GIGABYTE GA-MA78GM-S2H AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: POSTed immediately, no basic functionality problems at all. Plenty of connectivity for internal, front panel, and external components. Onboard video is at least as good as the discrete graphics card in my older system, and Hybrid Graphics should be great, once I can get a discrete card to install in this one.

Cons: None that I've found so far.

Overall Review: It's always a good idea to at least skim through the manual before installation anyway, but if you intend to run your SATA drives in AHCI mode, DEFINITELY read the manual, and configure this BEFORE installing your operating system. I'm going to have to go back and reinstall Windows, because I neglected to change the configuration before the first installation.

Pros: As always, research the parts before buying to ensure compatibility. For $450 I now have a very stable system for the in-laws, dead quite, with the Gemini 2 Cooler on a 4600 x2, 2 gigs of Crucial Ballistic DDR 800, Thermaltake Spirit Orb II Northbridge/IGP cooler, Mirrored Raid Array sata, and plenty of room to add an low end amd/ati video card to enable hybrid (but no need!). After a little break in, I bumped the 4600 up to 3.2 gigs per core, and ran at 100% for 9 hours. In a 74*F room I never broke 43*C on the processor, or 79*C on the IGP. Ran Crysis Demo for 1 hour, and IGP never budged above 91*C.

Cons: IGP requires some good lapping and polishing (as does the Thermaltake Spirit II, and the AMD HIS). Worth the effort as everything runs cool and quite, even at max load. Also, ram timings are difficult to maintain under the bios, but work much better with the flash.

Overall Review: Took Windows XP off, and am using Fedora (upgrading to Core 9 in two weeks) on the mirrored array, took the overclock off, as the in-laws will not make use of the extra head room) and the fans run at idle at all times (even at 100* cpu use, I never go over 39*C in a 74*F room!). System is dead silent with Intake (120mm and 80mm), Cpu (two 120 mm), Exhaust (1 20mm and powers supplies 140mm), IGP (one 40 mm). Looks good via HDMI at 1080p once it is setup for it, in both video and computing tasks (so long as your Tele is good enough to handle it).

Pros: First of all i did my homework on the kind of system i wanted to put together. i first started out wanting to build a system around the intell Q66 chip and reading differant reviews and finding out about the AMD 9600 CPu with this board i decided to try it. I am very pleased with the results the information provided by Gigabyte and AMD made this an easy installation. Booted up the first time with no problems, went into the cmos made the correct changes according to directions and started booting to Windows XP Pro. Thats where the problem started (Windows) but i knew that was going to be a problem before i started so i backed up everything. Files,etc and just reloaded windows so that it could load all the correct drivers for the new system. System running great no problems thanks NewEgg for great products and also the fast shipping received products in 3 days.

Cons: do no t have any cons except for some of the reviews that i have read where other people have had problems. For some of those that i have read you could tell that most had not checked everything out to get what they where looking for and to also get everything prepaired for the new hardware.

Overall Review: I Put myself in as a low understanding of the product because everyone else has listed as High to somewhat high. then you read them and you can tell that they are an average user. I have been in the industry for 20 years and have both the Intel and AMD products with differant boards. most of the name brand boards that lead the pack will have a review rating of around the 70 mark. Good luck and hopefully you will not get the dreaded Bad out of box failure which happens at times

Pros: All hardware recognized and worked without any fiddling. In kernel drivers work great for everything except video. VESA video driver is good enough for the installation and some basic 2d use. Right now this MB makes a very nice mythtv frontend/backend. If video driver issues get sorted out this will be PERFECT.

Cons: Open source drivers only support 2D at best. No 3d, xv or textured video. They are under very active development so maybe radeon or radeonhd will work well and have 3d and xv in a few months? AMD/ATI have been very active with helping the open drivers so it is safe to bet these features will be available in the near future.

Overall Review: Mythbuntu installed easily with AHCI enabled. But after install, grub failed to start Linux about half the time. Switched back to EIDE compat mode and it boots every time. I have a nearly silent COOLER MASTER RR-CCH-P912-GP CPU cooler which overhangs and helps cool the northbridge. Latest fglrx (closed source) driver in Ubuntu Hardy gets 3d working easily. TexturedVideo/xv works OK after some xorg.xconf hacking. mythfrontend crashed frequently with fglrx problems. Disabling compiz and mythtv opengl menus reduced the crashing. Usable by family this way. I'm using VGA output at 1280x768 to Vizio 37" TV. Using analog stereo sound out to the TV. Did not test digital sound, HDMI, or DVI outputs yet.

