Hi guys, so I am switching as stated above for graphics cards slot reasons.. take a single look at the PCI slot position and spacing on the UD7 and you will see why, anyone trying to run an SLI system with that motherboard on air cooling is headed for hot trouble interms of temperatures. The 2 cards have to sit on top of each other.

Anyway with this new motherboard I am going to be getting much wider spacing between my 2 cards, and thats all it needs as I have tested in a friends computer the spacing with my 2 cards : ) From full loads being at over 97c to dropping down to about 70-80c clearly shows me that more spacing was all they needed (obviously)

But in terms of the motherboard its self, what are your thoughts? Yes I COULD of got an Asus Rampage III Extreme but decided against it for 2 reasons, 1 this board was a little cheaper and 2 I just preferred the feature set on this one. I don't think the Asus Rampage offers TO MUCH advantage over this board unless of course I choose to go watercooling and wish to overclock my via Iphone, which I will do via the controller I get with the board anyway)

But yeah, other then the reasons I bought this motherboards, what are your thoughts on it? A good upgrade? A small upgrade but the benefit makes up for it? A terrible upgrade? Let me know.

Thanks guys, I have read the GURU3D Review and they loved it.

I'm currently trying to decide between the MSI Big Bang (+ i7-990x) vs P67 Asus Maximus Extreme IV (+ i7-2600k).

Leaning toward the P67, which allows for a cheaper CPU that is still quite fast, although it will depend a bit on whether I go with dual video cards and/or a PCI-e SSD drive.

:drool: nice budget you must have...btw to both you and the OP might be interested in the ASUS Rampage III Extreme Black Edition, which supports the 990X I think and is an upgraded version of the original version

As an owner of an MSI BB Xpower all I can say is it's a great mobo. I've got my I7 950 OC'd to 4.2GHz. (It has OC Genie for those who want the "auto OCing" approach.) I'm using 2 5870's in Crossfire.

I have nothing that uses PCI so I do not need any PCI slots. My Cretive Titanium uses the top PCI-E 1x. (I never used the included sound card.)

That leaves me 2 16x slots. Any 1x and 4x slot cards will fit in 16x slots so should I need to add anything, I just have to get one of those form factors. Being a gaming rig, there is not much I need to add beyond what is already on it though.

The features this board offers for the price are worth every penny if you ask me. I simply love it.

Upgrading from an already great motherboard, to another great, expensive motherboard in of the same socket when Intel has a newer socket out seems fairly silly. I mean, it's almost $300 to not really "upgrade" at all. 97 degree load temps for GPUs are actually just fine, granted, if you want to overclock, your temps are a bit more important. Also, I guessing that when you say they have to be on top of eachother, you're talking about when using the PCIe x16 slots, right? You really wont see a performance hit when using x8. Maybe a few % at most.