VPN: GA-MA770-UD3
Product ReviewsGIGABYTE GA-MA770-UD3 ATX AMD Motherboard
|
28%
56%
16%
0%
0%
|
With 25 User Reviews
|
 Rating: Review Date: 09/26/10  |
Cons:
-No esata-4pin power not at the top-USB headers not at the bottom
Pros: -Good expansion slot layout-Firewire and mini firewire |
|
Rating: Review Date: 08/08/10 |
Cons:
DDR2 only
Pros: Good quality, fair price, lots of bang for the buck Comment:
This may not have all the bells and whistles, but for the price you pay, you cant get any better especially if you have $15 ddr2 ram lying around!Go with DDR3 when the price drops (ie not this board) |
|
Rating: Review Date: 06/01/10 |
Cons:
None
Pros: Alot of USB ports, good feature set, plenty of expansion. Comment:
Works fine. I initially gave it a bad review because it failed after two months and 23 days. It started giving POST beep codes for the vid card. Turns out it was one module of my memory that was causing it. This review was modfied by poster @ 06-23-10 06:48 PM |
|
Rating: Review Date: 05/23/10 |
Cons:
8 pin 12v power is in a bad location. CPU are is cramped when using a big HSF.
Pros: Lots of PCI-e slots, 8 pin 12v motherboard power, unlocks extra cores (YMMV) Comment:
Got this board in May and I got rev 2.1. I was able to unlock 2 cores on my CPU to give me a quad core. Board layout is good (except for the 8 pin 12v power) and there are 2xPWM headers on this board. The CPU area is a little tight for larger coolers and I have to rest my CPU fan on-top of either my RAM or my NB (Scythe Ninja rev2). Overall a good board, especially for the price! |
|
Rating: Review Date: 04/01/10 |
Cons:
no DDR3 support? Heatsinks are a pain to put in (board heatsink rather close)
Pros: Decent lay out, room for upgrades, nice CPU support Comment:
No complaints aside from trying to mount an after market CPU cooler was a pain in the arse, as the bridge cooler was too close to allow for easy attachment. 16 gb or ram support is a nice bonus, as is 6 SATA ports, and a plethora of usb ports. Nice bang for buck, good base for a budget gaming build, though would like to see something in this range with DDR3 and dual PCI-E support. |
|
Rating: Review Date: 02/15/10 |
Cons: -doesn't have esata
Pros: -reliable brand-good warranty-pci-e Comment:
Apart from not having esata, it is good board. What separates this board from some of the others is that it doesn't have integrated graphics. This is good if you plan on buying a discrete graphics card. If you use a lot of pci-e slots this is the board for you. |
|
Rating: Review Date: 01/10/10 |
Cons: none at all except I would have liked more PCI slots
Pros: gigabyte product .... uses both AM2, Am2+ and AM3 CPUs Comment:
Very good. Front audio connector is all the way at the back of the Mobo howeverDecent BIOS....lots of hidden software on the driver disk. wish this mobo came with an overclocking utility however. Otherwise laid out very well. |
|
Rating: Review Date: 12/19/09 |
Cons: None so far.
