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: Installation went easy of 64bit vista ultimate. Easy to understand bios, documentation was good. Onboard graphics are a plus, in case something ever happens to your main video card, you can use the onboard as a back up unit.

Cons: Only minor gripe I have is that the board uses plastic stand-off's for the cpu mounting bracket, thus not allowing me to install a 3 prong clip heatsink because the plastic clips get in the way of the two outer prongs of the clip. Thats it.

Overall Review: This board isn't for the person looking for a crossfire system, just someone looking for a single powerful video card or a quiet system. My system total watt usage right now is 75watts minus the monitor, thats 4gigs of ram, Black 5000+ x2 cpu, 2 hard drives and tv card and a dvd burner

Pros: Bought this board to upgrade from a GigaByte GA-MA69VM-S2 so that I could spend Uncle George's popularity booster money and finally get a quad-core system. I ordered the 780G-DS3H and a Phenom 9550 from Newegg and got it two shipping days later. I decided to use my existing install of Vista 32bit and after backing up I took my old board out, put in the new board and processor, setup the bios and Vista booted right up. After installing the GigaByte DVD driver disk, I was up and running 100%. That is the way it should be. The best surprise was the onboard video. This is not a lame duck setup for an office PC or something to let the kids play all those Disney DVDs. Vista Experience Index rated the video at 4.1 Gaming graphics and 4.3 Desktop. The NVidia 8500 GT PCI-x16 that I had before was only 5.0 and 5.2, so I am going to leave the onboard running and have the option to use my 32" LCD TV with HDMI, which was about a 2 minute setup.

Cons: None to date. My Uncle George gave me 600 bucks to play with and I still have half of it left, a very fast PC, a nice upgrade for my wife's PC (the MA69VM, an Athlon 64x2 5000+, two gigs of SuperTalent DDR2-800 that I had laying around, and the 8500GT) and time to look for more great stuff on Newegg!

Overall Review: I put this board in a Gigabyte Aurora case with a 550 watt Master Cooler PS, 4 gigs of SuperTalent DDR2-800 ram, a WD 320gig SATA2 boot hd, a Seagate 250gig SATA2, Lite-On DVD burner and Lite-On Cd burner on the IDE ports, a Dlink wireless N PCI card and a WD 500gig SATA2 backup drive on an eSATA port that I had laying around. I built and serviced computer networks for 15 years, and this is the most satisfying purchase I have made to date. Newegg and GigaByte seriosly rock.

Pros: I got the CrossfireX to work - by booting with only 1 2GB DDR2 memory stick instead of two. Then it did not freeze when I saved the bios with SurroundView enabled. Catalyst automatically enabled CrossfireX. Shut down and put the other memory module back in. (Vista 64 needs all 4gb!) It's all good.

Cons: Now none...

Overall Review: Vista experience gaming graphics score went from 1.0 with only the onboard ATI HD3200, to 3.6 after adding the $20 HD3450 and the Hybrid Graphics/CrossfireX enabled. Mild OC'ing to 700 (from std 600) using ATI Catalyst brought it up to a 4.3 rating.

Pros: Lots of features, 6 SATA's, 4 ram slots, 780G chipset, very good instructions, up to date drivers on CD which was an easy install. Runs relatively cool. No onboard fans, all heatsinks. Lots of tweeks in BIOS. Onboard graphics just in case your vid card dies :)

Cons: Trouble powering up if new hardware is installed or faulty. I almost RMA'd this board thinking it was defective while it was actually the memory the whole time. It wouldn't even fire up with the bad memory. With good memory it's working great.

Overall Review: I can't really blame the MB for performing badly with the defective RAM, but I've never known a board not to power up due to defective hardware. Ideally it should at least POST even if you get a BSOD once windows starts. I was only able to fire up memtest and test the modules from another computer where I discovered I had a bad DIMM. I still decided to give it a 5 egg though. Since the memory issue was resolved it's been a very solid board. Fast and no errors or BSODs.

Pros: I just want to mention that I had the problem with my system not restarting as well. I tried all the suggestions in here. My fix was to turn off EPP for the DRAM.

Cons: None

Pros: video, audio, speed, OC capabilities

Cons: temperatures are not "ice cold"

Overall Review: I am embarrassed to admit, but I think it's necessary to mention this: After weeks of anger and frustration, I seem to have adjusted the right BIOS setting to get the mobo to reboot and come out of standby properly. There is a setting in DRAM setup of BIOS that solved the reboot/ warm boot issue I wrote about in previous review. The setting is "MEMCLOCK Tri-State" -> enabled. With it enabled (disabled by default), I have been smoothly computing with this great motherboard. Others suggested relaxing RAM timings or using slower RAM than the Crucial Ballistix. That did not work for me, but the BIOS setting fixed it. (see previous review)

Pros: Great board, smooth, fast, and while it does take a moment to show something on screen during boot, once it's going, it does very well. Love the 780g chipset. More than enough to run HD video which was the whole reason for this rig

Cons: The ground pads around the screws are small dots instead of a solid circle. This necessitates that you use the hex head phillips bolts that cases have come with for years to mount the motherboard. I tried smaller better looking hardware, but I had all sorts of trouble. Wouldn't restart, endless loops powering on the dvd rom, I thought it was the memory, like others had said. I replaced the bolts with the old school ones, and blammo. Perfection. No issues whatsoever with the board.

Overall Review: Make sure your mounting is covering all the pads surrounding the mount hole, and make it tight. I never thought a bad ground could cause all I was seeing, but I was taught otherwise.