An interesting model of the motherboard appeared on the market in 2008. It has now become fashionable to assemble a system on your own, to select cool devices for it, and then motherboards were in less demand, since it was easier for many users to purchase a assembled system and think about compatibility, the presence of some special connectors, etc.
The Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3, despite the support of the budget system logic from the Reds, turned out to be in the expensive segment. This was connected, as always, with the availability of improved parameters, capabilities and new technologies.
Packaging
The novelty was usually packed in a simple corporate box with bright graphic elements. Before us is a white and green box, in front the main advantages of the model, series and supported processors are indicated. There are a lot more specifications behind. Here and the type of memory, available connectors, various technologies and functions of the Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3. Characteristics, although presented, are in a compressed format.
There was nothing unusual or new inside the box. Although everything you need is here. In addition to instructions and manuals, they placed a driver disk, a pair of Serial ATA loops, one FDD and an UltraDMA one, as well as a dummy for the interface panel.
Element layout
The Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3 motherboard proved correct. The elements on it were arranged well, nothing interferes with the assembly and installation of the platform in the housing. Although here you can find flaws. For example, not all users liked the location of the power contact, which is now not on the edge of the board. Also unsuccessfully located FDD slot, which became lower and "stuck" under the PCI.
The north and south bridges are guarded by radiators. They are compact, so you should not think that such a passive cooling system is enough for full use of the system. Nevertheless, the presence of aluminum radiators pleases, and if you add them with a good cooler, the stability of the motherboard is ensured. And for those who are even going to experiment with overclocking, the purchase of a cooling system should come first.
Details
Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3 V 1.0 worked with AMD SB600 chip. She collaborated with four 3 Gb / s Serial ATA ports. In this case, it was possible to use arrays, one slot for a pair of IDEs, as well as a dozen USB-connectors. It is worth noting that four of them were inside. There was also a color designation, which facilitated the installation of modules.
The platform accommodated two PCI slots, two pairs of PCIe x1 and one PCIe x16. This time a good sound system turned out to work on an eight-channel codec. The connector supports both HDA and AC'97 in this case. We worked on the processing of the audio codec, now there are fewer dissatisfied users who received burnt capacitors.
There was a place on the board and the network controller, which supported several modes, among which there was 1000 Mbit / s. The power of the crystal worked thanks to a four-phase circuit. By the way, the food on the platform is also of high quality. It was assembled from polymer capacitors, chokes with ferromagnetic cores were placed. And if now this state of affairs is not surprising, then in 2008 the use of such a design was an excellent addition to stable operation.
Interface panel
In general, the Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3 V 1.0 turned out to be a fairly complete and self-sufficient board. Characteristics have helped this model break into the top sellers. Users also noted the presence of all the necessary connectors. So, on the panel there was a pair of PS / 2, designed for keyboard and mouse. There were 10 USB slots in total, as mentioned earlier, but six were brought to the external panel - and this is enough.
There were two S / PDIFs here, IEEE ports are implemented as six-pin and four-pin ports. RJ45 helped establish a network connection. Serial COM and three pairs of audio connectors are located.
By the way, the board itself also had connectors, including a place for installing a cooler, a four-pin cooler slot was located almost near the chip itself, which indicated the need to install a cooling system separately for the entire board and separately for the chip. For cooling in the case, the connectors were equipped with three contacts.
Support
The motherboard Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3 acquired a north bridge, presented by AMD 770, and a south - AMD SB600. The crystal connector is designed for Socket AM2 + format . A dozen processors could be installed on the platform. So, among them were AMD Phenom FX, Athlon 64 FX, X2 Dual-Core, Sempron, etc.
The motherboard also worked in tandem with DDR2. Moreover, there were four places on the board, but a two-channel connection was supported, with which it was possible to dial up to 16 GB.
The chipset itself was set up to cooperate with the HyperTransport 3.0 bus, which generally operated at a frequency of up to 2600 MHz, and if you buy a Phenom chip, then it is needed for correct operation.
Adjustment
To configure the parameters of the motherboard, you need to go into the BIOS. It is this menu that allows you to improve the parameters of the model, make it more productive and adjust it for yourself. But in general, all the parameters in the BIOS are designed for overclocking experiments with the Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3.
