AMD has made the 790FX chipset their high-end chipset and as such, the Gigabyte MA-790FX-DS5 is designed to work with the newest Phenom B3 CPUs. Gigabyte has done an outstanding job outfitting this card with the features that you need and the performance to boot. The inclusion of features like 8 SATA ports and 2 Firewire ports make this board ideal for the HT enthusiast needing those features. If you are looking for a motherboard to run the latest Phenom X4 B3 CPU this is it.
The negatives of this board are few but include the lack of four video card slots for four-way Crossfire and the mediocre overclocking options. Make sure you use the latest version of the BIOS as the BIOS that came with the board, F3 does not support the latest Triple Core 8750 CPUs and had issues with the 9850 we use for testing our motherboard test platform with that BIOS as well. Updating the BIOS to the F6 version fixed the issues. Not a big thing, but it is important to be aware that if you want to use those CPUs an updated BIOS may be necessary before the board recognizes the new CPUs.