Pros: CheapWell builtEasy to use and install. Comment:
I've built a computer with this motherboard and I have no complaints to make yet. The CPU installation and ram installation was easy as cake. Installing the GPU was not a problem and everything is fine. The only thing that lacks quality is the driver CD wich is really easy to intall but lacks a bit of nice visual. |
|
Rating: Review Date: 11/15/09 |
Cons: Could have more usb expansion room
Pros: AM2+ and AM3 support Comment:
Solid design and excellent quality.Great price, true value.Flexible: AM2+ and AM3 support, Win 7 ready, overclocking made easyRoom for improvement: Could have more usb expansion roomWould buy again |
|
Rating: Review Date: 09/28/09 |
Cons: Layout sucksHeatsinks too small
Pros: I got a rev.2 board - SB710!Full AM3 Phenom supportHella USB portsFireWire for $80 - wat! Comment:
I needed a cheap ATX board with DDR2 and support for the latest AM3 Phenoms. This fit the bill nicely. The one I received was revision 2.0, so it has the SB710 southbridge.C&Q disables if you change the multiplier to overclock (I have a X2 550 Black Edition). I like to have my cake and eat it to, so I changed the CPU freq instead - got it up to 3.6ghz. Fan control is good, use SpeedFan to fully control the CPU and SYS1 fans.No issues with it except for the layout (8-pin connector, USB headers, SATA ports) and the heatsinks are too small - they get mighty hot.Specs: X2 550, Katana 3, 4GB A-DATA DDR2-800, HD 4850, WD6400AAKS, Seasonic SS-350ET. This review was modfied by poster @ 09-28-09 03:23 PM |
|
Rating: Review Date: 09/11/09 |
Cons: No SLI or Crossfire, not a high end board.
Pros: Low price, solid performer - part of the Ultra Durable series. Comment:
I used this to build a computer for my sister. It allowed her a cheap way to put together an AM3 system on an extremely tight budget. While this may not be as "future proof" as a DDR3 system, it's cheaper, and future proofing is a huge myth. By the time she wants anything much beyond what this motherboard can provide, she'll want a whole new computer anyway. |
|
Rating: Review Date: 08/22/09 |
Cons: Doesn't work with the RAM I bought
Pros: Nothing, in my case Comment:
More a warning than a review: don't buy this motherboard with the G.SKILL F2-8500CL5D-2GBPK NCIX also sells. I'm sure it's a fine motherboard with compatible memory, but nothing on the board's compatibility list was available at Netlink when I was in there and I'd had good experience with G.SKILL before, so I went with that. Big mistake - the system built was just terminally unstable, would blue screen or shut down or restart without warning all over the place, it just didn't work. Took the mobo and RAM back after a day and went for a different combination (MSI and G.SKILL DDR3) which is working sweetly with the rest of the hardware all the same. So, yeah: if you're picking up this motherboard, be careful with the RAM, probably steer clear of the G.SKILL. |
|
Rating: Review Date: 08/18/09 |
Cons: No heatsinks on mosfetsBoard died after a year
Pros: Feature richEasy to setupGreat price Comment:
This board was awesome when I bought it, but 12 months later the board started having posting issues, and became unstable.Turns out the mosfets had started buying the farm, eventually the board died completely.Was running an Athlon 64 X2 6000, then a Phenom 2 940. Both these CPUs are 125W TDP. Recommend you add some heatsinks to the mosfets and ensure good airflow through your case.Shame, cos when it was working it was an awesome board for the price. |
|
Rating: Review Date: 08/07/09 |
Cons: -Better NB chips available
Pros: -AM3 compatible-DDR 1200-quality construction, manual, software etc.-Dual BIOS Comment:
I got this in a bundle with an Athlon 7550. I love it! I would buy this again. I updated the BIOS from XP with no problems, it is AM3 compatible, and DDR 1200 compatible so it's very future ready. |
|
Rating: Review Date: 07/31/09 |
Cons: None
Pros: Great for a HTPCTons of sata Comment:
I bought this from my htpc and i plan on having 6 hdds to back up my movies so sata was important. And for the sale price you cant go wrong |
|
Rating: Review Date: 07/25/09 |
Cons: Le heatsink du northbridge chauffe trop à mon gout. L'ajout d'un ventilateur 40mm est conseillée.
Pros: Très bon prix pour ce qui nous est livré.Carte bien équipée avec ses ports firewire et ses sorties audio numériques coaxiale et optique.Bonne disposition desconnexions. Comment:
Cette carte maitresse est de bonne qualité compte tenu du prix payé. La disposition des connecteurs est bonne et tous ce qui est requis est présent pour la majorité des utilisation. Cette carte combiné avec un AMD X2 7750 Be est un bon match. Carte amitresse à conseillée pour unEbudget étroit. |
|
Rating: Review Date: 07/07/09 |
Cons: Cheap south bridge heatsink, gets very hot. Front panel audio sits below PCIE, blocks airflow. Motherboard had random reboots, until I updated the bios to recognize am3 chips. Sb700 instead of SB710 which means no ACC.
