Gigabyte GA-E7AUM-DS2H Review

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?