GIGABYTE GA-MA770-UD3 (rev. 1.0)

GIGABYTE GA-MA770-UD3 (rev. 1.0)
AM2+/AM3 Motherboard Review

Manufacturer's Part Number: GA-MA770-UD3
Price: $76CDN+ Click Here to Compare Prices
Manufacturer's Product Page: Giga-Byte Technology Co., Ltd.
Warranty: 3 year limited warranty



In the past few months, AMD has been floating on a sea of goodwill and positive consumer reception towards its products. It's not hard to see why either. In these frugal times, the company's most expensive processor comes in at a mere $290CDN, and they have released of bevy of superb offerings in the sub-$150 range. There can be no denying that the low-end and mainstream products are (and will continue to be) the driving force behind AMD's resurging popularity. With this in mind, we bring you today a motherboard for the masses that can found for less than $80CDN but which features a specifications list that will satisfy just about anyone. The product in question is the Gigabyte GA-MA770-UD3. Although this is technically a Socket AM2/AM2+ motherboard, due to its support for the HyperTransport 3.0 system interface and the bits of magic that are BIOS updates, it fully supports all of the latest multi-core AMD AM3 processors. It is also a DDR2 motherboard, which means that you can re-use your existing memory modules and further delay the inevitable transition to DDR3.

This model is based on the AMD 770 northbridge/SB700 southbridge chipset combo. This chipset mainly differs from the higher-end 780G, 790GX, and 790FX chipsets by its lack of official CrossFire support. The 770 was designed for single graphics card configurations, which basically represents the vast majority of all home built systems. With this in mind, the MA770-UD3 comes with only one PCI-E x16 2.0 slot, but makes up for it with its four PCI-E x1 slots, two PCI slots, six SATA II ports, eight USB 2.0 ports, one Gigabit LAN port, two FireWire ports and high-quality 8-channel HD audio codec.

Needless to say it is quite well-equipped for a sub-$80 motherboard, but how does it perform? How's the layout? How's the BIOS? Can it handle serious overclocking? These are the questions that we will seek to answer, and more.