GIGABYTE GA-MA790XT-UD4P AM3 DDR3 AMD 790X ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: Solid board. I mean SOLID! its evident from the moment you open it. Beefy trasnistors light weight yet durable. Astheticly pleasing. Manual was written well, I would have prefered something a little more technical, but for people who would have trouble..the manual was FAB!! All connectors/jumpers/pins are placed well, so chubby clumsy fingers can maneuver in relitivly easy to change stuff..big plus for me. Bios settins are very nice. You overclockers out there Will love how potent this Board is. Comes with a great inboard soundcard. I canned my XFI. Not that it was too hard to do..Soundblaster really dropped the ball on this series, now I run exclusivly through my onboard audio. No complaints yet. I had to flash the bios and update..comes with something called @BIOS its simple simple simple. Download the bios you want. Click flash...your bios is flashed within minutes RIGHT FROM WINDOWS!! No more making a floppy, crossing fingers, or hitting jumper pins. ITs AWESOME!

Cons: The bopard recognizes my AMD PhenomII 955BE, but it does not run it. You have to flash the bios to version 4f. No way around it, I got horrible performance and was wondering If I had a bad chip. I got the problem solved, after a little research, I discovered that the chip cameout after the board was made...so they had to make a new bios for it. Well this new bios IS AWESOME!! My machine screams crysis full settings 1080p resolution, 4xAA(no need to go higher at those resolutions) never dropped below 30fps. I avaraged 53fps on the demo/benchmark tester. But I would say 40-45fps is the realistic avarage I noticed when I played and had fraps running. Still smooth, anything over 30 and Im happy. I have a GTX275 and 4gigs OCZ intel Extreme eddition. And aPhenomII955BE running stock 3.2g( I hear they go to 3.6 on this board w/out having to bump up the voltage) nive to be able to get an extra 400mhz free with little to no buildup on your CPU or heat.

Overall Review: Buy this board. Buy it buy it. Deffinatly know you will have to flash the bios. Its a must, but trustme. @bios is great. On @bios...remember when you install it, you cant run it from the program folder...you have to click on your start menu and run it from there...it makes an executable that is not visible if you try to manually open the folder from windows explorer...it must be done from the start menu.

Pros: Bought it based on review at xbitlabs.com. Very solid feel to it - inspires confidence. Nice set of cables - including external SATA cable and bracket to make two of the internal SATAs externally accessible.

Cons: Windows overclocking utility doesn't run under Vista64 - not a big deal since can always adjust in BIOS directly. Are only 2 chassis fan connectors, and they are inaccessible for top or rear chassis fans. Mounting holes on the front edge (the edge where the big hunking power connector is) didn't match my Lian Li PC-P50 case - so that edge of the mobo is unsupported. Thus, need to connect power supply before putting mobo into the case.

Overall Review: This is my first time back to AMD in several years - will take some getting used to the BIOS differences.

Pros: its a gigabyte = quality and support is written big! stable running bios updates take only 2 mins :) runs good with my 955

Cons: none

Overall Review: all 955 users, update bios before you plan on doing anything :) mine was running on a constant 800mhz till i updated now its flying on 3214.7 mhz :) perfect build thank you so much gigabyte keep up the good boards

Pros: Excellent board, great overclock, with Phenom II 720: on air (Zalman 120mm) = 3.5ghz (250x14!!) with only a 0.25v increment.

Cons: Ram was tricky to set at 1.6ghz using corsair ddr3 1600. But have it working, here are the following to run ddr3 on this board: Note I have RAM voltage at 1.65v. CAS# Latency = 9 RAS to CAS R/W Delay = 9 Row Precharge Time = 9 Minimum RAS Active Time = 24 1T/2T Command Timing = 2T TwTr = 6T Trfc0 for DIMM1 = 110ns Trfc0 for DIMM2 = 110ns Trfc0 for DIMM3 = 110ns Trfc0 for DIMM4 = 110ns Write Recovery Time = 12T Precharge Time = 3T Row Cycle Time = 40T RAS to RAS Delay = 7T

Overall Review: Still alittle pricey (compared to other amd boards), but its the new AM3 what can you expect...

