Gigabyte's top-tier socket AM3+ motherboard lineup is shaping up in a big way, with a bleeding-edge GA-990FXA-UD7 at the top of the pile. Gigabyte has yet another motherboard to cater to fans of the AM3+ platform, the GA-990FXA-UD5. The UD5 features a more conventional-looking component layout, with the northbridge located where it usually is. You still get the 10-phase VRM from the UD7, the black Ultra Durable 3 PCB, but this board is designed for multi-GPU setups with up to 3 graphics cards: supporting 3-way SLI and CrossFireX.

Expansion slots include five PCI-Express 2.0 x16, of which three (slots 1,3,5) are PCI-Express 2.0 wired to the AMD 990FX northbridge, with electrical configurations of x16/x16/NC or x16/x8/x8. Slots 2 and 4 are electrical x4, wired to the SB950 southbridge. Other slots include a PCI-E x1, and a legacy PCI. Storage connectivity is similar to that of the UD7, with eight SATA 6 Gb/s internal ports, a power-eSATA, and a normal eSATA.Other connectivity features include 8+2 channel HD audio driven by Realtek's ALC889A CODEC, FireWire, four USB 3.0 ports (two rear, two via header), a single gigabit Ethernet, and a number of USB 2.0 ports. Like most new Gigabyte boards, the UD5 features dual-BIOS with EFI-like extensions that let it boot from volumes greater than 2.2 TB in size. The GA-990FXA-UD5 from Gigabyte should target a market sweetspot price in the performance category of motherboards.