Asrock 880GMH/USB3 – Features

The Asrock 880GMH/USB3 is the only MicroATX board in this iii-manner round upwards and the only to utilize the AMD 880G chipset. In improver, this is also the only motherboard that doesn't sport the characteristic-rich SB850 due south bridge and instead uses the older SB710. At $85, the 880GMH/USB3 is the cheapest of the three products in our comparison.

Opting for the older SB710 south bridge bit has its disadvantages, naturally. Apart from the fact that it is based on a 130nm procedure and requires more power, it's too not quite as characteristic packed as the newer SB850. In a nutshell, the SB710 supports six SATA 3Gb/due south ports with AHCI 1.1 and RAID 0,1,10 along with twelve USB 2.0 ports.

Past comparison, the SB850 features six SATA 6Gb/south ports with AHCI one.2 and RAID 0,1,5,10 aslope 14 bachelor USB ii.0 ports. For the most part, these missing features will non impact the Asrock 880GMH/USB3 too severely, as SATA 6Gb/s devices are scarce at all-time while a dozen USB 2.0 ports will have most users well covered.

The 880GMH/USB3 supports a pair of USB 3.0 ports using the Fresco FL1000G two-port controller. We oasis't had any experience with this flake before. It appears that Asrock is using information technology to provide USB 3.0 functionality on lower end products, while the mid-range and high-end boards receive the more popular NEC controller.

Unfortunately nosotros were unable to examination the Fresco FL1000G controller's performance, as our only USB 3.0 device at hand, the OCZ Enyo, simply refused to work with it. At that place appears to be some compatibility issues we oasis't had with the NEC controller. The bulldoze would appear occasionally, but when trying to access it the organisation would lockup. Interestingly, USB 2.0 devices worked fine in the USB iii.0 ports and the OCZ Enyo worked fine when continued to a USB 2.0 port.

The Asrock 880GMH/USB3 uses the AMD 880G chipset with Radeon HD 4250 integrated graphics. Compared to the more powerful Radeon HD 4290 engine of the 890GX chipset, the just real divergence is the operating clock frequency. Specifically, the Radeon Hd 4250 is clocked 20% slower than the HD 4290, which reduces the gigaflops throughput from 44.viii to 40 GFLOPS.

The Radeon HD 4250 supports DirectX 10 and Shader Model 4.1. On thie motherboard it carries outputs for D-Sub (2048x1536), DVI-D (2560x1600) and HDMI (1920x1200).

For sound support the Asrock 880GMH/USB3 relies on the Realtek ALC892 codec to provide 7.i channel loftier definition audio. The Realtek ALC892 is a tried and true audio solution constitute on a wide range of motherboards. Another such flake is the Realtek RTL8111DL, which provides a single Gigabit Ethernet port using the PCI Limited bus for maximum throughput.

Finally, the 880GMH/USB3 offers a few trademark Asrock features such equally Turbo UCC, Turbo 50, OC Deoxyribonucleic acid and Instant Kick. Nosotros will particularly rely on Asrock's UCC (Unlock CPU Cadre) when testing out the 880GMH/USB3 lath to transform our Phenom II X2 555 processor into a total blown quad-core.