Introduction

It's review time again!  This time it is a Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 motherboard, complete with an AM3+ socket, ready to rumble with a Bulldozer CPU!  Thanks go to Gigabyte for sending the board my way and making this review possible.

Odds are you've heard of Gigabyte, they're one of the largest computer parts and accessories manufacturer, and also one of the most successful as well.

Motherboards aren't the only thing Gigabyte makes, they also make GPUs of excellent quality and performance, plus tablets, notebooks, servers and many other things.

Their #1 claim to fame is their Ultra Durable technology.  They describe it thusly: Ultra Durable™ Technology: First motherboard manufacturer to implement the following technologies.

• All solid Japanese capacitors (2006) : Long life and extended durability
• Ferrite Core Chokes and Low RDS(on) MOSFETs (2007) : Lower resistance for reduced power and heat consumption
• Dynamic Energy Saver (2007): Save energy with unique multi-gear power phase design
• 2 oz copper PCB, (2008): Cooler operating temperatures
• 24-phase Power VRM (2009) : Quicker response time, lower heat, more stable power supply to the CPU.

There are an awful lot of features on this 990FXA-UD5 AM3+ motherboard, I'm going to hit the high points in this section and add my thoughts to them.  The full specs will be on the next page.

The 990FX chipset is the major thing, it comes with an AM3+ socket and hence supports Bulldozer (AMD FX) CPUs along with all AM3 CPUs (Athlon II, Phenom II, Sempron 100 series) for bonus points.

Second to that is the 8+2 CPU power section, it's all Driver Mosfets (ICs built specifically for power regulation, they have both the high and the low side mosfets on one chip along with the mosfet driver.  They run cooler and more efficiently than normal separate mosfets) as well and hence worth rather more than your average 8+2 power section.  Atop that is some nice heatsinking to keep it cool.

You also get USB3 and SATA3, SATA3 via the AMD chipset, USB3 via a separate chip on the motherboard.

Something that comes with the 990FX chipset is the ability to use nvidia SLI technology, and on this motherboard you can even go up to 3x SLI!  This is a large change from previous AMD chipsets, which nvidia did not allow SLI to run on. 3x Crossfire-X is possible as well, as could be expected considering that it involves AMD GPUs and an AMD motherboard.

Onward to Gigabyte's official specs!

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