AMD 790FX Phenom Chipset On Linux

Written by Michael Larabel in Motherboards on 1 January 2008 at 01:07 AM EST. Page 2 of 7. 10 Comments.

Motherboard Layout:

Compared to earlier AMD chipsets, the 790FX supports PCI Express 2.0, compatibility with up to four-way CrossFire configurations (though no Linux drivers currently exist), and quad-core compatibility with HyperTransport 3.0. The AMD 790FX is built using a 65nm process and is quite power efficient with a TDP (Thermal Design Power) of only 10 Watts. The SB600 Southbridge, which is no newcomer to the market but is compatible with the 790FX, supports up to 10 USB 2.0 ports, HDA audio, SATA with various RAID capabilities, and two IDE channels.

The Gigabyte MA790FX-DS5 motherboard is laid out quite well and is similar to the MA790FX-DQ6 sibling, aside from just having two PCI Express x16 slots. Located on the upper right hand side of the motherboard are four DDR2 memory slots that can accommodate up to 16B of DDR2-1066MHz memory. Next to the system memory slots are the 24-pin motherboard power connector, FDD connector, and IDE connector. Immediately below these connectors is the ATI SB600 Southbridge. The SB600 is used on the first line-up of AMD 790FX motherboards, while the SB700 will launch this quarter. The SB600 on the MA790FX-DS5 is cooled by a small passive heatsink.


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