I am glad that you did a review and performance test on this motherboard. I was actually considering building a new pc with very similar components with only difference being ATI Radeon HD 4870 instead of 4890, and 7200rmp HDD instead of WD1500HlFS. But I have a question regarding PSU do I need a 880Watt PSU? Will a 500 Watt PSU be sufficient for the system.

Thanks

Fishli 500W is more than enough, for this build with a 4870 you would only need a 400-450w (good brand) PSU to run it, if you want proof instead of word of mouth use this http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp I am planning the same build as you only with a Phenom II 720 + my old X-Fi sound card with a Corsair HX450.

Good luck with your build

Informative review.
Thanks also for telling us about the Cool and Quiet feature which works even when overclocking (thats an important thing for me).
Also usefull to know about the fan regulation working with both 3 and 4 pin fans. So many boards don't do this with 3 pin fans anymore and yet there are still so many coolers with them.
Cheers!

Its really not a surprise that the MA770T-UP3P is a good
board. In fact the MA770-Series of boards was a good design
right from the start a couple years ago, that was gradualy
updated by newer chipsets and BIOS revisions.
The Gigabyte MA770 is one of a few remaining longliving designs and that simply shows in a time where boarddesigns
are beeing abandonend in favour of new ones before they
mature.

Would have been nice to compare to an AM2 platform to see how much difference DDR3 makes.