GIGABYTE GA-A75-D3H FM1 Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

I’m still a fan of the AMD FM1 APU platform, and with the recent launch of the second generation APU ‘Trinity’ the FM1 platform is a very strong budget play. We could easily pair the GIGABYTE A75-D3H with the AMD A8-3870K APU and 8Gb of Corsair Vengeance memory for under $250 shipped to our door. Toss in a Kington HyperX 3K 120Gb SSD for only $64.99 and you can have yourself a fast system for about the price of the Intel Core i7 3770K processor alone!

AMD A8 Series FM1 System Core Components

• GIGABYTE A75-D3H – $89.99
• AMD A8-3870K APU – $109.98
• Corsair Vengeance 8GB Memory Kit (2X4gb) – $37.99
• Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB SSD – $64.99

Total = $302.95

• Intel Core i7 3770K – $326.26

Looking at the numbers above, we can get the GIGABYTE GA-A75-D3H, AMD A8-3870K APU, 8GB Corsair Vengeance memory kit, and the Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB SSD all for $302.95. Or we can pick up the Intel Core i7 3770K for $326.26 and still need a motherboard, memory and SSD (hard drives are no longer an option in my book). It all comes down to what you are looking to do with your system. If you are looking for a daily driver to browse the internet, work on word documents, photo editing and the such you likely won’t notice much of a difference between the systems. If you are looking to do some light gaming, and don’t want to spend extra money on a graphics card it really is a no brainer. The GIGABYTE GA-A75-D3H with Radeon HD 6550D pretty much blew the doors off of the Intel system. To be fair though, the Intel system was able to outperform the AMD system in 3DMark Vantage.

Taking a quick glance at the chart, it wasn’t the graphics score that gave the Intel Core i7 3770K the edge over the GIGABYTE A75-D3H. 3DMark Vantage takes the CPU score into account and the Intel Core i7 3770K is without a doubt a much better performer in x86 applications. The CPU score of the Intel system was 280% higher than the CPU score on the GIGABYTE A75-D3H.

When it comes to price, the GIGABYTE GA-A75-D3H falls right into the median price range. The current high price A75 motherboard is retailing for $114.99 while the lowest cost A75 FM1 motherboard is retailing for $64.99. The A75-D3H hits that center sweet spot at $89.99 with free shipping. In the unlikely event of your GIGABYTE A75-D3H experiencing issues, GIGABYTE backs their motherboards with a three year warranty from the manufacture date.

Legit Bottom Line: The GIGABYTE GA-A75-D3H FM1 motherboard ran like a champ today, nothing short of what we expect from GIGABYTE products!