Customer Reviews

GIGABYTE GA-MA790X-UD4P Socket AM2+/ AMD 790X/ CrossFireX/ A&GbE/ ATX Motherboard

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I don't like to skimp when purchasing a motherbaord because it is a critical component. After doing some research, I settled on this motherboard because it has the features that I wanted all for a reasonable price. The bios options are plentiful for those who like to tweak their systems. I have not had any issues whatsoever with it. I contribute to Folding@Home ([...]) and it runs almost 24/7 with both cores of my Athlon II X2 240 AM3 2.8GHZ 2MB 45NM 65W CPU at 100%. I have overclocked mine to 3.1Ghz with stock voltage (1.425 volts). I'm sure that I can go higher, but I have to have CPU stability when folding, so I'm not going to push it too hard for now.

Believe me when I say this, you are better off spending a little more for a motherbaord and power supply, especially a power supply! Next to the motherbaord, the power supply is the most important component in your PC. By brand name power supplies and spare yourself the trouble of a fried PC becuase you bought a cheap power supply!

I have installed this board in several machines now and have yet to have any issues with it. All the boards I ordered worked perfectly. I ordered this board for my own system. I am running this board with a Phenom II 940 overclocked to 3.6Ghz with 4GB od Kingston HyperX 1066 Ram.

This system board has more features than I'll ever use. I bought three of these. One for my multimedia center and the others for myself and my wife's PCs. The media center PC is running a dual-core AMD low-power CPU and the others are running quad-core Phenoms. I really appreciated all the SATA ports/options on the media center PC which has 5 HDDs and a DVD. The boards come packaged with more than enough SATA cables, and every other type of cable you might need, as well as a complete manual. Everything works. Fully Linux compatible (>2.6.29). The newer BIOS available from Gigabyte even supports the new 6-core AMD Phenoms. Worth every penny.

Bought this motherboard back in july. Great motherboard for the price, with lots of option. Have bought lots of Gigabyte motherboards because of there reliability. Had problems with this one not rebooting after a restart or after it went to sleep. Have to turn the power supply off and on to get the motherboard to turn on again.(not its not the power supply, I've tried two.) I have tried emailing and filling out Gigabytes RMA Form online to return, but no response. I don't like the fact that they aren't very support friendly, just check their website and you'll see what I mean. I will go back to buying Asus boards again. Better Support!

I looked at a lot of boards and did my research carefully. This MB promised to fill my overall needs. Priced right, plenty of features, and has proven to be a great motherboard. This particular board allowed for a AM3 cpu, but allows me too use available DDR2 memory now and upgrade later as time, money permit. Easy installation, great instructions, plenty of cables...excellent! About an hour of assembly time, installation checks, the board fired up, no problems. I am currently running the board for a 25 hour burn in period and so far no issues...

I highly recommend this board based on my experience.

This is a good mobo for keeping your DDR2 ram and even your AM2 CPU while you gradually upgrade to newer AMD processors. The add-in options are well-distributed, and Gigabyte posts bios and driver updates. However, it is not flawless (nothing is). Bios insists on enabling Num Lock with no option to turn it off. Also, some installations have a boot-up blue-screen-crash problem caused by the Realtek HD Audio driver installation; it is too complicated to discuss here but I have emailed Gigabyte a solution.

Nonetheless I bought two of them, one here on Amazon Marketplace. I'm happy. :-)

I purchased this board to allow me to upgrade to an AM3 processor without having to replace the 8 GB of DDR2 system memory I was already using. The motherboard plus processor upgrade was about $320. If I had switched to an AM3-only motherboard, purchased the same processor and purchased 8G of matching DDR3 memory, the upgrade would have been about $650. AM3 processors contain memory controllers for both DDR2 and DDR3 memory types so the memory upgrade wasn't necessary. This motherboard will take DDR2 memory up to DDR2 1200 for the high-end AM3 processors.

The motherboard is well appointed with interfaces. I don't use everything available, but what I use works very well. The nicest thing about the motherboard was that when I installed it in the case, added the processor, memory and video, it worked correctly when powered up even before I tweaked the BIOS.

The motherboard came with a dual eSATA adapter for the back panel. This includes power for the external SATA devices, too!

My ONLY concern with this motherboard is for the heatsink/heatpipe solution Gigabyte is using for the northbridge chip and the MOSFETs. As is usual in most tower cases, the motherboard is mounted vertically with the processor toward the top. This means that air cannot flow through the fins of the northbridge chip cooler is blocked because the video card in the PCIe 16x slot is directly under the chip. This cooler is essentially forced to function via heat transfer through the heatpipe. The heat sinks for both the northbridge chip and the MOSFETs are covered by nice aluminum covers with "Gigabyte" and "Ultradurable" in raised lettering. This makes for a pretty motherboard, but I think it may block heat removal from critical parts. While I have had no heat issues, I don't overclock the motherboard nor keep the processor and video card 100% loaded all the time. Anybody who is planning to overclock the processor and the north bridge might want to consider an active cooling solution and removing the pretty blue caps.

I sure am glad I picked this motherboard. I bought this board for my first self-assembled PC and I was happy to find that it was very easy to install into the case and attach all of the needed components. I have been using it for almost three months now with no problems. What a value!

Board was very easy to install and started up fine with win7 rc1. Very easy to OC the CPU as well in the bios. It also came with an e-sata card. Only wish that both PCIe 2.0 slots were x16. One is x16 and the other is x8. Running a single XFX 4890 right now in the x16 slot. Don't know if running the x8 in crossfire mode makes a difference with dual 4890s. Would highly recommend this motherboard. Thanks, gigabyte!

This is the second GA-MA790X-UD4P that I have purchased. First one has a 550BE and the second one a 720BE. Just make sure you upgrade the BIOS to F5 (3Jun2009) for it to reconize the 550BE or 720BE chips. There is a newer F6A available but I've heard that it will not allow the ACC to unlock cores so I havn't upgraded pass the F5 version. Using the above BE CPUs I have the 550BE (3rd/4th core unlocked but not stable) at 3.6 Ghz on air with CPUvoltage bumped up to 1.45 vs 1.25 stock and the 720BE (4th core unlocked, stable after 1hr prime95) at 3.4 Ghz on air with CPUvoltage at 1.43.
Power Supply is another important! issue with this mobo, it has a 24 and 8 pin power connectors so don't try and use adapters for the 20 to 24 pin and one for the 4 to 8 pin since the power supply was not designed for it. I've been using HEC Compucase Zephyr 750DR-AT(2 each) and X-Power Pro 600 (3 each) for my home and office systems and have had no problems.