GIGABYTE GA-MA78G-DS3H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: With the 2.8 5400 Athlon and this board I was able to put together a pretty nice system for my son. I was surprised that it could play Bioshock at decent Frame Rates on High Settings with some on Medium. Looked not to far off from my own Computer which was quite a bit more in dollars. I haven't had a chance to really test it out on Crysis but from what I have done it has played at Medium.

Cons: Before the 780 Chipset you would of been hard pressed to build a computer or buy one that could play the latest games for under $500.00. Anybody complaining just doesn't understand how much value they are getting for the Price Tag. My video Card alone cost me over twice as much as this board did.

Overall Review: You can easily put together a Gaming System including Vista 64 Home premium for under $450.00 with this board. This doesn't mean you will be able to run the newest Games on Max settings but it does mean the Games will look good and they will be at decent Frame Rates. You can then save up for that good Graphics Card so you can run it at those magic settings. Just remember your not paying $350.00 for a Graphics Card but $99.00 for a MB that does more than that Dell does for $700.00. Another pretty cool feature is that the MB has tons of clocking features giving you plenty of expandability down the road.

Pros: No complaints for the duration of the working lifespan...however...

Cons: One night my friend and I were installing xp, and suddenly a capacitor on the board lit up like a candle. we had adequate cooling and had not attempted to overclock the attatched processor.

Overall Review: All in all, I know it's just a case of bad luck, and I'm sending an RMA for the same item. This review is part of my grieving period.