-Excellent workmanship. Board feels very robust. Love the minimalist black/grey.
-The on-board Dolby Audio is astonishingly good for an integrated solution. I will not be getting an X-Fi after all.
-Fast, and feature rich.
-Intel Smart Response
-Price.
Weaknesses:
-I don't like how Gigabyte does their on-board SATA inputs.
-As has been stated, the driver CD is required to get LAN up and running which is a bit annoying these days.
-Old school style BIOS.
Summary:
People have reported some initial boot problems with this board. I did not experience any despite initially setting up with my notoriously problematic OCZ Vertex 3.
I'm extremely satisfied. System is fast, stable and a great value.
Pretty easy install, lots of options. Love the bluetooth proximity feature, very cool.
Bios is easy to get around, and the included software allows for easy over clocking for newbies like me
Sound quality from the Dolby system is impressive for main board sound
Weaknesses:
In a Z9+ case the SATA ports can be a bit of a pain to get too
Some SATA ports and the Ethernet controller are not detected on a fresh install of Windows 7 64 Home Ultimate edition. Once driver CD was installed all is good.
Summary:
Combined with 2500K chipset and Corsair Vengence ram kit. For the money I am very impressed. Great value for the money.
Running with a Momentus Hybrid drive and Corsair H80 water cooler and boot times are very quick (half that of my previous system) and the general system speed is amazing, even compared to my i7 equipped laptop.
This was a great deal, glad I went with this instead of an AMD8120