Recently Viewed
Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H AMD 690G Socket AM2 Onboard VGA 8 channel audio mATX Motherboard
- £40.52ex vat
- £46.60inc vat
(price includes 2.5% VAT discount)
Need it fast? You have:
Wednesday, 3rd December.
Bookmark & Share
- manufacturer #: GA-MA69GM-S2H
- quickfind code: 136367
- 10 in stock for next day delivery.
11 reviews
/
write a review
Product Reviews
xcellent value quality board for HTPC
os:
Windows XPBought this board for a HTPC setup and it is excellent.
Has all connections you could possibly want for HTPC, i.e. HDMI, DTS and even TOSLINK if you wana connect audio through amp.
Has headers for serial and parallel on board but does not come with connectors for these.
Only thing to watch out for if you have a small case is the sata connectors. They are at a right angle so you may need right-angled sata cable to connect if you have a small case with a tight fit.
Also, in xp if you have issue with the sound card driver, goto their website and follow instructions for setting it up, its not a normal way of setting it up.
Good board
os:
Windows VistaInstalled Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H (136367) in a Cooler Master Elite 330/PSU case bundle (135101) with 2 X Kingston 1Gb DDR2 800 ram (129954) and AMD 64 X2 4200+ (141242). Combination works very well.
Vista Windows Experience Index;
Processor 4.9
Memory (RAM) 5.9
Graphics (aero) 3.6
Gaming graphics 3.1
Primary Hard Disk 5.3 (ATA133 7200 rpm HDD)
No problems running XP.
os:
Windows XPI have had no problems running XP. All the supplied drivers loaded and worked first time (with XP SP2).
The card is supplied with a (standard PCI) height bracket which has a set of component & S-video sockets. The attached cable connects to a header on the MB. To answer an earlier question, this arrangement does not require a card! The sockets on the bracket are fed directly from the MB. The manual claims the Pb socket (one of 3 component output sockets) doubles up as the composite video out (but I haven't tried it). All in all, you get HDMI, S-video, component and composite video output as standard. I have only tried the S-video and it works.
I am using it with an AMD AM2 BE2350 energy efficient CPU, 1GB of eBuyer value RAM and Toshiba 2.5" SATA disk. I haven't done any performance comparison but it feels as though it's not as fast as my C2D 6550 set up. Mind you, the latter uses a 3.5" SATA drive!
The only cons are (i) I would have preferred a connector block that plugged onto onto the 'block of pins' on MB for all the case connectors (i.e. HD LED, Power sw, Reset sw, etc), as it is a bit fiddly to wire up all these connectors individually in a small case and (ii) GUI of all supplied utilities are not pleasant to look at!!
Ubuntu
os:
LinuxUbuntu 8.04 LTS DeskTop edition loads and runs without any issues (except for ATI graphics. It seems the built-in driver cannot handle all the ATI functions but I have no problem driving my 19" monitor at 12280x1024 or my TV via S-Video. Since I don't have a TV with HDMI input so I haven't been able to test this output). The standard OS build also has a driver for the on-board n/w controller.
The MB gets four stars since it does not come with an UBS bracket for the rear (i.e there are only four USB sockets on the back panel) and has electrolytic capacitors near the CPU heat sink. The latter could lead to capacitors leaking over time and causing intermittent faults. I am using an 'energy efficient' BE2350 AM2 CPU which does not generate a lot of heat.
COMPATABILITY PROBLEM
We have built 15 of these boards usng the cool master E340 Case. We have had a succsess rate of only 9 working with coolmaster PSU despite a further 6 cases being supplied. The mother baords have proved 100 percent reliable using Antec PSU so a word of caution
Great motherboard badly let down by SATA connectors
os:
LinuxThis is a great all round media center board, BUT the Sata connectors enter the board from the side, not the top. If your media center case is small (as most are) then it might not fit or you can't use SATA!
For example, this motherboard does NOT fit the Antec NSK2480 MATX case without drilling holes in the case to get at the SATA connections!
Apart from this, it's a great motherboard. I would have given it five stars but for the SATA connectors.
Not Happy
os:
Windows XPHad 3 boards including this one , all gigabyte, none of the realtek ALC889A ON BOARD SOUND worked on any of them!
Updated to the latest sound and ATI drivers but to no avail.Did everything!
Installed pci sound cards at extra cost.
Will not be buying anymore gigabyte motherboards, too stressful.
However E Buyer service and delivery is still first class but didn't ring them over this.
Am going to try asus.
Video sockets.
It's not very clear from the specification but the MB does come with a video bracket containing a 4-pin S-Video (i.e. no composite video) and a set of component video (3 x RCA) connectors. Haven't completed the build yet so cannot comment on performance at present.
TV out
Does the mobo come with a low profile bracket with the TV-out on?
bios version?
i am contemplating a build with an athlon x2 4450e, which requires bios version f5. What version is the Mb supplied with? and does anyone know would it work partially until i can sort a bios update out?