Pros: Gigabyte has another winner on their hands! 12 usb ports, Dolby Digital 7.1 audio, firewire, esata you name it this board supports it! Super stable with 8 GB mushkin 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Item #: N82E16820146740. AMD Phenom II X3 720 2.8GHz (3.4 OC) Socket AM3. SAPPHIRE 100259-1GL Radeon HD 4870 1GB. Don't be scared get this board or it's big brother.

Cons: Gigabyte support. Tried to find answer for pre-purchase decision making since no reviews are out on this board yet. I had several questions I asked Gigabyte support. They don't reply to support email, don't return support phone calls (you only ever get voice mail), web based support someone answers you but refuses to answer questions asked and refers you repeatedly to support email and phone number that they don't answer! Horrible help from Gigabyte.

Pros: This is a straight up AWESOME MB! Now this is coming from a guy who had to stick with >$100 parts in previous builds in the past. Now finally able to afford better, I carefully researched and found that this MB has MUCH more to offer than the equiv. "Competitor" board at the same price point. Installed all hardware with no hiccups, everything worked from first boot. Aside from a few minor things I'm extremely satisfied with this board and look forward to learning more about some of these cool advanced bios settings I've not been able to play with before.

Cons: Width of the board is like 1/4" shy of the standard full ATX size MB's I've been used to. Had to dig up old plastic standoffs becuase the board didn't line up with the normal screw-in standoffs on it's right side (SATA connector side). I notice the 2600MHz HT clock only runs at 2000MHz, I set it to 2600 in CMOS but it still shows up as 2000MHz in CPUz. Maybe there's something I've not learned yet about that. Default memory config is set to single channel ("unganged") mode, despite proper DIMM placement, it doesn't auto-detect that way. Also RAM defaults to 1333, 11-11-11-and other "up there" timings. So it was a sharper-than-expected learning curve for a first-time higher-end MB owner. Otherwise, I still love this MB.

Overall Review: Saw someone else post about Ethernet controller failure, which is similar to what I experienced. Everything was fine at first, then downloaded the updated realtek ethernet driver from Windows update (running XP home) and suddenly nothing but trouble. XP saw the 1394 ethernet adapter fine, but swore on it's mothers grave that the realtek ethernet could not respond. (I forget the exact message.) The Smart-Ethernet tester thingie in BIOS started detecting a 2m cable instead of a 25m cable. Fearing the worst, I finally decided to check the RJ45 jack and found that it wasn't fully or correctly seated, the plastic housing slightly 'hung' on the metal of the I/O shield. I noticed this cuz the RJ45 lock tab clicked when I wiggled the plug. I reseated the plug fully, and started her up, said a prayer, and cried when Internet was back to normal... *sniff. I STILL LOVE THIS MOTHERBOARD!!!

Pros: This is a well laid out board, looks and feels high quality! Love the e-sata bracket, lots of usb and sata ports. The driver software is very quick to install.

Cons: The bios seems lacking in some respects. The voltage settings seem lacking to me. Website doesn't have necessary bios for new procs right now.

Overall Review: Don't beat your head against the wall trying to figure out why your new Phenom 2 955 is stuck at 800mhz! You can't download the proper bios from their website right now! You need f4a to play with a 955 or 945. Use the online bios update utiltily to get it! I love you Newegg, Thanks!

Pros: I've been using this board for over a year now, it's sturdy and reliable. I've never had a problem directly linked to it, and OCing with both a 720 BE and a 965 BE has yielded great results.

Cons: None, really. It's ATX, so case accordingly.

Overall Review: I'll probably have this board for at least another board before I feel like replacing it, and that's just the enthusiast in me wanting newer tech. People really need to stop posting 1 egg reviews because they got one DOA product. This stuff happens to pretty much every electronic product ever made, it has nothing to do with the quality of the product itself, and it's misleading. If you get two or three in a row, yeah. But just one? Don't be dumb. :)