GIGABYTE GA-MA790FX-UD5P AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: very cool runing board, five fan headers, 8 sata ports two are controlled by a gigabyte controler. runs am3 cpus including the 955 supports memory higher then 1066

Cons: none

Pros: Solid board reinforced with copper. Many Connections. Performs great!

Cons: None that I've found out so far.

Other Thoughts: I went to connect a firewire thinking it wouldn't work but this board even has a 4 pin firewire connector on the back! Amazing!

Pros: It worked well for 18 months.

Cons: After 18 months the on board sound card failed, two weeks later the motherboard burned the power supply and the video card and almost started a fire (some circuits were on fire).

Other Thoughts: The motherboard has too many configuration option and for many of them you get a threatening message saying that if you change something it may lock the motherboard in a way that can't be reversed.

Pros: Excellent Crossfire platform

Cons: Ignorant reviewers/owners who tarnish the reputation of a highly capable motherboard.

Other Thoughts: This motherboard is NOT "billed" as SLI ready because it isn't
capable of running SLI.

FYI SLI is Nvidia's multiple GPU technology.
CrossfireX is ATI's multiple VPU technology.

This motherboard is capable of running multiple ATI Graphic cards in Crossfirex. It is not designed to for use of muiltiple Nvidia graphic cards.

If you didn't get a crossfire connector with your video cards you should hit those manufacturers up for the cable, not Gigabyte.

Pros: Not sure, haven't installed it yet -- will amend the review after I get it running. But given the "con" below, I don't expect this to get more than 4 eggs even if it makes me breakfast in the morning.

Cons: This motherboard package, despite being billed as SLI ready, does NOT include an SLI bridge.

That's right, you have to order it separately from Giga-Byte. The cost is $10, and you are required to send credit card information via unencrypted email, as they do not take phone or web orders.

Talk about two really bad choices made by marketing. I hope the board performs really well, because right now, I'm not happy :-/

Pros: Dual BIOS!
Onboard (blue-lit) buttons - pwr, rst, clr cmos!
AM3 & DDR3!!!
2 PCI-E 2.0 x16!!! FULL - two PCI-E video cards? You get FULL x16 bandwidth!!!! That's hard to find!
External E-SATA!!!

AMD Phenom II x4 955 pops right in... My ASUS M4A79T required a BIOS update to use the same chip... Weird.... Took me 4 hours to figure that out! GRRRR.... ASUS isn't doing too good these days.

Cons: I've owned this since February '09... It's almost August and I haven't found any!

Other Thoughts: I would love to see WiFi built-in on this board. I don't need 2x network ports and teaming only increases latency on most home configurations.

Only thing - as with almost every other MoBo manufacturer... The included "helper" software needs to be developed better.

Pros: This boards ran my AM2+ Phenom 2 940 Black Edition pretty good, was able to overclock (stable) with upping the FSB, not by clock multiplier, ran 3.5 gig, nice performance, comparable to my i7 920 O/Ced at 3.5, if you have an AM2+ proc you want to run, GREAT, if not go AM3, then you can run the DDR3 memory which is very reasonably priced.

Cons: If your starting fresh, GO AM3

Other Thoughts: only gave it 4 stars, because i couldn't O/C my B/E proc by clock multiplier, but that very well could be the proc's fault

Pros: Has everything on it already, no need to add stuff, easy to set up IF you are already familiar with Gigabytes method, namely ctrl-F1 to access the advanced CPU and memory tweaks. Does unlock the extra cores on my X2-550 processor but I had to use Hybrid, look for it in the ACC section of the bios
There is enough space between my Crossfire 4870 cards so the top card now gets enough airflow unlike the Asrock board this one replaced.

Cons: It does cost $170 and won't do that thing your girlfriend taught me

Other Thoughts: If you have a bunch of DDR-2 ram and want to make use of it this is the board to get. The heatpipe cooler for the north and south bridges is super nice too plus it also cools the 8 phase power chips, or some of them.
I haven't yet figured out how to make my OCZ 1066 ram run at that speed but not the boards fault as this is the 3rd board I've tried the ram in.
I had to flash the BIOS to properly recognize my X2-550 but it worked prior to the flash so no biggie

Pros: This board is really cool, and does its purpose at a very good cost. The 790FX is a nice chip and is really something for amd to be proud of. VERY well built.

Cons: When I tried to overclock my phenom 9950 black edition, the max that I could run it to is 2.9ghz, and the board says that it great for overclocking the black editions. Whereas I do see others who have gotten the 9950's in th 3+ range I did recently sell this alongside all of my amd equipment as I was sick of amd's bad updates. Every time I tried to install the newest driver for my graphics, my computer would bluescreen. For some reason it would not allow me to overclock my graphics.

Other Thoughts: Old setup: This mobo, -8gb Gskill ddr2 1066, -phenom black 9950, dual 4850 hd's Visiontek, antec 900 case,850 watt thermaltake psu (gaming series), Vista 64bit (crysis lags up)
New Setup: (way better) -MSI mobo with x58, -12gb ocz gold DDR3 1333, -i7 920, Nvidia 295gtx, Antec 900, 850 Thermaltake psu gaming series, vista 64 bit (run crysis maxed out and 8x AA)

Pros: It shipped with the firmware needed for a 940BE. This board was exactly what I needed- dual ethernet with support for old legacy LPT and serial port hardware. Bios has lots of options, plenty of stuff to fiddle with. Everything seems to work with Ubuntu 9.04 just fine- I've never installed Windows on this box but I would assume since Ubuntu works Windows would work too.

Cons: I wish you could buy the brackets for the parallel and serial ports. I had to shop elsewhere for that.