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Author
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IEATFISH
May 16 :D
Registered: July 2008
Location: Idaho
Posts: 8207
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Review Date:
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: $125.00
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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Lots of USB ports, Crossfire, feels solid, e-sata extension panel, onboard audio
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Cons:
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Expansion cards may cover bios jumper, some may not like the colors
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I have really liked this motherboard. The design is very well laid out and the only things I have wanted moved was the battery/bios jumper. With my 4870 and TFad2, I have a difficult time accessing the jumper to reset the bios. This was solved easily by using a regular fan extension cable. Now I can jump it from the end of the cable.
It is almost exactly the same as the MA790X (see the missing T) but has DDR3 and AM3 support only. Overclocking is rather simple though the voltages are changed by adding or subtracting off a default value rather than setting the value specifically. I prefer the latter. There are a plethora of options and I don't notice anything blatantly missing.
The sata ports are angled off the side of the board to aid in cable management. The 24 pin MB connector may be a little high for tall cases with short-cabled PSU's but in my mid tower (Lian-Li PC-7F) and with my Corsair TX750w I had no problems.
It comes with 8 USB ports and an extension panel with two e-sata ports and one molex plug. I have no use for this and have not installed it but it may be useful to some. The onboard audio seems decent and has optical out. I have a dedicated sound card and have not used the onboard sound nearly at all. It also includes two 90 degree sata cables which are very nice is your HDD's are in a cramped space.
Overall, it has been a very solid motherboard and I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to go the AM3 route.
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Swiftes
I LOVE FOXY
Registered: June 2008
Location: Somerset/UK
Posts: 4360
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Review Date:
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: None indicated
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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Great looking, awesome layout and Crossfire, for a neat price.
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Cons:
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8x, 8x CFX (Not a big deal really) Lower PCI-E slot is Orange, out of theme
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Great overclocker, this thing eats Phenom II's for breakfast, then does an ace job saving some for lunch too. Sweet looking board too, nice to see GB slowly moving away from puked Lego.
Would definitely recommend this, I grabbed my as a Refurb and saved £20, not that I would have minded paying full retail price, it is a really good board, the 790X chipset certainly has broken some OC records.
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PSN Username: OCN_Swiftes | Steam: hpisam
Subscribe to my Youtube Channel, for gaming videos, commentarys and montages 
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Quantum Reality
4.0ghz
Registered: November 2008
Posts: 2207
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Review Date:
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: $130.00
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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Well laid-out, many USB ports available, overall a pleasing color scheme. Good BIOS configuration options as well.
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Cons:
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8x 8x crossfire might be limiting in the future
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Got this board as part of my planned upgrade path to a Phenom with an Athlon II X4 as a stopgap.
The board has a very nice layout and comes with LOTS of accessories. I didn't need/want the eSATA connector so I left that in the box. The back panel has LOTS of USB ports which is a nice change from the usual four which can make it logistically problematic to use a USB drive, a keyboard, a printer and still have room for other USB devices without using the front panel which, unfortunately, I have found to be a bit ill-behaved with one of my USB sticks. Could well be the fault of the Antec case not the motherboard.
The BIOS was easy to figure out as far as configuration options went. The Ctrl-F1 trick was necessary to fully tweak the board, but one thing that did make overclocking easier was that the Auto settings seem capable of providing the necessary voltages to the components which can potentially be affected by overclocking.
Memory speeds/timings were also easily adjustable. Had some issues trying to stabilize an overclock of the RAM at 1600 MHz but again, I believe it to be a fault of the Samsung DDR3-1333 just not being able to take the higher speed even with relaxed timings. Keeping my CPU speed at 3.25 GHz I was able to operate my RAM on spec at 1333 MHz without issue.
One final feature that I very much like about this board compared to some of the others I've used is that when you disable the fan control mechanism it is actually one hundred percent disabled. My CPU fan runs full tilt at ~3000 RPM on the stock AMD heatsink/fan and helps keep things nice and cool there. 
For anyone thinking about AMD I would definitely recommend this board or its bigger brother based on the 790FX chipset.
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Kahbrohn
333mhz
Registered: October 2009
Location: Guaynabo, Puerto Rico
Posts: 53
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Review Date:
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: $124.00
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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AM3, DDR3, price, solid build, Everything easily found on the board
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Cons:
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Stock BIOS, CMOS reset a bit hidden, memory banks proximity to the CPU
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Ok... this was for my very own first build. My XFX fried and needed a replacement. I was overwhelmed with the options at the store. Mainly ASUS. I had already read that Gigabyte was the "up and coming" so I asked for their best AMD board. I was directed to the GA-M790XT-UD4P. Granted... it was the last one on the shelf.
I knew that I wanted a 790 chipset so I decided to go for it. What the heck, I could always exchange it later if something went wrong, right?
Well... nothing went wrong. I paired this board up with a Cooler Master HAF 922 and there was plenty of room to work everything around. The board is solid and a bit heavier than I expected. Bottom line was that I didn't feel scared in handling the board.
CPU install was a snap. CPU heatsink/fan was very easy with the rear access. I had originally installed my old Thermaltake V1 and decided to change it for the Cooler Master Hyper N520. It was easy and took me about 10 mins. between reading the instructions and getting it secured into place. Did not have to take the board out as I had read other's who bought the same cooler. The only thing I have to complain here is the close proximity of the memory bank to the CPU cooler. It makes it difficult to install a memory bank cooler and lends to the CPU heat being picked up by the memory sticks a bit but as luck would have it, I have 2x120MM side fans pointing to the memory sticks and I do not need additional cooling for them right now.
BIOS options seem to be all there. Being that this is my first OC experience, I asked for help on settings and whatever people would recommend me to look up in my BIOS, I found with no problem.
The BIOS that the board came with did cause me a bit of a problem but I took care of it real quick by updating it. The gigabyte tools to do so were fairly good in assisting.
Documentation is pretty well written and laid out. Did not find a chart to interpret the meaning of the beeps as I boot up. At one point I had a problem and I kept hearing the boot up beeping. I looked for a chart and could not find it. Other than that, the documentation was helpful.
As a "starter" board, I highly recommend it. As an "average" OC'er (like me... just for fun and not necessarily for competition or the such) the board is way more than sufficient.
I know there are better boards out there but to get my feet really wet while I learn the in's and out's of OC'ing, this board is just great. There is no way to lose with it really. The best part of all is that if you do decide to upgrade your MOBO this is an excellent back-up board to keep around. When I decide to upgrade, I am keeping this guy tucked away.
The only other complaint I could have is the CMOS location BUT this is easy to overcome by installing a fan extension cable and tucking it away. Otherwise, you will need to remove expansion boards (if installed) to reach it. Screwdriver gets in there perfectly though but I rather use the jumper.
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;)
;)
