# Asus M4A88TD-M EVO/USB3 review



## itsakjt (Oct 17, 2012)

Here's a review of the Asus M4A88TD-M EVO/USB3 motherboard. I am using it for 1 and a half years now and have found it excellent. Though it is quite old now considering the speed at which technology is developing, I want to review this motherboard.






As you can see, it is a micro-ATX motherboard and is suited perfect for HTPCs and low-mid range gaming PCs.

It includes the AMD 880G and SB850 chipsets which are good as per specs.






They are cooled by passive heatsinks. The smaller one for the South Bridge and the larger one for the North Bridge.
It supports SATA 6 Gbps(SATA III) natively.





Also it includes TurboV-The Asus overclocking utility.











The rear I/O ports. It features the S/PDIF optical jack and the onboard video has all the three connectivity options i.e. VGA, DVI and HDMI.
Includes one eSATA port and a 1394 port.





It has 4 DDR3 1600 MHz (2000 MHz OC) RAM slots which supports a maximum of 16 GB RAM.

Also you can see the sensor at the top left which is an ITE8721F a popular chip seen on many motherboards.





It has the AM3 socket which supports all the Phenom II series of CPUs.






The USB3 is also there-Not onboard but with an external PCIe adapter.






From left-Realtek ALC892 8 channel audio, VIA 1394 controller and the Realtek 8111E Gigabit Ethernet controller.
It is an excellent motherboard and it does overclock really well.
I am now running my AMD Phenom II 955 CPU at 3.9 GHz with 2.8 GHz IMC and RAM at 1.73 GHz without any issues. So you will not be disappointed.
Most of the MOSFETs are made by NIKOs. I don't know how it is. Maybe some of you can tell.
But overall, it is an excellent motherboard and worth the money.


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## rainzor (Oct 21, 2012)

Hey, thanks for the review. Seems like a solid board but lacks some of the modern board features and the pcie usb3 card is far from perfect solution. 

Anyway, i am thinking on going matx way too. Found the perfect case (SST TJ08E) and was looking to replace my Asrock 890GX atx mobo with some of the matx ones. Unfortunately there are virtually NO matx AM3(+) boards that suit my needs or at least i cannot find one! All im looking for is the on board USB3 header (20pin), couple of SATA3 connectors and one PCI slot. Sounds reasonable yeh? Well it appears only Intel motherboards have those features and maybe some of the FM2 boars, no love for AM3 whatsoever :/


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## itsakjt (Oct 25, 2012)

Right Rainzor. I also didn't find any such AM3 or AM3+ board. My board would have been perfect for you if it had the front 20 pin USB without the card too. It has 5 SATA 3 ports. But if you are really going to M-ATX, look for the AMD A8 line up of CPUs which will have FM2 socket. They are very powerful and consumes MUCH MUCH LESS power thus generating less heat making a perfect small form factor PC. 
What will you be doing with the PC?


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## de.das.dude (Oct 25, 2012)

rainzor said:


> Hey, thanks for the review. Seems like a solid board but lacks some of the modern board features and the pcie usb3 card is far from perfect solution.
> 
> Anyway, i am thinking on going matx way too. Found the perfect case (SST TJ08E) and was looking to replace my Asrock 890GX atx mobo with some of the matx ones. Unfortunately there are virtually NO matx AM3(+) boards that suit my needs or at least i cannot find one! *All im looking for is the on board USB3 header (20pin), couple of SATA3 connectors and one PCI slot.* Sounds reasonable yeh? Well it appears only Intel motherboards have those features and maybe some of the FM2 boars, no love for AM3 whatsoever :/



why not just use and extender cable to bring the back header to the front.

or you can use this card by silverstone
http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=302&area=en


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## itsakjt (Oct 25, 2012)

Looks like it is using the same chip as my card. NEC uPD720200
Good thing. 

@de.das.dude- Is there anything available to extend the 2nd PCI-E x1 slot to a lower level? My GPU is completely blocking the 2nd PCI-E x1 slot. Just asking because if I ever get an external sound card or a PCI-E x1 device, I can use that slot.


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## de.das.dude (Oct 25, 2012)

that is the problem with mATX form factor. too little space. you can use a riser card. or make yourself one.

either way its a painstaking process, as its not available in india.


i remember someone here in the project log section making a complete pci x16 extenter with wires.


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## itsakjt (Oct 26, 2012)

LOL. I have the making idea in my mind actually. 
It is actually nothing if you do it with patience. Just need a spare PCI-E x1 card, rainbow wires(for the beauty  ) and a PCI-E slot from a broken mobo which I have.


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## de.das.dude (Oct 26, 2012)

you can cut any x16 card off to fit a PCI x1. infact if you cut the excess pins of a GPU off to fit in a x1 slot, it will still work. but with a huge performance drop 

you can pick up a chep non working GPU at chadni for a 100rs or less. then salvage the pci card from there.


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## rainzor (Oct 30, 2012)

de.das.dude said:


> why not just use and extender cable to bring the back header to the front.
> 
> or you can use this card by silverstone
> http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=302&area=en



Thanks for the tip. That SS card isn't available in my country and having it shipped from say Germany would set me back ~50eur. That's a bit extreme :/ Most likely i'm gonna sell my stuff, add some cash and get a used i5+ matx mbo or something like that. Had this phenom for almost 3 years now, such a good cpu for its price, too bad AMD has nothing that would interest me now. cheers

@itsakjt This PC will mainly be used for gaming. Small but powerful gaming machine heeh


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## itsakjt (Oct 31, 2012)

Cool :-D
Yeah AMD FX series is absolute crap. They would have done better if they simply improved the memory controller of their Phenom II line and make them DDR3 only. 
For the price of a Core i5 and a Bulldozer, even an i5 is a much much better choice.
I don't know why they did the Bulldozer. My Phenom II X4 955 defeats the core i7 9xx any day after I overclock the IMC.
I am now currently running it at 3.9 GHz with 2.8 GHz IMC and the RAM at 1736 MHz-9-9-9-24 and I get over 13000 in 3D Mark Vantage and 51.7 GFlops in IBT. .


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## de.das.dude (Oct 31, 2012)

lay off the ganja. phenom beating an i7 9xx is too much lol. and bulldozers aren't crap. its window's fault that it can't use its architecture properly. piledriver seems to be worth it.


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## itsakjt (Nov 1, 2012)

Seriously speaking, a core i7 920 has 52 GFLops of computation power on IBT and mine has 51.7 at 3.9 GHz. Basically same after.
Also just yesterday, I was seeing my friend's core i5 2320. Its a steal for Rs 12000 - Say no to FX. It was giving 41 GFlops initially. Then AIDA told me that I should update to Service pack 1 for AES support. And that was it, the score went up to 69 GFlops without ANY overclocking! Can you believe it?
And I also don't see a point for buying FX. An FX4100 is absolute crap even worse than a Sandy Bridge Pentium G620 or an i3. Same with all the FX. AMD should refine their architecture-increase the number of socket pins-Simply more I/O at a time.


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## de.das.dude (Nov 1, 2012)

yes only one benchmark is n excellent way to compare. lol.


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## itsakjt (Nov 1, 2012)

LOL ok.  But even in games, Intel is the clear winner. Even every review site is telling FX series is not upto the mark.


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## de.das.dude (Nov 1, 2012)

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=174704


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