GIGABYTE GA-MA74GM-S2 AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 740G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Bought this MB back in 2009 for a good price at the time and installed it without any problems. Packaging was satisfactory. It's 2013 now and it's still chugging along splendidly...I've been wondering if it's time to upgrade, but since I upgraded my video card a couple of years ago and I'm looking to upgrade my memory right now, I'm thinking it's still going to be chugging along until my games either require something better or my OS requires an upgrade (I'm still running on XP, even now).

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: It's a pretty little board that can support 8Gb of memory, but since XP only supports less than 4, that's what I'm stuck at. I was actually doing all right with just 2Gbs, so it's neither a pro nor con...I just decided (finally) that I needed a little more, that's all.

Pros: cheap...

Cons: This motherboard gave me problems from the start, I would be watching movies or listening to music. I would leave the room and come back and the onboard audio would just cut out. I had to restart the computer to get it working again. And then about a month ago the motherboard started to go. Now I can't get it to work at all, and I've tried everything resetting the CMOS, removing the onbaord battery, tried new HD's, and new video cards. Oh and the on board video took a dump as well. So I have a big frisbee at this point.

Other Thoughts: It looks that this has happened before and it sounds like gigabyte has horrible customer service.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for your comments. We apologize for your difficulty with your Gigabyte product. Please contact us at newegg-support@gigabyteusa.com with the case number 74975 in the subject line. We will provide personalized service and analysis to help solve your issue ASAP. If the matter is urgent, please send us your contact number, and we will contact you.

Gigabyte VIP Support Team

Pros: Gigabyte boards are well built and solidly designed. This was an inexpensive board packed with features for a budget build for a friend. It had everything I needed. I put an AMD 3.2 Regor 65 watt processor on it and together with that and 4 gigs of G.Skill DDR2 800 memory it is a nice machine for a very low price. The BIOS is packed with features for enhancing performance if you desire. The optimized defaults work fine for me and a simple build. I have bought several Gigabyte boards after years of buying ASUS and MSI boards. None of the Gigabyte boards have ever failed. I have had issues with both of the other manufacturers.

Cons: This goes for many if not most Motherboard manufacturers. I wish their qualified vendor list for memory was broader. I could have installed DDR2 1066. The processor's memory controller supports it but the ones on the list were significantly more expensive then the G.Skill DDR2 800 I bought. If I bought DDR2 1066 off the list it would probably not have worked at the rated speed.

Pros: Just buy it!
you cant go wrong!!!!

Cons: front panel was difficult to find correct adapter! Wish they included and empty one.....

Other Thoughts: Easy tune 6 just makes this board sweet~!

Pros: using as WHS machine... 8 external usb ports make adding external drives very easy instead of cracking open the box...
bios allows o/c of amd tri-core easily...

Cons: only 4 internal sata plugs which are hard to plug cables into.
board power plug very inconveniently placed as to making right under hdd drives .
newegg claims DDR3 ram, so i ordered that...
get the box & it says DDR2 ram.
so now im sitting on un-needed ram that doesnt fit, & RMA costs more than the ram. thank you newegg !
maybe in couple years ill have a use for it
anyone else ordering, its 240 pin DDR2 ram

Other Thoughts: otherwise fairly laid out, almost easiest install ive had, other than power plug.
bios features very nice for overclockers.
newegg, mention that people need to leave very specific delivery instructions for purolator please....
or have the permission slip online to leave packages...

Pros: Inexpensive and all plugs were placed in convenient spots on the motherboard. Came with a right-angled sata cable! :-) I was hoping to get one of those for the case I was using. I am using this after a bad experience with a Biostar A870L and I am quite pleased!

Cons: None. I hope it stays that way.

Other Thoughts: I also bought a Gigabyte ATI Radeon 4670 HD for this build as well for it's smaller size and larger bandwidth. It seems to me that this video card is meshing quite well with a Gigabyte motherboard. I guess accessories of the same brand name is agreeing with this build. Board is nice, thick and sturdy.

AMD Phenom II X4 920 2.8Ghz
ATI Radeon 4670 HD
Gskill 4g DDR2 800 Pi Series ram
Corsair CMPSU-750TX 750w power supply
320G and 1T Hitachi HD
Rosewill Challenger gaming case

Pros: Cheap and supports the Athlon X4s

Cons: At this price-point, none.

Other Thoughts: This is a great base for a cheap system. I bought this to run a Hyper-V server on and so far no issues. I am hosting 4 VMs on the Hyper-V on this and it runs 24/7 and has done so since last summer. I needed no drivers for the onboard NIC in Hyper-V. I do not use the onboard sound so I cannot comment on that.

Pros: It was cheap, flexible, and supported a wide array of AMD processors.

Cons: Auto-updates to the flash and the dual BIOS left a lot of room for iffy behavior. It kept rebooting for no reason every few days and after awhile it started trying to 'restore' the BIOS and locked into a reboot cycle. Tried repairing it with qflash, but it locked up during that and bricked the board. It seems to be very unstable with it's BIOS and peripheral inputs. If anything's off, it just panics and either reboots or locks up.

Other Thoughts: I was using this as a media server system which drove me batty having to fiddle with it for months on end. By the time it did brick, I couldn't get any assistance out of Gigabyte with it. This has really sullied my opinion of Gigabyte's motherboard line.

If you start seeing any problems at all with the board, RMA it immediately, don't wait since it will probably get worse. I had a 4.4 rev too.

Pros: Easy to use...just plug and play. This was my first build and what could have been killed by noobish tactics was saved by the simple fact that this board is so easy to install.
Have had ZER0 problems with this cute little board, and would definitely go GIGABYTE again.

Cons: None that I can think of at the moment.

Other Thoughts: Fit the screw holes in my old Compaq Presario case. A little smaller than the junk board that was in it, but perfect!

Pros: Worked out of the box with XP and windows 7 64 bit. Drivers were up to date.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: I noticed that there were about 5 reviews stating the motherboards died or fell apart. I'll keep my fingers crossed.