Gigabyte GA-880GMA-UD2H Review

GA-880GMA-UD2H Performance Analysis

The UD2H has a wide appeal given its budget leanings and overclockability, so we’ve pitched it against a wide range of other motherboards. We’ve chosen the mini-ITX Asus M4A88T-I Deluxe which is likely to provide competition for people looking at HTPC builds and the excellent ATX Asus M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3. We’ve also included the 890FX-based Asus Crosshair IV Formula as a ccomparison to a high-end board.

The UD2H started well in our image editing test, scoring a respectable 940 points. This was just a shade behind the Crosshair IV, which costs over £160. The UD2H dropped back a little when overclocked however, meaning it fell behind the M4A88 EVO. It did maintain its lead over the HTPC-orientated mini-ITX board though.

At stock speeds the UD2H was poor at video encoding, scoring only 1,205 points which was behind most of the other boards tested, even the mini-ITX M4A88 Deluxe. It did save some face when overclocked, marking up an impressive 1,586 points, which was second only to the excellent M4A88 EVO.


This pattern continued in our multi-tasking and overall scores, as the UD2H was mid-table in both tests at stock speeds but fared comparatively better when overclocked. Of particular note was its performance in our multi-tasking test when overclocked, which was imperious. It’s important to note however that while the UD2H’s overclocked results are impressive, the lack of VRM cooling means that we'd be wary of aggressively overclocking the board for long periods of time.

Gaming performance proved to be the Achilles heel of the UD2H, as it performed disappointingly in Crysis at both stock and overclocked speeds. At stock speeds it sat at the bottom of the pile, though it fell behind the M4A88 Deluxe only by virtue of a slightly slower average frame rate. Overclocked performance was also frustratingly poor, as the performance didn't improve by the same magnitude as we saw from the Media Benchmarks. This meant that the minimum frame rate only improved by 3fps so the game was still unplayable, unlike on the Crosshair IV.


The SATA performance of the UD2H was just a tiny bit behind other 880G and 890GX based boards that we’ve tested. Realistically, the difference was so minimal that you’re unlikely to notice any difference between the boards.

Conclusion

The UD2H is stuck in the no-man’s land between the truly budget and the high-performance ends of the market. There are cheaper current-socket boards out there for those looking to cut the cost of upgrading, as the SATA 6Gbps and USB 3 support that the UD2H offers doesn’t come for free.

However, the USB 3 and SATA 6Gbps ports of the UD2H do mean it won’t be outdated anytime soon and it is one of the cheapest board we could find that supports both of these standards. However, another keenly priced AMD board that supports SATA 6Gbps and USB 3 is the Asus M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3. This board now costs just £83 and with a cleaner layout and more performance for the same price, only the fact that the Asus is an ATX board that might not fit in your HTPC case is a reason to not buy it over the UD2H.

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• 7/10

• Features
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• 7/10

• Value
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• 7/10

• Overall
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• 7/10

Score Guide