Jetway's HA08
A little something different

Most of our motherboard coverage these days is dominated by the big three: Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI. That's not so much a conscious effort on our part as it is a reflection of the fact that those three tend to get their hands on new chipsets first, do the best job of delivering the kinds of features enthusiasts covet, and be the most widely available in North America. Socket AM3 hasn't brought a wave of new chipsets with it, which has allowed Jetway to introduce the HA08 alongside new AM3 boards from the big three. In fact, the HA08 is already selling at Newegg, for just $110. That makes it about $30 cheaper than the Asus M4A78T-E, despite the fact that both use the same 790GX chipset.

So can Jetway deliver a good enthusiast-oriented motherboard? Well, the HA08 is a part of the company's premium "Hummer Studio" line, whose logo inexplicably features a horse's head.

I dunno, maybe it's a Mustang and there's an underlying car analogy that I'm missing, perhaps related to live rear axles. More likely, something got lost in translation.

The HA08 isn't anything particularly special to look at. It certainly lacks the clean aesthetic of the Gigabyte board, instead opting for a more random collection of colors for its expansion ports and slots.

Without a mass of auxiliary peripheral chips and their associated port hardware, the HA08's layout looks a little sparse. That should have left plenty of room for board designers to place onboard components carefully in order to avoid clearance problems, and they've done a reasonably good job. The power plugs, for example, are along the edges of the board right where we like to see them. There's even an eight-pin plug for the auxiliary 12V connector.

Around its CPU socket, the HA08 leaves just enough room for larger coolers. The north bridge and voltage circuitry heatsinks are short enough not to interfere our massive Ninja processor cooler, and the DIMM slots are just far enough away from the socket to accommodate taller Corsair Dominator memory modules. However, the board supplies the processor with six power phases—fewer than the Asus and Gigabyte boards.

While we're looking at the HA08 from this angle, note the presence of a 128MB DDR3 memory chip just to the left of the north bridge cooler. This is the board's dedicated Sideport graphics memory, and as on the Asus board, it runs at an effective 1333MHz. We won't be testing integrated graphics performance today (for an in-depth look at the 790GX's graphics chops, see our initial review of the chipset), but with the same chips and clock speeds, the HA08 and M4A78T-E ought to be equivalent on that front.

Jetway commits one of the cardinal sins of motherboard design by arranging the HA08's Serial ATA ports so that two will be blocked by a double-wide graphics card installed in the top PCIe slot. That still leaves four ports available, but having to deal with a clearance issue that could easily have been avoided is annoying.

Surprisingly, the HA08 is one of only a couple of boards in this round-up to feature a two-digit post code display. These displays are incredibly handy for troubleshooting, and the HA08's manual conveniently spends several pages cataloging what each of the post codes means. Kudos to Jetway for getting this feature just right.

The HA08's slot stack is identical to that of the Asus M4A78T-E. Dual PCI Express x16 slots are provided alongside pairs of PCIe x1 and PCI slots, striking a good balance between new and old schools. Unfortunately, Jetway's approach to lane switching is a little too antiquated. In order to get 16 lanes of bandwidth running to the primary x16 slot, you need to insert an included switch card into the secondary slot, rendering it useless. Most dual-x8 CrossFire implementations are capable of running 16 lanes of bandwidth to the primary x16 slot and one lane to the secondary slot without the need for switch boards that limit expansion options.

Depending on just how closely you pay attention to onboard components, you may or may not have noticed that the HA08 uses solid-state capacitors exclusively. Yes, even Jetway has jumped on that bandwagon, although the company doesn't make mention of premium electrical components beyond the board's capacitors.

Don't expect much in the way of extra comforts in the HA08's port cluster. While it's nice to get DVI and HDMI video outputs, there's no provision for digital audio output over S/PDIF. There are only four USB ports, too, although headers for an additional eight ports are available on the board. Jetway has at least seen fit to include an external Serial ATA port. Some assembly is required, though; to get the external port working, one must run a SATA cable from an internal port just behind the rear cluster down to one of the available SATA ports in the lower right-hand corner of the board.

Motherboard makers aren't exactly known for their slick software interfaces, but the driver installation screen that popped up when I ran the HA08's setup utility sets a new standard in ugliness. The setup screen looks like it was pulled from the days of Windows 3.1, and while retro is in these days, the so-called Magic Install utility looks horribly dated. That's not the sort of thing that instills confidence in one's motherboard.