Pros: Great layouts. Cheap. Fan controllers. OK all around motherboard. Solid board. Comment:
High overclocking with this motherboard could be a challenge (or atleast it was for me) as the heatsink would get hot fast, the Northbridge heatsink is held on loosely. Don't get me wrong, this is a great motherboard, I didn't have much of a problem setting it up and everything works fine. Hell I would put it on the solid category because it seems very sturdy.But this motherboard is more suited for the non-overclockers who just wan't a decent board. If your intention is overclocking the cpu, you might want to try the 790x.One more peeve, one of the usb port only supports usb 1.1 and I though it died when 2.0 came out. Even my 5 years ahtlon 64 system didn't have usb 1.1. |
|
Rating: Review Date: 07/02/09 |
Cons: Audio connection for front case at the back of the board.
Pros: Solid. Stable. Nice layout. Lots of case fan connectors (4). Comment:
A great board. Very stable. Only complaint is the placement of the connection for front audio is at the middle rear of the board, making it a long stretch for the cables. |
|
Rating: Review Date: 06/25/09 |
Cons: none so far
Pros: stable, fast, excellent value Comment:
Purchased to replace a poor ASUS board. Second and last ASUS board I will buy. Board installed easily, no issues, running XP with 2 gigs of ram, and a BFG 9600GTX. Intially ran old XP install from ASUS board, was amazed that it ran and it ran quite well. Did a repair install for XP and it runs even better.I run a number of Photo editing programs and Autocad without any problem, I have played COD 3 and COD World at War at higher resolutions without any issues.System runs relatively cool as compared to an Athlon XP system. Overall I am very satisfied and impressed.In fact I have just ordered a bundled Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-US2H and Athlon X2 7750 2.7GHZ from NCIX to replace my wife's aging but still performing Athlon 2600XP and Epox motherboard. It still works quite well but is outdated. I am pretty confident that we will be happy with the new system we are going to build. |
|
Rating: Review Date: 05/29/09 |
Cons: none that I can think of
Pros: Stable board, lots of ports Comment:
I used this board, like another poster mentioned to run Windows 7 until next year when I expect to get a release copy. Putting this into my Antec case with a 500 watt power supply, AMD 7850 CPU, 4 Gb Patriot 1066 ram, and ATI 4870 video card, everything fired up without a hitch in Windows 7. Everything runs very stable and FAST! This is a budget build gaming system to get me by until next year when I hope AMD quad core CPUs will be lower in price, and hopefully bundled with Windows 7. This system has given very good bang for my buck, and leaves room for decent upgrade paths in the future. As a bonus, this board can work with AM3 CPUs, so I have all the options, except for DDR3, which is at a premium compared to DDR2. This board can run DDR2-1200 with the right CPU. For now, running with economical but fast 1066 DDR2 ram, I am more than happy. |
|
Rating: Review Date: 05/22/09 |
Cons: - CPU power plug, front panel audio and front panel USB positions make cable management awkward- PCI-E 16x slot is a little too close the Northbridge cooler
Pros: - nice set of overclocking features- allows CPU and RAM frequencies to be configured independently- full ATX on a budget!- very stable overclocker Comment:
Bought this for a low-budget Windows 7 / overclocking build. Besides the strengths listed, I also like the 8 back panel USB ports and Firewire. Would definitely buy again for similar builds. |
|
Rating: Review Date: 05/05/09 |
Cons: -If you use the Firewire header it blocks a PCI slot-SB700 instead of SB750
Pros: -Worked out of the box with Phenom II 940-Cool enough so no fans are needed-8 USB Ports on the back-2 Firewire ports and a header for firewire at the front of a case Comment:
