Gigabyte F2A88XM-D3H review

If you’re desperate for AMD’s brand-new A10-7850K “Kaveri” processor you’ll need a motherboard to go with it, and the Gigabyte F2A88XM-D3H, with its budget price, could be just the motherboard you need.

The F2A88XM-D3H is a microATX FM2+ board compatible with not just the latest Kaveri processors but older FM2 processors too. This means you can upgrade to the F2A88XM-D3H now if you already have an FM2-compatible processor and then upgrade the processor to a Kaveri chip at a later date.

Although the F2A88XM-D3H is a microATX motherboard, it has all the features that most users will need. There are four memory slots into which you can press a maximum RAM capacity of 64GB. Even better, the F2A88XM-D3H supports memory speeds up to 2,400MHz, which is comforting given the better on-chip graphics performance afforded by faster memory.

The F2A88XM-D3H also has a whopping eight SATA3 ports, which is more than enough for even the most dedicated disk hoarder, and you can be sure that all your drives will be working at the highest potential.

The F2A88XM-D3H is a compact motherboard, measuring just 244x244mm, so there’s predictably little room for expansion. However, the board does have two PCI Express x16 slots that support CrossFire. Bear in mind, though, that only the first PCI-E x16 slot conforms to the PCI Express 3.0 standard. The second x16 slot conforms to the PCI Express 2.0 standard and runs at x4.

The board also has a single x1 slot, which is ideal for adding USB3 and LAN cards, for example, and a single legacy PCI slot for installing older expansion cards such as TV tuners. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to access the x1 slot if you use a dual-slot graphics card.

Looking at the rear of the board, it’d be good idea to add a USB3 card. There are only two USB3 ports on the backplate, along with four USB ports, a single PS/2 port, three 3.5mm analogue ports, an optical S/PDIF port and a Gigabit Ethernet port. The F2A88XM-D3H also has three graphics outputs, one of which is a HDMI output that supports a massive resolution of 4,096×2,160.

We tested the F2A88XM-D3H with an A10-7850K, and the test system scored 70 in our multimedia benchmarks, which is what we’d expect to see. If you’re using an unlocked processor, you can alter clock and voltage settings in the F2A88XM-D3H’s BIOS.

We like the Gigabyte F2A88XM-D3H, especially the four memory slots and support up to 64GBs of fast RAM and many SATA3 ports. However, it isn’t perfect, with few USB3 ports and expansion slots. Even so, if you need a compact motherboard for your new Kaveri processor and don’t want to spend a lot of money, you should check out the bargain F2A88XM-D3H.