Gigabyte F2A88XM-D3H AMD A88X

Linux Support & Performance:

The first issue I ran in using this motherboard was while I had bought the F2A88XM-D3H after AMD's Kaveri launch and this motherboard advertised Kaveri compatibility, the UEFI/BIOS version was outdated. The motherboard shipped with the "F1" initial release of the BIOS where as version F4 is needed for FM2+ APU compatibility and that version was released by Gigabyte in November of 2013. Since then have been two more BIOS releases, including one from early January to improve memory compatibility.

In order to upgrade the BIOS, an AMD Trinity FM2 APU that I had lying around had to be used. That wasn't much of an issue for me since fortunately I had an FM2 APU while new AMD APU users could be in a tough position. More of a nuisance to me was that in order to upgrade the BIOS for compatibility, their MS-DOS AMI Flash Utility had to be used. This Gigabyte motherboard has Q-Flash as an easy way to flash the BIOS off a USB drive when within the BIOS, but it's not supported in the BIOS release adding Kaveri APU compatibility. As a result, you'll need to first either make an MS-DOS disk from Windows or mess around with FreeDOS, either option is still a bit of a headache for Linux users. Fortunately, after the F4 BIOS release you can go back to using Q-Flash for easy BIOS flashing under Linux.

When using a modern Linux distribution (Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 14.04, etc), the Gigabyte F2A88XM-D3H ran fine with Linux. There were no Linux issues encountered specific to this motherboard and you can read my many AMD Kaveri Linux articles for details on the performance and open/closed-source driver support. The motherboard has been running 24/7 fine for several weeks without any issues and is currently using Ubuntu 14.04 with the Linux 3.13 kernel.

The only other issue to point out today that may upset some Linux users is the lack of LM-Sensors support. When using LM_Sensors on Ubuntu 14.04 with the Linux 3.13 kernel, no onboard hardware sensors were found at all for thermal monitoring, etc. AMD Kaveri temperature monitoring also isn't patched into the AMD thermal driver until the Linux 3.14 kernel.

Aside from the initial headache in having to do MS-DOS BIOS flashing for Kaveri compatibility on this motherboard and then not having any hardware sensors support at this time, for all other usage the board has been working out fine. This board with an AMD A10-7850K Kaveri APU is part of the new Phoronix Test Suite / OpenBenchmarking.org / Phoromatic test farm so we should see soon enough if any other board issues are uncovered since it's being stressed daily.

There are no special Gigabyte F2A88XM-D3H benchmarks being published today since the Linux numbers weren't any different against our other Kaveri motherboards. However, we have already used this Gigabyte board in several Phoronix articles. You can also find more benchmarks of the Gigabyte F2A88XM-D3H via OpenBenchmarking.org.

At the end of the day if you're looking for a micro-ATX motherboard for an AMD APU system with Kaveri compatibility, the F2A88XM-D3H is a decent offering at just around $80 USD.