Asus M4A88T-M Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. The M4A88T-M Motherboard3. Testing Methodology4. 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark 115. SiSoft Sandra 20116. Cinebench R10 and R11.57. Super Pi Mod 1.58. Media Encoding: Cyberlink MediaEspresso 69. Grand Theft Auto 4: EFLC10. Closing Thoughts11. View All Pages

We have recently looked at two impressive AMD motherboards from Asus which performed well in our tests and offered great feature sets and build quality. Today we are going to look at the M4A88T-M motherboard which offers a similar feature set to the other two boards we've tested but in a micro-ATX form factor.

The most significant feature that the  M4A88T-M lacks compared to the other boards is USB 3.0 support.  There is a USB 3.0 version of the board available but we have the non-USB3.0 version here to review.

Specification

CPU	AMD socket AM3 for AMD Phenom II / Athlon II / Sempron 11 series Processors (up to 140W)
Chipset	AMD 880G / SB710
Memory	4x DIMM, max. 16GB, DDR3 1866 (O.C.) / 1333 / 1066 MHz, ECC and non-ECC, un-buffered memory
Storage	-1x Ultra DMA 133/100/66 Connector -6x SATA 3GB/s ports with RAID 0, 1, 10 and JBOD
Expansion Slots	-1x PCIe 2.0 x16 slots -2x PCIe 2.0 x1 slots -1x PCI slots
Audio	-8-channel High Definition Audio CODEC -Optical S/PDIF output at back panel
LAN	Realtek Gigabit LAN controller featuring AI NET 2
I/O (back panel)	-1x PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse Combo port -1x DVI -1x D-Sub -1x HDMI -1x S/PDIF Out (optical) -1x RJ45 port -6x USB 2.0/1.1 -6x 3.5mm Audio connectors
Form Factor	Micro ATX

Like the other two AMD motherboards from Asus we've looked at recently, the M4A88T-M is supplied in a lime green box that only differs in size from the other two.  The front is decorated with various different logos which elude to some of the boards' features.  Turning the box over reveals more detail about the features and specifications of the board inside.

Inside the box we find all the accessories we would usually expect.  These include two SATA cables, a selection of installation manuals, an IDE cable and a software CD.  We were a little disappointed not to find a ‘Q-connector' in the box like the other two motherboards as this made installation a lot more hassle free.

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