With AMD more or less pulling out of the high-end CPU market, it looks like the motherboard makers are following suit, at least if Gigabyte's latest AM3+ motherboard is anything to go by. The GA-970A-DS3 is part of Gigabyte's Ultra Durable 4 Classic series which is a more affordable range of boards which is target towards your average consumer rather than performance junkies.
The board isn't going to impress those used to spending a small fortune on their motherboard, but Gigabyte has at least managed to include enough connectivity to make this an overall appealing board, at least if it's priced accordingly. The board is a full-size ATX model with two x16 PCI Express slots, although the secondary slot only operates in x4 mode due to the use of the AMD 970 chipset. The board also has three x1 PCI Express slots and two PCI slots.
As with most recent AM3+ motherboards we're looking at six SATA 6Gbps ports and the board has pin-headers for up to six additional USB 2.0 ports, but the only other feature of note is Gigabyte's dual BIOS. Around the back things are as spartan with a pair of PS/2 ports, six USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports via an Etron host controller, a Gigabit Ethernet port and a mere three audio jacks that supports 5.1-channel analogue output. There's always a market for basic motherboards and not everyone are running multiple graphics cards in their system or overclock their CPU, something that's easy to overlook when you're always surrounded by high-end gear.Source: Gigabyte

Read more: Gigabyte quietly launches the 970A-DS3 AM3+ motherboard by VR-Zone.com