The first crop of 790FX boards certainly has its share of problems, too. Gigabyte's GA-MA790FX-DQ6 suffers from a number of BIOS-related issues that really need to be fixed before we would even consider recommending the board. And it's not like this is a pre-release product whose kinks are still being worked out; the DQ6 was selling online before the 790FX officially launched. The DQ6 also suffers from a poor graphics slot layout and alarmingly high power consumption given the 790FX's 10W TDP. It's not cheap, either. With street prices currently hovering around $270, the DQ6 costs nearly as much as the fastest Phenom you can buy. Our problems with 790FX motherboards haven't been limited to Gigabyte, either. We haven't yet had the opportunity to test MSI's riff on the Spider platform, but we've found Asus' M3A32-MVP Deluxe to have numerous BIOS-related issues and questionable stability. The fact that the top two mobo makers can't get their initial 790FX offerings dialed for the chipset's launch doesn't give us a lot of faith in the platform.

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