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The 990FXA-UD7 is a very attractive board which is finished in a black livery.
The heatsinks on the board are very attractive, with shiny gold accents highlighting the dark overall colour scheme.
The board has 6 PCI E x16 slots. Two of them run at x16, two x8 and two x4.
Gigabyte say “For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16_1 slot; if you are installing two PCI Express graphics cards, it is recommended that you install them in the PCIEX16_1 and PCIEX16_2 slots. The PCIEX8_1 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16_1 slot and the PCIEX8_2 slot with PCIEX16_2. The PCIEX16_1/PCIEX16_2 slot will operate at up to x8 mode when the PCIEX8_1/PCIEX8_2 is populated.”
Along the bottom of the board are three USB 2.0 headers, a single USB 3.0 header, a FireWire header and the front I/O audio connector. There are only three CPU fan headers on the board, which seems a little shortsighted.
Along the bottom of the board are 8 SATA ports. All of these ports are SATA 6GBp/s capable. The two grey ports on the right are handled by the Marvel 88SE9172 controller while the other six are powered by the onboard AMD SB950 South Bridge controller.
The motherboard can support memory with speeds at 1066mhz/1333mhz/1600mhz/1866mhz and 2000 mhz (OC). A total of 32GB of memory can be installed and obviously it is a dual channel memory architecture.
Next to the SATA ports is a diagnostic debug readout which is used for troubleshooting in case of any problems. Gigabyte include a cover over the reset CMOS button to prevent accidental activation. They have also included a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) header to aid with hardware based security.
The back panel connectors include: 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port, 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector, 1 x coaxial S/PDIF Out connector, 1 x IEEE 1394a port, 7 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports, 2 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports, 1 x eSATA/USB Combo connector, 1 x eSATA 6Gb/s connector, 1 x RJ-45 port, 6 x audio jacks (Center/Subwoofer Speaker Out/Rear Speaker Out/Side Speaker Out/Line In/Line Out/Microphone).
The overall board design is very attractive and it looks great inside a windowed case.
Great boards, right up their with ASUS IMHO
Like the colour scheme, very menacing !
I think ill stick with intel, but im interested in bulldozer, will be interesting to see if they can take on Intel at £200 sector.
Phew, I hate seeing a review when I bought something a few days beforehand. thankfully im reassuring. ill post my findings when I get the system built.
(1090t, but planning to bulldozer when available)
I disagree with previous comment. I think gigabyte are better motherboards than ASUS. I have always found them more stable.
good motherboard, I plan to buy this when bulldozer is out.