Final Thoughts, Pricing, Conclusion
Power consumption
We extensively tested the GA-E350-USB3 under idle and load conditions and found the mainboard to be very cool and efficient under both conditions. Power consumption has become a key factor in modern PC components and the GA-E350-USB3 lived up to my expectations for an efficient, low-power mini ITX motherboard.
Performance
We put the GA-E350-USB3 through a series of synthetic and real-world benchmarks to assess and analyze how this board compares to other mini ITX motherboards. Our benchmark results for this board were much lower than the other boards we pitted it against in a variety of PC tasks that evaluated the GA-E350-USB3’s CPU, graphics, memory, and sub systems. I took a look at Gigabyte’s website after my first round of testing and ensured I had the latest drivers and BIOS and ran the tests a couple more time to ensure everything was done to make our findings as accurate as possible. In the end, the GA-E350-USB3 just didn’t perform at the same level as the other E-350 boards.
Features
The feature set Gigabyte included with the GA-E350-USB3 is very comparable to most E-350 based motherboards. This board has a three-year warranty from Gigabyte and supports USB 3.0, SATA3 (6GB/s), USB power boost, and DDR3-1333 memory that is a bit higher than most mini ITX offerings in this category. Gigabyte’s third party software bundle that includes its EasyTune 6 technology helps users monitor and manage their system resources to get the most performance out of the GA-E350-USB3 as well. I think these types of applications is what separates a lot of vendor’s offerings and makes their products more attractive.
Pricing and Availability
As of Dec. 9, the Gigabyte GA-E350-USB3 was available at Newegg for $89.99 after mail-in rebate ($119.99 before rebate). Consumers can also purchase it at Amazon.com for $124.99.
Final Thoughts
We’d like to thank our friends at Gigabyte for providing the GA-E350-USB3 for our review today. I had high expectations for this E-350 motherboard, but the benchmark results didn’t give me what I was looking for from this board. The next Fusion APUs will provide better CPU performance as well as graphics and multimedia capabilities to help boost this platform into something consumers will drool over for their next home theater PC. While this board gives users adequate performance for Blu-ray playback and very low-end gaming, the GA-E350-USB3 really didn’t shine during testing and we would have to recommend that our readers wait for the next APU revisions from AMD.
Strengths
- Decent integrated graphics on APU via HD 6310
- One PCI-E x16 slot
- SATA 6GB/s support
- Good overclocking options in BIOS
Weaknesses
- Subpar benchmark results against other E-350 boards
- APU lacked much overhead for overclocking
Can this thing handle source
Can this thing handle source games? css, dods, etc
It all depends on your
It all depends on your settings and resolution, but I would say YES it can play them at something like 720p with moderate quality settings.
It should be able to play
It should be able to play those. I didn’t try those two games when I had my E-350, but it did play Portal 1 and 2 at 1920×1080. 2 was barely playable at that resolution on low-medium settings, but 1 ran better (20-30 FPS).
Would this board be able to
Would this board be able to record a couple of shows at once to WMC with a ceton cablecard tuner?
That is a little hard to say
That is a little hard to say with certainty without having that hardware here but I would tend to say yes for dual streams. What software would you be running it on?
Why no media file tests?
Why no media file tests? Seems a large oversight to not test HD Netflix, 1080p MKV files, SOMETHING! How would this board work if actually used as an HTPC?
I agree with above, most
I agree with above, most people will be using this as an HTPC. Some HD playback test would be nice.
yes i would like to also see
yes i would like to also see some hd play back tested as i would love to get ahold of one of theses boards for a htpc on board hdmi at 1080p and windows 7 media center with 4 tv tuners would like to see how would hold up?
I bought this motherboard
I bought this motherboard back in March and used it until last month as my HTPC, so I’ll give a quick overview of my experience with it.
Gaming: I ran a few games on it at 1920×1080, low-medium settings. It performed better than I thought it would. I played the following games on it:
Portal 1/2
Trackmania United
World of Warcraft
Video/HTPC: The fan on it is near-silent, even at 3500 RPM. More than a foot or so away from it, it’s inaudible. Video playback worked fine with XBMC, and I was able to play 1080p MKVs with no dropped frames, and low CPU utilization (Make sure to enable DXVA in XBMC settings!). Netflix in Firefox worked fine for SD content, I think HD/720p was okay as well but I didn’t check for sure. YouTube 1080p was straining it quite hard, but 720p was fine.
Power consumption/overclocking: Using the included PSU with an Antec ISK300-65 case, it idled at ~24w and loaded at ~34w. This was with 2×2 GB G Skill low-voltage DDR3-1333 @ 1333, 7-7-7-21, 1.38v; and a 250 GB/7200 RPM Samsung 2.5″ HD.
As for overclocking, it topped out at 1.73 GHz for me as well.
Hope this helps :).
Whoops, forgot to mention I
Whoops, forgot to mention I played Live for Speed on it as well. It ran that at 35-50 FPS.