Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3

AMD Socket AM3 Budget Motherboard Shootout

In terms of features the Gigabyte 870A-UD3 is a far more serious product than Asrock's budget offering. In place of the AMD 880G/SB710 configuration, the Gigabyte 870A-UD3 employs the AMD 870/SB870 chipset combination. The AMD 880G and 870 chipsets are almost identical spec-wise, with the only difference being the integrated Radeon HD 4250 graphics engine which is not supported by the 870. That aside, Gigabyte has decided to slap an extra $10 on the price tag and offer a number of notable features not found on the Asrock 880GMH/USB3 -- features such as Firewire and dedicated eSATA ports. SB850 south bridge the Gigabyte 870A-UD3 provides six SATA 6Gb/s ports with support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID5, RAID 10, and JBOD, giving users a great deal of flexibility. Besides the SATA support offered by the SB850 south bridge chip, Gigabyte has also included the Gigabyte SATA2 and JMicron JMB362 chips. The Gigabyte SATA2 controller (a re-labeled JMicron JMB363) offers an IDE connector and a pair of SATA 3Gb/s ports. Meanwhile, the JMicron JMB362 serves up an additional two SATA 3Gb/s connectors used to provide the board's eSATA support.