SLI and Crossfire remain off-limits on Micro ATX motherboards (for now).
#GIGABYTE INTEGRATED X1250 DRIVER UPGRADE#
The GA-MA690GM-S2H offers plenty of expandability, including an upgrade path for the onboard graphics core. This provides an excellent upgrade path from the onboard video.ġ PCI Express x 16 slot, 1 PCI Express x 4 slot 2 PCI slots Remember, however, that you can’t effectively use a full 4GB of memory in a 32-bit operating system. Memory voltages up to 1.8v are supported.įour memory slots used to be a rarity on Micro ATX motherboards, but now it’s essentially the norm. The GA-MA69GM-S2H supports the full gamut of available DDR2 memory speeds. The AMD 690G chipset consists of the RS690 northbridge (which integrates an X1250 graphics core, effectively half of a Radeon X700) and SB600 southbridge. AMD seems determined not to repeat their past mistakes with prematurely discontinuing Socket 939 products.ĪMD’s Hypertransport bus offers competition-humbling memory bandwidth with an effective 2GHz link between the CPU, memory, and northbridge. The Micro ATX form factor is enjoying renewed popularity in enthusiast machines, thanks to the HTPC revolution.Ĭompact Micro ATX motherboards allow PCs to fit into racks of home audio electronics.Įven as new socket technologies such as AM2+ and AM3 loom on the horizon, Socket AM2 remains a viable and relatively future-proof socket.
The S2H designation indicates that this motherboard is designed for stability, and offers intelligent features like Gigabyte’s Xpress BIOS Rescue and EasyTune software.