We weren't particularly impressed with AMD's 790FX chipset when we took our first look at it last month. The Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DQ6 motherboard we tested had numerous issues, including BIOS quirks and relatively high power consumption. The chipset itself appeared flawed, as well, exhibiting slow USB and PCI performance and compatibility problems between Windows Vista and Serial ATA drives running in AHCI mode.
To gather a broader impression of the 790FX, we've rounded up new motherboards based on the chipset from Asus and MSI to see how they compare with Gigabyte's initial offering. We've also dug deeper into the SB600's support for AHCI in Vista, discovering some troubling performance characteristics along the way. Keep reading for a quick look at the current 790FX motherboard landscape. New boards from Asus and MSI
With a street price hovering around $265, Gigabyte's GA-MA790FX-DQ6 comes in at the very high end of the 790FX motherboard spectrum. There, it's joined by Asus' M3A32-MVP Deluxe WiFi-AP Edition, which can be had for about $35 less. At the other end of the map we find MSI's K9A2 Platinum selling for as little as $156—clearly the bargain of the three. Time constraints prevent us from giving these boards a full work-up. We've run them through our full chipset test suite, though, and have a complete set of results to report.