GIGABYTE has done a wonderful job with the GA-M59SLI-S5 motherboard. S5 stands for Silent Pipe, SLI, Speed, Smart and Safe. The board offers these features in spades. The addition of the Multiple SATA port adapter means that you can have up to 30+ SATA devices on this board, more than anyone could possbily want. Feature-wise the board scores above the 40 point threshhold, as the ability to use 16GB under Windows XP 64-bit, the Muli-SATA port bracket and SLI add points to the board.
Performance on the GA-M59SLI-S5 board was generally excellent, keeping in mind that the performance on the AMD platform is mostly controlled by the memory controller on the CPU die. The board is GIGABYTE's highest-end board meant to compete with the M2N32-SLI from ASUS. The inclusion of three full-length PCI Express slots means that you can install three video cards, allowing up to six independent displays to be utilized for more screen space without using the slower PCI video cards.