I really liked working with this motherboard, it worked with the Phenom II 940 without a BIOS update , not to mention that the Gigabyte rBIOS is an awesome program that lets you easily update the BIOS within Windows.The only changes I would make to this board would be to change the SB700 for the SB750, move the Firewire header so it is not blocking a PCI slot when used, and instead of 8 USB ports at the back, just have 6, and add another header for more options at the front of the case.I have already ordered more of these boards! |
|
Rating: Review Date: 04/27/09 |
Cons: If you aiming for AM3 cpu, get the 790 chipset instead
Pros: Cheap with Rebate and the 770 chipset is good enough for all AM2 and AM2+ cpu, works very well with these cpu Comment:
The one I ordered from NCIX is a DOA and as a matter of fact this is my 1st DOA of computer parts. Since I have already sold my old parts I was forced to buy this motherboard local instead of waiting NCIX RMA but bear in mind this has nothing to do with NCIX, they got the best price in the country and DOA sometimes happen....Now let's see how the RMA goes...hoping for a good experience with that department.Back to the board review....installing windows is a breeze with a Phenom 9500 oem which I bought from NCIX with a Katana 2 Heatsink. No overclocking and I am not a gamer but decoding MKV to AVCHD with same file and Ripbot264 is faster than my old E2180n3.2Ghz, I am surprise here but for encoding video with the right software 4 cores is faster than 2.Updated to F5 bios and disable TLB fix since that fix will slow down the cpu and the error that they talked about is not an everyday issue...ie unless you are running those programs which are affected.770 chipset with SB700 is best for AM2 and AM2+ cpu, if you are going to have AM3 cpu...best to upgrade to 790 series chipset and SB750..DDR3 which these combination will bring out the best of AM3. |
|
Rating: Review Date: 04/05/09 |
Cons: The northbridge is HOT. OC'ing with this board is a bit limiting.
Pros: Cheap price! Great for a 'simple' system without frills. Comment:
If you need a good motherboard without any superfluous stuff added then this is it. I ran my 7750 kuma at 3.1GHz prime95 stable for 32Hours on this board. The NB does run pretty hot though. Wouldn't hesitate to buy again |
|
Rating: Review Date: 02/03/09 |
Cons: No onboard video, no Crossfire/SLI support, northbridge heatsink felt unsecure.
Pros: Solid construction, handles an large array of CPU's, lots of SATA ports, good overall support of devices and hardware Comment:
Straight to the point, this motherboard is alright. It's lacking in a few key departments and for the price, you could get a better/more feature rich motherboard.The good parts are that it's a nice modern motherboard and supports a large array of AMD processors out of the box. No worries about having to get a BIOS update. It also has tons of SATA ports so if you're looking to run a RAID config, this might be your board. The northbridge is also pretty decent and supports a nice array of devices and RAM.A big downer was the lack of onboard video. Even though onboard is generally weak, it's enough to get the system going, enable all the bells and whistles of Windows Vista/7 and play simple Flash games or PC games on low/medium settings. When pretty much every motherboard coming out has onboard video, why does this not have it? I had to shell out some more cash for a video card which wasn't needed because onboard video would have suited my needs just fine. So Gigabyte makes you buy a new video card but they don't allow for multi-GPU set-ups. It's kinda lame for those of you looking for a cheap but decent multi-GPU capable motherboard.The last bad part was that the north bridge heatsink felt really unsecure. It would rock back and forth as if it was not quite in place. However, after using the system for a few days, I guess it's fallen into its place and is now nice and sturdy.Overall, it's ok but there are better alternatives for your money. |
This is a pretty good board. The only things I would really change are mentioned above. I don't like cables running to the middle of the board. Otherwise, I have not issues running a Athlon II x4 635 and 4gb of G.Skill PC2-8000 DIMMS.