AMD is a company that not too long ago was on top. They had done something that no one thought possible; they were able to outperform Intel clock for clock. But they had a problem; they had a winning CPU but had to rely on others for a solid platform to run on. This prompted AMD to buy ATi (one of the companies that had a good chipset for AMD) which gave them a GPU business and a chipset business. The problem has been paying the bill on that particular purchase. This has prevented them from putting a lot of money into R&D and has also led to some, well unimpressive products (on the CPU side not the GPU). We have worked through several CPUs and chipsets; each one improving a little over the other but never really catching up to what Intel has on the market. Now things could be different; nVidia has allowed SLI on an AMD chipset and AMD is making good strides in terms of what their chipsets can do (with limitations from the CPU and IMC). We have their latest chipset in the form of the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5. This is a Three-Way SLI AMD motherboard with lots to offer. We are going to look at the design, layout, and cover some design philosophy and features along the way.
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Conclusion Part I -
So far I like what I am seeing with the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5. It is a clean board with what looks like a lot of potential. The 8+2 phase power system should keep things humming even with the most power thirsty AMD CPUs while leaving enough to make sure you can push your RAM to its limits too. AMD has had some good luck with their integrated SATA controller and we see no reason to think we will not get at least the same if not betting performance from this board. Like I said, I like what I see and there is so much more to talk about. We are going to diving right into this product and see just what we can get from it. We will also do what we can to try out the three-way SLI and Crossfire…
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