GIGABYTE GA-970A-D3 AM3+ AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: It's a decent motherboard supporting usb 3.0, as well as the usual motherboard ports that are out right now about 6 - 8 usb ports. No much to brag about but not a terrible motherboard for the cost.

Cons: Died on me at the worst time. I had tested everything in my computer before finding that the motherboard was completely dead. Still trying to find a reason I would have to say that this product wasn't worth what I paid for it a year ago. The MB was constantly causing hiccups that I figured was the RAM since one RAM stick had died immediately after purchasing it. After replacing the motherboard last night with a better version of it I would have to say Gigabyte is on my watch list for now. I used to swear by them and this is just one bad product but its infuriating to spend money on a motherboard that didn't last more than 7 months.

Other Thoughts: I recently purchased the Gigabyte-990FXA-UD3 and it's amazing so far compared to this product. It's Gigabyte, so I got the warranty this time and will be calling them immediately as soon as something goes wrong.

Pros: Cheap, does what it needs to do

Cons: No support for the USB 3.0s on the front panel of my case, albeit it's a cheaper mobo, but it has USB 3.0s on the back, yet doesn't have a plug for USB 3.0s for front panels on cases.

Also forces you to run AMD catalyst which I don't even need since I'm using an nvidia card. A lot of the drivers won't install correctly because of the catalyst issue.

Other Thoughts: Wouldn't mind a lot of the problems if I had gone with an ATI card, but I have to go with nvidia due to the fact that my uncle works there and gets me stuff from time to time.

Pros: None.

Cons: Will not boot after the third time. Bought it for my sons birthday and he was unable to go back home with the gaming system I promised him. Gigabyte is dead to me.

Other Thoughts: Came packaged well from Newegg. No damage during shipment.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for your comments. We apologize for your difficulty with your GIGABYTE product. Please contact us at newegg-support@gigabyteusa.com with the case number 96614 in the subject line. We will provide personalized service and analysis to help solve your issue ASAP. If the matter is urgent, please send us your contact number, and we will contact you.

GIGABYTE VIP Support Team

Pros: Fast. Lots of features in the bios. Plenty of 6mb Sata ports.

Cons: died after 32 days. rebooting windows 7 64-bit, video went dark. After 1 minute it should have rebooted, turned off power. Waited 5 seconds, tried to power up nothing. Tried another ps, nothing.

Pros: Good price. Respected manufacturer

Cons: Never got it to work

Other Thoughts: I could not install an OS (Tried Windows and Linux).
The problem was that even though the system saw the USB mouse and keyboard in the BIOS setuo, the OS could not find them. Tried booting to a live CD, but it never found the mouse or keyboard. Tried every USB port to no avail. It makes no sense, if the BIOS can see the keyboard, why wouldn't an OS see it?
I really don't think it was something I did wrong. This isn't my first rodeo, I've been building custom machines for 20 years.

Pros: Options for the price can't be beat.

Plenty of room to upgrade. Even if you are on a budget now, you won't have to buy another motherboard later on.

Installing was a breeze. (First time installing an aftermarket MB) and I had no trouble what-so-ever. Booted first time trouble-free.

Unlocking cores was easy

Bios obviously designed for overclockers

Cons: - I didn't care for how they designed the SATA ports.

- Running 2 video cards would make swapping out memory a hassle. But then again, how often does that happen?

- No onboard video, but if you are buying this board, chances are you have a video card to use.

- Needs more fan headers.

- Gigabyte's rebates are a joke. When looking at the final price, do not count on that rebate.

Other Thoughts: Gigabyte makes a good product but they shouldn't bother offering a rebate if they are going to drag their feet honoroing it.

Pros: Works as advertised. I'm unable to clock my ram over 1333 though.

Cons: Unable to clock RAM past 1333 MHz...my RAM goes up to 2400. The mobo itself is too small for my case so it shorts on the right side.

Pros: Easily accessible for plugs with the PC case i have. everything fit perfect, and the bios is a upgrade for the traditional old style more fancy should i say, so far so good.
i would suggest this MOBO for the price.

Cons: no video out put on the mother board so required a video card of some sort. but, i had one either way.

Pros: USB 3.0
PCI, PCI-E, PCI-1X slots
I like the Sata port location

Cons: Hope that your product works correctly, as Gigabyte has the WORST support I've ever encountered. After about 2-3 months of them supposed to be helping me with my motherboard, they simply stopped responding to my emails over a month ago, despite us sending about 6-7 each. Their ignorance combined with the faulty motherboard finally resulted in me asking for a refund and I received that, thankfully due to Newegg, not Gigabyte. That still leaves my potentially damaged processor. I mentioned it a few times, to which the technical support completely ignored the fact that this motherboard had my processor running @1.504 instead of the AMD's specification max of 1.400. Upon calling Gigabyte and asking to speak to a manager, I don't think that is what I got. Instead my call was forwarded to someone that said I should deal with it with AMD and have the warranty cover it. But everyone knows overclocking voids warranties and that's exactly what the insanely high voltage did. Instead of making things right and having the cost coming from them, Newegg took the hit and now they want AMD to pay/fix this potentially damaged processor. Gigabyte may win many awards for their Hardware, but they don't deserve them.

Plus All the cons from my previous review on - 2/5/2013 10:49:49 AM

Other Thoughts: I will never recommend Gigabyte and I will ALWAYS make sure to inform anyone I know about this experience I have with Gigabyte. And since I graduated for Computer Networking Technologies + often fix people's computers, they will listen. Gigabyte refused to make good on their faulty hardware and instead of the costs coming out of their pocket to pay for it, they will pay over time with bad rep from me and whoever I discourage from buying their products.

Pros: The board is simple and clean. For those that aren't going to go crazy overclocking and want a good inexpensive stable motherboard, this one works great.

Cons: I bought this board before the FX chips came out from Newegg. I was moving to Poland from NY so wanted to build me a "future" compatible computer. I built the system on the Phenom II X6 1090T and ATI HD5870, 16gigs of Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 ram. I had to manually change the RAM speed in BIOS, otherwise, it booted up with RAM set to 1333. No big deal. The shocker came when my Rev 1.0 motherboard would not work with AMD's latest FX8350 CPU. Come to find out that Rev 1.0 will not even work with the FX8150, which is the first released Bulldozer. This in spite of the box sporting the AMD FX sticker. I updated the BIOS to the latest version F11, and still there is no support for my CPU. It will show up in POST correctly, but you will get BSOD soon after fully booted up.
Very very disappointed. I've been a Gigabyte user for ages. I had to buy another board (yes, it was Gigabyte GA970a-UD3) in order to have to use the FX8350. That was not a part of my plans.
Gigabyte's reply was (and it was in Polish even though I wrote in English. Using Google to translate Polish reply) "FX8350 processor support if this is technically possible we will try to add in a newer BIOS version." Thanks. Just what I did not want to read. And still no FX8150 support.