Pros: Has just about any input and output anyone could want, great funtionality and features, excellent, sharp video, very stable, very good overall performance, great value. I was shipped board revision 1.1 which has a beefier Northbridge heat sink. Very good manual. Windows Vista installed without a hitch. Although this was my first build with AMD, I plan to purchase this motherboard and AMD processors in the future. This saved my customer about $300.

Cons: None that I have encountered.

Overall Review: This was the first AMD system I have built for a customer and it has been a very pleasant experience. All previous builds were with Intel processors. It was an economy build with an AMD X2 5200+ Brisbane processor. Performance is much better than expected, processor heat sink barely gets warm to the touch after hours of use and the Northbridge stays about 39 C (103 F). Windows Vista Experience Index is: Processor 5.2, Memory 5.9, Graphics 3.6, Gaming 3.7, Hard Disks (RAID 1) 5.9. Everything is running with default settings with No over-clocking. Memory is standard fare G. Skill and hard drives are standard Maxtor SATA 3Gb/sec.

Pros: Working great for a new media center platform. Connecting this to a Panasonic TH-50PX77U Display mainly to play flac/mp3/video files over a home network. All I really wanted was an upgrade to an old Sempron processor so my winamp visualizations would stop stuttering and this is getting the job done.

Cons: I had a display problem with the included drivers. Early reviews of other motherboards using this chipset are pretty good as well. The upcoming NVIDIA chipsets may be better if you need to do 8-channel LPCM over HDMI.

Overall Review: If I changed the input on my plasma display to something other than the computer's input, when I switched back to the computer, the screen would be black. This was corrected with the latest ATI Catalyst drivers version 8.3 - March 5, 2008. When downloading them, look for the Radeon HD 3400 driver. The card on this motherboard is an HD 3200, but that's not listed on ATI's site yet.

Pros: This was a very easy board to set up and get going...The manual was easy to read, and it has plenty of ports that are always good to help future proof your computer as much as possible...I like that it has HDMI output, and the internal graphics card is quiet good for an IGP and is easy to overclock.

Cons: Make sure that you check on the Gigabyte Webpage if you are going to buy this board so you can make sure that it will support your memory...I bought this board with Gskill 2x1gb SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) both from newegg, and the mobo will only run it in single channel mode and not dual...it works find in single channel, but now if I want to upgrade I will have to get a whole new set instead of being able to just add on...but that is just my fault for not checking in advance..oh well it was my first build... Also just so you know you cannot use the DVI and HDMI output at the same time...you are limited to D-Sub and either of the other two for multiple displays.

Overall Review: This is a great board for anyone building a HTPC...it does not require any external graphics card to easily play back 1080p videos, and the HDMI output is alot more practical than using a HDMI to DVI converter

Pros: * Home Theater PC's need to be quiet. Therefore they need to stay cool with little fan noise. The 790 chipset onboard video is more than required for HDTV, and saves cost and heatload of graphics card . AMD's e4850 CPU easily copes with HDTV at 45W of power. * This board includes HDMI and DVI-D connectors, plus VGA if you need it (you can dual-monitor VGA and HDMI or HDMI). Has optical SPDIF output on panel, plus onboard header for optional coax or optical SPDIF (in and out) connector plate.

Cons: * Must choose either HDMI or DVI in Setup--can't use both simultaneously. * DVI -D connector has no analog capability, so you can't use an adapter for Component Video on it. Would have been so cheap and easy to include DVI-I. Alas. *Turns out my audio setup could be easier with coax SPDIF, but the SPDIF connector plate option is not available through Newegg. Not hard to make one from a spare filler plate, Radio Shack RCA jack, and an old CD-to-Soundcard cable, but Newegg ought to carry these and show them as options!

Overall Review: * The BIOS ships with just DVI digital only and VGA enabled. Perhaps some DOA complaints are from that? Easy fix if you have a VGA display around (who doesn't?) * AMD's 690 and 780 chipsets include all three major video interfaces, but all the other AMD microATX boards I've seen give you only two of the three types of video connectors on the panel. Some provide an extra connector plate for the third video or SPDIF, but microATX slots are usually too valuable to waste (your HTPC needs space for tuners!). This board does it ALL with all slots available! Since I use an HDHomerun remote HD/DTV tuner (uses my Ethernet LAN), I have no cards plugged into my HTPC at all. What a luxury!