From the minute you lift this board out of the box, the heft alone shows you just the kind of quality you purchased. This board is noticeably thicker and sturdier than the other boards I own in the same market (ASRock, ASUS, MSI, Pcchips, and Intel) and even then a much cheaper older Gigabyte running an older dual core from years back. In the few years between buying gigabyte products they have imperssively improved the quality.
It comes with an elaborate setup manual, good software for drivers (in case you need them), good quality cables, and very customizable and frequently upgraded bios (that allows for the overclocking and unlocking of most of the AMD Black series easily)
This went into a Callisto 3.1ghz AMD chip running at regular speed and performed beautifully in games, hulu, and when attached to a HD projector (using dual screens) it handled an eight gigabyte High def copy of twilight like a pro. I even had people ask if they could buy this computer off of me. Just a note though that it seems run much faster in the final version of seven, than xp or vista (or the RC of seven)as it seems to be optimized for the newer software structure.
…and it used DDRII memory so I didn’t have to spend the extra bank on newer stuff! Yay!
Rating: 4 / 5
This board requires an 8 pin EPS connector, though the manual says that you can use only the 4pin, it did not work for me. No adapter is included, which would be nice since this isn’t standard among 785 boards.
What made me come back to give it a poor review is that bios updates are distributed as self-extracting .exe files. I don’t run windows and therefore I specifically checked the manual beforehand to make sure that the bios had a build in firmware upgrade utility. It does, but it’s pretty pointless if there’s no way to get the files.
The product works, construction of the motherboard itself seems good, though the back panel is the chintziest I’ve ever seen. The manual has some good diagrams explaining which slots share bandwidth. I was surprised that using the PCIe slot disables two of the PCI slots. The written portions of the manual are nearly incomprehensible.
I wish I had bought a different product that didn’t require me to use an adapter, and didn’t require me to involve another computer to extract the bios updates.
Rating: 3 / 5
Amazon sent me the wrong motherboard first (Gigabyte Micro ATX version)so I contacted them the same day by email immediately. The very next day I received the correct board. As usual, I did not have to pay return shipping costs on the motherboard received first. Amazon return policy is one of the best I have encountered. I installed the new board in my Antec Sonata III 500 case and it booted up 1st time with no problems. I found the on board graphics suprisingly good.
My system: Gigabyte GA-MA785G-UD3H, Mushin DDR2 1066, AMD Phenom II X4 940, Antec III Sonata III case, VISTA.
Rating: 4 / 5
February 9th, 2010 10:45 PM
From the minute you lift this board out of the box, the heft alone shows you just the kind of quality you purchased. This board is noticeably thicker and sturdier than the other boards I own in the same market (ASRock, ASUS, MSI, Pcchips, and Intel) and even then a much cheaper older Gigabyte running an older dual core from years back. In the few years between buying gigabyte products they have imperssively improved the quality.
It comes with an elaborate setup manual, good software for drivers (in case you need them), good quality cables, and very customizable and frequently upgraded bios (that allows for the overclocking and unlocking of most of the AMD Black series easily)
This went into a Callisto 3.1ghz AMD chip running at regular speed and performed beautifully in games, hulu, and when attached to a HD projector (using dual screens) it handled an eight gigabyte High def copy of twilight like a pro. I even had people ask if they could buy this computer off of me. Just a note though that it seems run much faster in the final version of seven, than xp or vista (or the RC of seven)as it seems to be optimized for the newer software structure.
…and it used DDRII memory so I didn’t have to spend the extra bank on newer stuff! Yay!
Rating: 4 / 5
February 10th, 2010 12:03 AM
This board requires an 8 pin EPS connector, though the manual says that you can use only the 4pin, it did not work for me. No adapter is included, which would be nice since this isn’t standard among 785 boards.
What made me come back to give it a poor review is that bios updates are distributed as self-extracting .exe files. I don’t run windows and therefore I specifically checked the manual beforehand to make sure that the bios had a build in firmware upgrade utility. It does, but it’s pretty pointless if there’s no way to get the files.
The product works, construction of the motherboard itself seems good, though the back panel is the chintziest I’ve ever seen. The manual has some good diagrams explaining which slots share bandwidth. I was surprised that using the PCIe slot disables two of the PCI slots. The written portions of the manual are nearly incomprehensible.
I wish I had bought a different product that didn’t require me to use an adapter, and didn’t require me to involve another computer to extract the bios updates.
Rating: 3 / 5
February 10th, 2010 2:51 AM
Amazon sent me the wrong motherboard first (Gigabyte Micro ATX version)so I contacted them the same day by email immediately. The very next day I received the correct board. As usual, I did not have to pay return shipping costs on the motherboard received first. Amazon return policy is one of the best I have encountered. I installed the new board in my Antec Sonata III 500 case and it booted up 1st time with no problems. I found the on board graphics suprisingly good.
My system: Gigabyte GA-MA785G-UD3H, Mushin DDR2 1066, AMD Phenom II X4 940, Antec III Sonata III case, VISTA.
Rating: 4 / 5