To adjust the processor technology, you need to select the menu Cool'n'Quiet Virtualization. The processor factor can also be adjusted in increments of 0.5, while its range starts at 5. The frequency of the system bus can be adjusted from 200 to 500 MHz and can also be changed in 1 MHz steps. There is a divider for memory, which is designed for models with Phenom.
There is a setting for the HyperTransport parameter. You can adjust the bus frequency to 1 GHz in steps of 200 MHz, as well as change the resolution from 8 to 16 and vice versa. There is a whole range of voltage changes that go to the memory, north and south bridges, to the processor.
As time has shown, if you deal well with BIOS, you can achieve a good overclocking potential of the system. If any critical values appeared, they were marked in red, which immediately set the boundaries for the changes.
Many liked the Hardware Monitor section, in which it was most convenient to monitor the heating of the processor and the board itself, as well as the speed of the cooler on the processor and others, if any. Total body fans can be three. The menu also indicated the current supply indicators. From here it was possible to indicate the critical heating temperature, cooler rotation values, set automatic speed control of the blades, etc.
Utilities
The manufacturer did not equip the Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3 with a huge number of useful and not very utilities. Of the most popular ones there is AMD OverDrive. It allows you to manually overclock, monitor the system, not entering the BIOS, but doing everything from the desktop. Interestingly, depending on the chip selected, it was possible to get extended or reduced adjustment parameters.
There is also a good proprietary program Easy Tune 5 Pro. This software will help to find out the temperature on the main components of the board, it is also possible to control the fan speed from here or help the system improve the frequency performance. By the way, many experts believe that such software overclocking will help beginners, since the process itself is more or less automated.
Testing
Naturally, this model was tested, which showed good results and overall competitiveness of this board. In games of that time, the board allowed showing 80-90 FPS, which is quite enough for shooters of those times.
Overclocking
Overclocking of this model should be carried out with high-quality powerful cooling. The process of improvement itself, on the whole, was rather stable and without any errors. Problems can arise only if the voltage is set incorrectly, in which case the system will fail and simply shut down. Therefore, the acceleration itself takes a lot of time, since you need to correctly configure the voltage on the north bridge, increasing it by an average of 0.15 V. In this case, the frequency can be raised to 410 MHz.
Such values make it clear that on the whole the board allows overclocking processors of even the youngest category to their full strength.
Update
After some time, the company decided to release a modified version of this version of the Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3 rev. 2.0. This is not to say that the option was very different from the previous one, but still it acquired something new. Processing in the design of the board became noticeable, some elements were transferred. The COM port has moved from the rear panel to the lower left corner. Instead, a couple of USBs were added to the panel.
The number of SATA connectors has also increased - from four to six. The second BIOS scheme is noticeable, the model for network connection was also updated, and on the bottom of the board there was a redone wiring of the chip power.
Changes
Interestingly, the Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3 v.2.0 specifications have changed. The south bridge has been updated to version SB700, as well as the entire power system, which has become more reliable and 100% made of capacitors with solid polymer.
The number of supported chips has increased, including the Phenom FX, Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX, Athlon 64 X2, Sempron line. Moreover, among the supported cores of the crystal, there are already forgotten Kuma, Windsor, Lima, Sparta, etc.
The power consumption of the processor is up to 140 W, the bus frequency ranges from 2 to 5.2 GHz. Updated sound codec. The amount of memory remains the same, there are four pieces of modules, but the system adopts a two-channel architecture.
Reviews
Gigabyte GA-MA770 DS3 v.2.0 received average reviews. The first version was praised for its rich features, fast memory support and important expansion slots. Overclocking also appealed to customers. There were also dissatisfied users. Some of them crashed due to not quite correct power wiring, which was generally fixed in the second version.
Therefore, the second updated version has become better. They have already noted the convenient location of the necessary slots, access to them and, in general, the placement of components on the board. There were also those who used a similar model after 6-7 years, which can be considered not quite right, since technologies are moving forward, which means that outdated devices do not find a place and leave the market. Hence the discontent of many about the presence of the old Realtek sound card and AC'97.
Both motherboards were marked by the presence of Hyper Transport 3.0 and PCI Express 2.0. Pleased with the presence of all the necessary adapters and additional software. It is also possible to install four fans on the platform, of which three are case-mounted, and one is designed to cool the processor.