AMD motherboard haven’t really seen much change over the past couple of years and since the release of Bulldozer back in October 2011 we haven’t seen any new chipsets for the AM3(+) socket. Due to this fact motherboard vendors have mainly been opting for either BIOS updates to keep these motherboards supporting new technology or revision updates occasionally to bring the motherboards up-to-date. Gigabyte is the latest vendor to do this by upgrading its 990FXA-UD7 motherboard to revision 3.0. This was probably a move done to ensure that Gigabyte have the latest and most up to date flagship AM3(+) motherboard on the market in time for the new FX-9000 series processors AMD released recently.
Gigabyte skipped revision 2.0 and went straight to 3.0 and quite a lot has changed as a result. We find an update to Ultra Durable 4 and a 10 phase CPU VRM, slightly reinforced over the older version to allow for FX-9000 overclocking. The CPU VRM features driver MOSFETs and a rather large heatsink to cool everything. This heatsink is connected to the chipset via a heat pipe too. The memory support is up to 64GB of 2000MHz+ memory and expansion slots include four PCI Express 2.0 X16 slots with the following electrical configs x16/NC/x16/NC or x16/NC/x8/x8 or x8/x8/x8/x8.
Additionally there are two more full sized PCI Express 2.0 slots, wired to 4X, connected to the Southbridge and there is a legacy PCI. Storage is provided by six SATA III 6Gbps ports from the Southbridge and two more SATA III 6Gbps ports from a Marvell 88SE9172. USB 3.0 is provided by two Etron EJ168 controllers for two USB 3.0 via the rear plane and two via a header.
The rest of the connectivity and features are nothing out of the ordinary:
The expected price is $200~ and we should see availability soon.
Image(s) courtesy of Gigabyte
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