Gigabyte GA-M78SM-S2H Review

Testing:

So will this little board pack a big enough pounch to catch up to the big brothers it pairs with? Does size matter? Well, there is only one way to see and that is to push it to the limits. I will be stressing the Gigabyte GA-M78SM-S2H using a variety of scientific and video benchmarks to see how well it scores at stock and overclocked speeds. Then I am going to put it up agaist several motherboards to see how it compares. All settings, voltages, timings, and latencies will be run at stock specifications to keep out any variables that may interfere with the scores and cause unwanted results.

Testing Setup:

• Processor: AMD Phenom 9600 "Black Box" (200x11.5)
• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-M78SM-S2H
• Memory: Mushkin Redline XP2 8000 2 x 2 GB 5-5-5-12
• Video Card #1: Integrated NVIDIA 780a IGP graphics w/ Forceware 175.19
• Video Card #2: ASUS 8800 GT w/ Forceware 175.19
• Video Card #3: ASUS 9800GTX w/ Forceware 175.19 (with HybridPower enabled)
• Power Supply: Mushkin 800watt Modular Power supply
• Hard Drive: 1 x Seagate 7200.11 750GB SATA w/32MB Cache
• Opticals: Lite-On 8x DVD+/-RW
• O/S: Windows Vista Ultimate Edition

Comparison Motherboard:

• Comparison Motherboard 2: ASUS Crosshair II Formula
• Comparison Motherboard 2: ASUS M3N-HT
• Comparison Motherboard 3: ASUS M3832-MVP

Overclocking:

Overclocked settings:

• Processor: AMD Phenom 9600 "Black Box" @ 203/12.5x
• Sytem Memory: Mushkin Redline XP2 8000 2 x 2 GB 5-5-5-12

Man giving birth to an elephant must be easier than overclocking the GA-M78SM-S2H board. This thing didn't like anything I threw at it and kept spitting out BSODs one after another. I know I have been able to overclock the Phenom 9600 to 2.7GHz by just raising the multiplier, but this board didn't like anything over 12.5x even with the vCore pumped to 1.5v. Little by little, I started from stock and pushed it a little further. I ended up at 1.45v and sable at 203MHz with a 12.5x multi. This gave me an overclock of 239MHz for an end result of 2539MHz, which is what the overclock tests will be run at.

Benchmarks:

• Scientific & Data:

1. Apophysis
2. WinRAR
3. SpecviewPerf 10
4. PCMark Vantage Professional
5. Sandra XII
6. ScienceMark 2.02 Final
7. Cinebench 10
8. HD Tune 2.55

• Video:

1. Crysis
2. Knights of the Sea
3. Bioshock
4. Call of Duty 4
5. World in Conflict
6. Call of Juarez
7. Company of Heros-Opposing Fronts
8. 3DMark 06 Professional