Tom's Socket AM2 Motherboard Summer Slam

Features
By Don Woligroski
published

Gigabyte M59SLI-S5

Gigabyte brings a quality board to the table with three PCIe x16 graphics card sized slots.

slide show: Gigabyte M59SLI S5

Ports

For expandability, the board features three PCIe x16 slots for video accelerators. The third x16 slot actually runs at x8 speed maximum. In addition, there are two PCIe x1 slots, and two standard PCI slots. For USB and Firewire connectivity we have the four integrated USB ports, and three headers to support for six more USB ports. A single Firewire (IEEE1394) port is on the motherboard and a header for a second port is available on the board as well. Another two gigabit network ports on the panel utilize the nForce5 GbE controller. The SATA connectivity is taken care of with the nForce 590 MCP controlling six nForce ports for SATA/300 devices and a single standard UltraATA/100 connector.

Audio

The M59-SLI-S5 is the only board in the roundup to use the Realtek ALC888DD codec for 7.1-channel high definition audio. Six audio mini jacks, a single SPDIF coax and a single optical out are available for audio connectivity. Headers are available for 5x2 pin front audio, CD-in and SPDIF in and out.

Cooling

The M59SLI features some very impressive cooling. Similar to the Asus boards, a large heat pipe connects the Northbridge, Southbridge and power supply components. The number of available fan headers is typical, three in total, one of which is likely to be used with the CPU.

Bundle

The M59SLI-S5 is the only board in the roundup that did not arrive in a retail package, so we can only get an idea of the software bundle from the Gigabyte Website. The retail package should include: Easy-Tune 5 & M.I.T. (Motherboard Intelligent Tweaker), which is Gigabyte's signature CPU overclocking and voltage tweaking software, R.G.B. (Robust graphics Booter), which, I believe, is Gigabyte's graphics card overclocking software, but without trying it out I can't be certain.

Notes

It is certainly very interesting to see a board with three PCIe x16 slots. For some time now the idea of motherboards that would facilitate three graphics cards has been thrown around - two graphics cards for multi-GPU rendering and one for physics calculations. There are other uses for the third x16 port of course, but it's still nice to see the technology moving in that direction.

slide show: Gigabyte M59SLI S5

Don Woligroski
2 Comments Comment from the forums
  • autorotation
    ive had a headache with this board =/ didnt do my homework and bought a phenom x4 9600 and then found out its not compatible with this board =/ i also bought a evga geforce gts 250 512 mb card and it wont post on this board and i get no display, im assuming its just not compatible because i posted it on another board with a psu that was weaker than mine and it had a display. if anyone can shed light on my situation with this video card not posting on this board, would be great. as far as recommending this board, im not even sure its still in production, but i would not reccomend it. spend the extra cash and get a board that can handle a quad core and a modern gfx card. also the cpu fan mounting bracket had one of the tabs break off on me, so i had to get a new psu fan mount, so that gives you an idea of what high quality this board is anyways =/ plus i think i heard that epox went out of business.....
    Reply
  • I bought two of these boards and both ended up with the same problem of a read-out of 4 red lights saying the processor is bad!Wrong!They are both fine and this is the worst board I have ever had!I will not be buying any more of MSI boards again!Still not sure what the problem is,but these are going straight to the trash!!!!
    Reply