Gigabyte release their Bulldozer UD5 board

Gigabyte has already announced its AM3+ UD7 recently but now it has announced the more affordable UD5 board to be released next month. The board will be based on the 990FX chipset and with the AM3+ socket which will have 10 phase VRM support. The board will be in black with Gigabyte’s normal Ultra Durable components that we have come to expect from mid-high end motherboards.

The board will support 3 way SLI and 3 way crossfireX. The PCI-E configuration is that there are 5 slots. Slots 1, 3 and 5 are wired to the NorthBridge. Slot 1 and 3 operate at 16X. Slot 5 operates at 8X. Slots 2 and 4 are wired to the SouthBridge chip and are both 4X. The board also includes at PCI-E 1X slot and a legacy PCI slot.

So in terms of graphics card configurations you can run:

• 1 card at 16X
• 2 cards at 16X
• 3 cards at 8X

The board also has 8+2 channel HD audio, 4 USB 3 ports (2 front 2 back) , gigabit ethernet, Dual bios and the ability to boot from drives larger than 2TB.

Pricing is about £170 as you can already pre-order this board from Aria PC here:
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Motherboards/AMD+AM3%2B+%28900+Chipset%29/Gigabyte+990FXA-UD5+AMD+990FX+%28Socket+AM3%2B%29+DDR3+PCI-Express+ATX+Motherboard+?productId=44725

The full specifications of this board are as follows:

CPUAM3+ Socket:

• Support for AMD AM3+ FX processors
• Support for AMD AM3 Phenom™ II processors / AMD Athlon™ II processors
• (Please refer “CPU Support List” for more information.)

Hyper Transport Bus 

• 5200 MT/s

Chipset 

• North Bridge: AMD 990FX
• South Bridge: AMD SB950

Memory 

• 4 x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 32 GB of system memory (Note 1)
• Dual channel memory architecture
• Support for DDR3 2000(O.C.)/1866/1600/1333/1066 MHz memory modules (Note 2)
• (Please refer “Memory Support List” for more information.)

Audio 

• Realtek ALC889 codec
• High Definition Audio
• 2/4/5.1/7.1-channel
• Support for Dolby Home Theater
• Support for S/PDIF Out

LAN 

• 1 x Realtek RTL8111E chip (10/100/1000 Mbit)

Expansion Slots

• 2 x PCI Express x16 slots, running at x16 (PCIEX16_1, PCIEX16_2) (Note 3)
• 1 x PCI Express x16 slots, running at x8 (PCIEX8) (Note 4)
• 2 x PCI Express x16 slots, running at x4 (PCIEX4_1, PCIEX4_2)
• 1 x PCI Express x1 slot (All PCI Express slots conform to the PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
• 1 x PCI slot

Multi-Graphics Technology 

• Support for 2-Way/3-Way AMD CrossFireX™ and NVIDIA SLI™ technology

Storage InterfaceSouth Bridge:

• 6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (SATA3_0~SATA3_5) supporting up to 6 SATA 6Gb/s devices
• Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID5, RAID 10 and JBOD
• 2 x Marvell 88SE9172 chips:
• 2 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (GSATA3_6, GSATA3_7) supporting up to 2 SATA 6Gb/s devices
• 2 x eSATA 6Gb/s connectors on the back panel supporting up to 2 SATA 6Gb/s devices
• Support for RAID 0 and RAID 1

USBSouth Bridge:

• Up to 14 USB 2.0/1.1 ports (8 ports on the back panel, 6 ports available through the internal USB headers)
• 2 x Etron EJ168 chips:
• Up to 4 USB 3.0/2.0 ports (2 ports on the back panel, 2 ports available through the internal USB header)

IEEE 1394VIA VT6308 chip:

• Up to 2 IEEE 1394a ports (1 port on the back panel, 1 port available through the internal IEEE 1394a header)

Internal I/O Connectors 

• 1 x 24-pin ATX main power connector
• 1 x 8-pin ATX 12V power connector
• 8 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors
• 1 x CPU fan header
• 2 x system fan headers
• 1 x power fan header
• 1 x front panel header
• 1 x front panel audio header
• 1 x S/PDIF Out header
• 3 x USB 2.0/1.1 headers
• 1 x USB 3.0/2.0 header
• 1 x IEEE 1394a header
• 1 x serial port header
• 1 x clearing CMOS jumper
• 1 x Trusted Platform Module (TPM) header

 Back Panel Connectors 

• 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port
• 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector
• 1 x IEEE 1394 port
• 8 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
• 2 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports
• 2 x eSATA 6Gb/s connector
• 1 x RJ-45 port
• 6 x audio jacks (Center/Subwoofer Speaker Out/Rear Speaker Out/Side Speaker Out/Line In/Line Out/Microphone)

I/O Controller 

• ITE IT8720 chip

H/W Monitoring 

• System voltage detection
• CPU/System temperature detection
• CPU/System/Power fan speed detection
• CPU overheating warning
• CPU/System/Power fan fail warning
• CPU/System fan speed control (Note 5)

BIOS

• 2 x 32 Mbit flash
• Use of licensed AWARD BIOS
• Support for DualBIOS™
• PnP 1.0a, DMI 2.0, SM BIOS 2.4, ACPI 1.0b

Unique Features 

• Support for @BIOS
• Support for Q-Flash
• Support for Xpress BIOS Rescue
• Support for Download Center
• Support for Xpress Install
• Support for Xpress Recovery2
• Support for EasyTune (Note 6)
• Support for Easy Energy Saver
• Support for Smart Recovery
• Support for Auto Green
• Support for ON/OFF Charge
• Support for Cloud OC
• Support for 3TB+ Unlock
• Support for Q-Share

Bundle Software

• Norton Internet Security (OEM version)

Operating System 

• Support for Microsoft Windows 7/ Vista/ XP

Form Factor 

• ATX Form Factor; 30.5cm x 24.4cm

Note(Note 1) Due to Windows 32-bit operating system limitation, when more than 4 GB of physical memory is installed, the actual memory size displayed will be less than 4 GB.

(Note 2) To support a DDR3 1866 MHz (and above) memory, you must install an AMD AM3+ CPU first.

(Note 3) For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16_1 slot; if you are installing two PCI Express graphics cards, it is recommended that you install them in the PCIEX16_1 and PCIEX16_2 slots.

(Note 4) The PCIEX8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16_2 slot. When PCIEX8 is populated with a PCI Express expansion card, the PCIEX16_2 slot will operate at up to x8 mode.

(Note 5) Whether the CPU/system fan speed control function is supported will depend on the CPU/system cooler you install.

(Note 6) Available functions in EasyTune may differ by motherboard model.