Conclusion
This has been an exceptional board to work with. It should put to rest anybody's belief that a board with integrated graphics is boring or good for nothing other than office work. It has everything you could possibly need for the home and office crowd, plenty of multimedia muscle for the artsy folk, and even enough graphics power to satisfy the casual to middle gamer, and if you need more of something, there are 2 extra PCI slots, a PCI-e x16 slot, and a PCI-e x1 slot for adding on. The board has remained completely stable throughout the entire testing phase, I haven't had a single nasty surprise. The folks at Gigabyte have designed a board that should be used as the basis of comparison when looking at any mainstream feature-packed motherboard.
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| REPORT CARD : Gigabyte GA-M61PM-S2 Motherboard (Socket AM2) |
| Quality | 4 | The motherboard components and build quality are very good. Includes nVidia's nForce 430 chipset and updated Realtek audio. |
| Innovation | 4 | The use of nVidia's nForce430 chipset is what makes this motherboard interesting. The northbridge and southbridge are integrated into one chip, and also includes decent video. Unfortunately only VGA output. |
| Performance | 3 | This motherboard does not like to overclock at all, and is very stable. Gamers and Overclockers should look elsewhere. |
| Installation | 3 | Board layout is decent, but nothing to write home about. |
| Value | 4 | The GA-M61PM-S2 can be found online for around $80. Other nForce430 boards are about the same price, and even include DVI output. The onboard 7.1 Realtek audio makes this is a good value, but integrated DVI would have made this a steal. |
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| FINAL VERDICT: 4 out of 5 stars |
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