AMD CPUs have taken a backseat to the Intel juggernaut as of
late. The latest AMD Phenom X4 9850
does not have the performance to match the latest Intel Core 2 Quad CPUs. AMD
has been forced to compete in price/performance and even there they are
fighting a losing battle as the Intel Q6600 outperforms the 9850 but offers the
same price online today.
AMD announced their Spider platform last year with the
launch of their 790FX motherboard chipset and the Phenom 9600 series.
Unfortunately due to a TLB error, and subpar performance compared to Intel
equivalents this platform was not as successful as it could have been. With the
release of the Phenom B3 revision, the platform and CPU performance has come up
to par with the Intel equivalently priced CPU. Gigabyte is a Tier-1 motherboard
manufacturer based in Taiwan. They are well known for their high-end
motherboards, video cards and other computer components. They have motherboards
based upon virtually every known motherboard chipset from AMD, Intel, NVIDIA,
VIA and S3. Today’s board
review is based upon the AMD 790FX chipset and the board is the Gigabyte
MA-790FX-DS5.
