The ASUS M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 is an exceptional motherboard.

It\'s well laid out, very well specified and does everything it\'s designed to do in a simple, straightforward and reliable way.

I only had one stability issue during the whole of testing and that turned out to be the JMicron PATA and SATA driver. Once uninstalled and using the onboard AMD drivers all was well.

Beyond that the only negatives i could mention are 1) that the VGA switch to activate the full 16x capability of the lower PCIe slot is a slightly clumsy solution and 2) that the SATA 6.0 Gb/s sockets could be a little better positioned on the board. These, however, are just splitting hairs as far as i\'m concerned.

In terms of performance AMD boards i would say that this is the most impressive i\'ve used since the good old Socket 939 Nforce 4 days! As i said earlier in the review recent AMD boards from most manufacturers have been a little lacklustre when i came to getting the most out of your CPU\'s but i can happily report that in my opinion the M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 has changed all that.



It\'s one touch clocking and core unlockers work very well indeed - i\'m glad that ASUS have adopted this type of feature since i suspected only the competition would have facilities like these.

On top of this i would say that the bios level overclocking options and both the stability of the 8+2 Phase Power Design supply and quality of the new 890GX and SB850 chipset only further enhance the ease and ability of the board to return simple and stable overclocks.

All in all i am blown away by this board. Indeed i\'m seriously considering making the upgrade myself since i don\'t really have a bad word to say.

In conclusion, if you\'re either considering an AMD system as your next build or simply upgrading your motherboard the M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 comes very highly recommended indeed - good job ASUS.

Pros

+ Superb overclocking performance
+ Reasonable price considering performance
+ Looks great
+ Excellent fanless design that doesn\'t run hot
+ Excellent Software support - wonderful selection of utilities
+ Very stable platform
+ Well specified motherboard
+ USB 3.0 and SATA III 6.0Gb/s capability
+ \'Core Unlocker\' and \'Turbo Key II\' are excellent features


Cons

- SATA position could be better
- VGA switch card not a particularly streamlined solution
- Slightly unstable JMicron driver

As a result of this i choose to award it our top accolade - the Vortez Hardware \'Gold\' award.