end GPU for gaming at stock clockspeeds. indeed, it could
be argued that the AMD Kaveri chip isn’t well suited to high end gaming; its
CPU cores aren’t really up to keeping a powerful 3D card busy. But then we’re
back to value and being reasonable about expectations. Pairing Kaveri with a
really high-end GPU isn’t going to make sense on any motherboard.
Instead, with
the right chassis and a mid-range GPU, this board will make for an affordable
and effective budget gaming box. You can’t say fairer than that.
Specifications:
·
APU: AMD A
series processors, AMD Athlon™ series processors ·
Chipset: AMD
A88X ·
Memory: 2 x 1.5V
DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 64 GB of system memory, support for DDR3
and AMP/XMP ·
Onboard
graphics: 1 x D-Sub port, 1 x DVI-D port, supporting a maximum resolution of
2560x1600, Maximum shared memory of 2 GB ·
Operating
system: Windows XP 32-bit, Windows 8.1/8/7 32-bit/64-bit
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