Gigabyte GA-F2A88X-D3H review

The GA-F2A88X-D3H is a mid-range ATX AMD FM2+ motherboard with just about everything you’ll need for a moderately specified PC build. It supports AMD processors using both the FM2 and FM2+ sockets and it uses the A88X chipset.

It’s a spacious board to work on, with all the various headers and ports spread nicely around the board. We were left a little cold by having only two USB ports at the rear, although there are two further headers on the board if your case has spare ports. You do get a total of four slower USB connectors, with four on the back and four additional headers. You’ll have no problem connecting all your peripherals, but you’ll need to decide which of them will benefit from the high speeds USB3 offers.

At the rear of the board there are five 3.5mm audio jacks alongside an optical audio port, which will be a welcome addition for buyers with high-quality audio equipment. You also get DVI, VGA and HDMI video outputs, which will come in handy if you choose not to buy a graphics card at all. All three ports can output in Full HD, with the DVI port capable of 2,560×1440 resolutions and the HDMI port also able to produce Ultra HD images, although only at a slightly jerky 24Hz and only if you have an FM2+ processor installed.

If you do want to use a graphics card, there are two PCI-E x16 slots, although only the uppermost one runs at full x16 speeds. The second one, situated below a pair of PCI-E x1 slots (there’s a third x1 slot in the middle of the board) runs at x4 speeds. This means if you wanted to connect a second graphics card at a later date you could do so, although the x4 speeds may prove to be a bottleneck. Only AMD cards are compatible for dual card setups on this board. Fitting a graphics card in the x16 speed slot will obstruct one of the x1 slots, but with two others to choose from this won’t be much of an issue. There are two legacy PCI slots at the bottom of the board, too, if you have old expansion cards that you want to use on your new build.

There’s room for four DDR3 RAM modules for a maximum of 32GB of memory, and the board can handle overclocked RAM up to a maximum speed of 2,400Mhz, so there’s plenty of headroom for future upgrades and tweaking.

Gigabyte’s UEFI BIOS is a little behind that of rivals Asrock, Asus and MSI. It’s by no means bad and fans of simpler, more old-school BIOS menus will feel right at home. Sadly, though, there’s no automatic overclocking tools to be found. This won’t be a problem for more advanced users, but inexperienced buyers who want a little performance boost may be left scratching their heads. Even so, the board managed a respectable 57 in our benchmarks, which is what we’d expect.

Overall, though, the Gigabyte GA-F2A88X is a decent FM2+ motherboard for the price. It does all the basics well and if you’re not into overclocking and minute tweaking, you don’t need much more. That said, the Asrock FM2A88X Pro3+ is a better board all-round.