Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H Comments

I think the point of the M/B is maybe for creating a Media PC, the 9400 would make for a good H264 Decoder etc. As for a gaming, on-board has always been lacking in that department, So for Value if your building a Media PC, then I'd say it would get a better than 6, but for gaming yes, not much use really.

Keith, I quite agree that the Gigabyte 9400 would make a good Media Centre but the cheaper GeForce 9300 (and Intel G45 for that matter) will also suffice. The problem with GeForce 9400 is that it is in a sort of limbo between Media Centre and Gaming.

@leo, Well if the 9400 is about 30% faster than the 9300, even for a Media PC I'd go 9400,. As you most likely know H264 encoding can be GPU/CPU intensive, and even more so for H264 Encoding, and having my H264 encoding being hopefully 30% faster sounds good to me. :) So I'm not sure its stuck in the middle, but higher up on the Media PC front. And at the end of the day it's not that much dearer than the G45. But like I said, for gaming it wouldn't be the M/B for me.

Hi Leo,

Anyway you could compare the GF 9300 vs GF 9400 on things like: HD playback performance / HD sound quality.
The Gigabyte uses the exclusive ALC889A Dolby Home Theatre Audio chipset.
I’m not sure about the ASUS, but Gigabyte has 1x eSATA connector on the I/O panel.

Also, when you reviewed the ASUS board, to be fair, the US$ to the Pounds was much better.
Looking around now, the ASUS board is much higher in price, where as the Gigabyte is relative to today’s current exchange.
The ASUS is now on average going for £95inc VAT
Where as Scan/dabs are selling the Gigabyte between £109 ~ £115inc VAT

This board is really not targeted for gaming, no on-board graphics can currently replace the almighty discrete Graphics card ;-)

GigaMan is right

The Gigabytes ALC889a would be better for Blu-ray playback as the Asus board has the newer ALC1200 (no Digital out but better quality than 888) this still 8 channel and a Dolby ultra stereo for headphones but no Dolby/DTS connect or the like, so if you were putting together a HTPC and wanting to play blu-ray without a sound card the Gigabyte is the better (if not more expensive) option.

I have built 2 machines using this M/B.The video and audio are very good.The HDMI output is perfect.I put a Core 2 duo E6750 on it with 4 gigs of G.skill ram @ 1066 speed(I had from a upgrade)Win 7 performance gives the ram 5.5 CPU-6.0 graphics desktop 4.8 graphics gaming 4.3 Western Digital 500 gig a 5.9 Overall score 4.3 This M/B is loaded with many extras- 6 rear usb ports 1-1366 rear port DVI and VGA.Very nice HTPC board.

No sound via HDMI with Win XP Pro SP3. Perfect sound via HDMI from additional PCI-E VGA card. NVIDIA HD audio driver presents, but can't be set as default. The Default - Realtek and can't be changed. Used the latest BIOS - F3a & F3f. Anybody met this problem?