Pros: Lots of features for the price.

Cons: BIOS documentation in the manual was not up to date. Here's the scoop: under "integrated peripherals" there is a variable called "NV SATA(x)class code", where (x) is 1 or 2. The choices for this code are 0101, or 0104, with 0101 being the default. If you want to install Win XP on a mirrored raid system, and you use the NV RAID drivers on the included system CD, then you need to change this value to 0104. Also, I am using DDR 400 memory, but the system speed defaults to 333. To change that, change "DDR clock/timing mode" to "manual", and "CPU/DDR clock ratio" to "2/2". None of these variables are mentioned in my manual. I do note on P. 7 that since I installed 2 double-sided memory sticks, I should expect the speed to drop to 333, but they didn't offer any explanation on how to increase it.

Overall Review: I needed a motherboard for an existing 754-pin CPU, and I wanted one with a PCI-E slot for a video card. I doubt that I could have found a better one at this price.

Comments: When i recieved the board i tested everything on it except SATA, internal USB ports and SPDIFin/out. every thing so far works great. I even tested how much stain the onboard audio migh have during game play, and i found it to work very well... I ran Doom3' Timedemo at Ultra, 1600x, 2xAA, 16xAF once with audio, and once with onboard audio disabled, and found it only changed by .1fps...47.6/47.7 hell that slight frame difference might not of even been because of the audio. In any case onboard audio strain equals = Minimal to None. The baord i recieved shipped with BIOS version K8NE.F5, this version does not have any Ram settings in the bios.... but Updating it to the newest one on gigabyts website, K8NE.F6 = Added all manual ram settings along with other options aswell... So with the Updated BIOS im able to clock Dual sticks of DDR400 back to 200fsb, even though socket 754 auto clocks multiple ram sticks to 166fsb. One of the things that attracted me to this board was the Fanless northbridge, but so far my only consern with this board is that the fanless heatshink on the chipset gets pritty hot.. i touched it while it was running. It may or may not cause any problems (it didnt cause any problems in my test) but im going to stick a normal 80mm fan nearby it anyway just to be safe. I never used Gigabyte in the past and just recieved this board, so i cant say anything about its reliablity... but since many peaople talk of Gigabytes quality, i can only assume at this point that the board will remain trouble free. As it showed in my tests.

Pros: I've had this board for a year now. Stable, good board. No major complaints. Featureset is great PCIe, Support for 10 USB, 4 SATA headers, surround audio, coaxial digital audio out, lots of available BIOS tweaks. No complaints about audio quality - running 6-channel analog outs to an Onkyo receiver, sounds great.

Cons: Hypertransport speed needs to be cranked down when overclocking. If you have trouble coldbooting when overclocked, try reducing the HTT multiplier to 1x-2x. It makes no impact on performance anyway, so this is a minor issue. BIOS voltage options go by .5v, but then skips from 1.55v to 1.65v. Too bad, 1.65 runs too hot for me, 1.55 isn't quite enough for maximum overclock. It would be nice if the board supported 1.6v. Also, no firewire. :(

Overall Review: Some folks complained about 2-double sided DIMM support. This is a limitation of pre-Venice core Athlon64 chips, not a motherboard limitation. I had the same problem with my Newcastle, updated to Venice core 3400+, no problems. Stock speed is 2.4ghz, running at 222x12 (~2.67ghz) at 1.55v, 1.5v over stock.

Pros: Feature Rich, Cheap, Stable

Cons: The driver disk doesn't match the motherboard well, I haven't gotten the onboard lan to work properly, otherwise everything else is great.

Overall Review: This board is actually really nice and I like it, still giving it a 5 star because I planned on using an off board nic anywyas, though I wish the onboard would work right. It installed but It won't do much. Could be a driver / IRQ conflict on my end too. 5 star, good product from Gigabyte as always.

Pros: Lots of features.Easy set up.I own another gigaboard so the I was pretty much aware of the drivers that are on the cd so I used the drivers from the site and windows xp pro32 bit installed smoothly.Paired with the 2800+ sempron this thing runs cool and fast(temp on the board is 24c idle 29c load and the chip an impressive 19c idle, 22c load "this was after a 24 hour burn in"(I used AMDs thermopad thats on the stock heatsink btw was very easy to install).Im a gamer and I dont OC(I know that sounds funny in the same sentence)but this thing has all the bells and whistles to do so.Ran a stress test in CSS and got 120 fps on high settings with AMDs stock fan and heatsink btw was very easy to install.Im useing 1 gig of DS DDR in slots 1 and 2 with 400mhz output:) also running a 256mb 7600gs pci-e@405mhz(at a cool 32c)so theres hardly any fan noise at all just the cpu fan. OVER ALL was very impressed.This board makes a really nice rig for the price and I would definatly buy again

Cons: not sure if this is a con or not but the passive hs on the N bridge gets a little warm so I put a fan on it.But with some VCs u may not get 2 do that because its right behind the pci-e slot

Overall Review: This is my 1st purchase from NewEgg and certianly not my last.Was very pleased with the packing of the products and shipping was just as promised. THANKS NEWEGG

Pros: Each of the motherboard components (LAN, both PCI-E, PCI, SATA, IDE, USB) have a discrete bus to the nForce4-4X chipset. Superb performance, incredible price. No bottlenecks. Onboard gigabit ethernet. Full Linux support.

Cons: The nForce4-4X has a tiny heatsink on it, and runs incredibly hot. Fit it with a larger heatsink or fan. BIOS doesn't implement AMD64's built-in ECC support.

Overall Review: Through a combination of the onboard RAID controller, two SIL3132 cards, and a SIL3114 card, a RAID server was built that can sustain reads of 450MB/s.

Pros: Great price for the features it has. Gigabyte has a good reputation and I hope they will live up to it with this motherboard. The board booted up without incident, so I hope it will last a long time since this is for a 754 socket and I don't want to spend more money on a 939 upgrade. PCI-Express slot...just ordered a card from the "EGG" so we will see how this board performs with the Nvidia Chipset 4.

Cons: The IDE and Floppy slots are right on top of each other so this makes connecting rounded cables hard. Could have spaced these out more. Could use more system fan connectors. Loose the (2) pci-e x1 slots to make room for extra PCI slots. I think one PCI-express x16 slot is good enough for this board.

Overall Review: I like the passive heatsink versus a fan on the chipset.

Pros: fanless chipset hsf.

Cons: none so far

Overall Review: my other review was titled "So Far So Good". But what i didnt run into untill recently was, that i noticed performance would Vary +/- 2%... and i finally found the information and fix to why... It was because the (Memory Command Rate) was set to (Auto)... However Gigabyte hides this option in the BIOS untill you press (CTRL+F1) that will show you the Advanced hidden options... and after i Manually set Command Rate to 1T the perfomance was fixed at constant 100%... Do not ask me why they didnt include that (CTRL+F1) in the manual. But besides that inconvenience, the board now operates perfectly. ------------------------- o yea something else i found out... Do Not install the nForce Audio Controler Driver... Use Gigabytes Audio controler Drivers... Gigabytes Audio drivers have almost no overhead, were as i noticed a 3FPS drop in Doom3 after i installed Nvidia's nforce Audio drivers. I use the nForce drivers for everything except Audio.