GIGABYTE GA-970A-UD3 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Good solid motherboard. Very nice quality, no worries. Works fine. I went with Gigabyte because of their quality.

Cons: I got this motherboard with Vishera FX 8350 CPU with the intention of overclocking it. Unfortunately, with this board, the highest I could get it was 4.5. No matter how I tweaked it, I could not get stability past 4.5. If not for this limitation, it would be 5 eggs.

Pros: It's a good solid motherboard.
It can take a FX8350.
makes it very easy to OC the RAM.
has lots of features in the BIOS
supports pile-driver
It survived a PSU failure without dying.
The BIOS can be updated without Windows

Cons: The combined PS/2 port doesn't seem to support mice, at leas not on Linux.

doesn't appear to be any automatic fan control utilities in the BIOS.

It had a habit of crashing if anything was using Virtualization. Updating the BIOS fixed it, which is why I still gave it a high rating

The bios updater is a self-extracting .exe, I had a much more difficult time trying to update the bios, until I remembered Linux can extract .exe archives. After extracting the BIOS update, I was able to update without Windows with the Q-flash utility. The lack of proper non-Windows BIOS update instructions is still annoying.

The SATA ports are sideways, which makes plugging drives in more difficult

Fan control is only supported by the CPU fan controller, and the fan1 controller. All other fans run at full speed and cannot be controlled by software.

Other Thoughts: Overall, I think Gigabyte has made it onto my list of reliable motherboard suppliers. I would buy this mobo again. Aside from the little annoyances, it's a really good motherboard.

Make sure to update the BIOS if you're system is crashing for seemingly no reason. Worst case scenario you have a brick instead of an unstable computer. Best case scenario you have a stable system that doesn't need a new motherboard.

Pros: sturdy not affair to take it out of my case, super easy over clock, good north and south bridge cooling.

Cons: bad placement of sata connectors, USB 3.0 ports on mobo died about 7 months after first boot up. other than that really solid board.

Other Thoughts: gigabyte is a good company for cheap and durable products. Would deff buy from them again if my replacement board works for over 2 years.

Pros: Works great out of the Box

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: I was using Asus MB I had 4 go bad over the years between my wife's and My own systems I said this time around I try Gigabyte so far I glad I moved on I gotten tired have MB go dead on me.

Pros: Solid construction, lots of features, good documentation.

Cons: Wouldn't get past POST

Other Thoughts: I've been an AMD guy for years, and I've stuck primarily with MSI motherboards; I've experimented with an Elitegroup here, an Asus there, but I always come back to MSI - only one has failed me, and that was because a faulty UPS took it out.

Anyway, I've been noticing that the reviews for MSI boards in general seem less positive than they used to be, and the Gigabyte products appear to be satisfying a lot of folks, so I thought I'd give this board a try, combined with a new FX8320 + a new Gigabyte GTX 650 videocard.

Much to my disappointment, this board repeatedly hung up at POST. It never did seem to fully recognize any of the three keyboards I tried, though the mouse worked fine. Repeated attempts to get into the BIOS (delete) were only successful about a third of the time. If I made no attempt to access the BIOS, the board took up to three minutes to POST (with no beep codes or other errors) and finally turn things over to the hard drive. An update to the latest BIOS had no effect. Swapping out two different kinds of RAM had no effect. Loading defaults, no change.

Back to the local retailer I went, and later, my new MSI board is sailing along smoothly with no hiccups.

Maybe I just got a bad one, but the retailer had several "open box" Gigabyte motherboards and no MSI's.

Pros: No onboard graphics.
Simple and useful BIOS.
Supports all AM3+ processors

Cons: Sound card driver is pretty annoying, changes default devices occasionally.

Other Thoughts: Gigabyte is a pretty trustworthy brand.

Pros: No pro's this is not a very stable unit

Cons: This is the second time we have had to send it back, Not proud of it due to i have 8 or 9 of the older that run superb. This board has problems even after we have done what tech provided help and it still reboots at least 10 times a day loosing time and money. Have changed every peice of hardware in it and still reboots for no reason. Have tryed both new 6 core and quad core to no end. this sucks. Ed p.s. this was the owners machine and he is ready to &^%@+*!!!

Other Thoughts: Would not buy this again and if theuy do not work it out will not buy another for this reason.....

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 96312 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: Good specs.

Cons: Been fighting intermittent BSODs since install. Tested new RAM and video card, took to repair shop and further tested, but no cigar. Gigabyte customer service is horrible too... Takes them 4 days to answer a question and even longer to process an RMA request. I'm confident I will never ever buy a gigabyte product ever again... Nothing but trouble, waiting, waiting and more waiting.

Other Thoughts: If they get me a working, non-blue screening MoBo within the week, I might give them 2 eggs

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 96308 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: Cheap, good design, am3+, good features. Installed and was playing games an hour later.

Cons: Not a deal breaker for me, but like a lot of people mentioned sata ports are sideways and my drive cages were very close making it a pain to plug sata cables in. Heat sinks were pretty wobbly on the north/south bridge but it doesn't seem to hurt operation or cooling. These are just minor things nothing major.

Other Thoughts: replacing a 2 month old asrock 970 board that died

Pros: Great value for the price at the time. Filled needs of a very well endowed full tower case. Awaiting company reply so the jury is still out on their standard of service and commitment to their product.

Cons: Issues with usb3 front ports from install. USB never worked up front and usb 3 was faulty. I thought I could deal with the occasional lock up caused by plugging in devices so I never returned the product only to have 2 of the DIMM slots fail this week. Can't get an accurate read on ram modules even though the RAM is not faulty. Windows shows 6 gigs of 8 installed. 3.98 usable.

Other Thoughts: If anyone else is like me they cannot be without their motherboard in order to send it in for a replacement. I really would like a refund on this product so that I can go to a store and purchase a newer model and hopefully not have the same issues.