Introduction

Back in early June the AMD 990FX chipset release took us a little off-guard, I mean here we have this all new motherboard series yet are lacking the Bulldozer FX processors to show off the (hopefully) true muscle power.

Meanwhile all reviews and tests that are published are based on the latest 3.7 GHz Phenom II processors, and on a 990FX motherboard... well you are just not going to see anything different, not in features and not in performance.

The one thing different is SLI support from NVIDIA on the 990FX series, but truth to be told... you really do want to see the perf difference in-between say Sandy Bridge based Core i7 2600 processors and then a Phenom II on this 990FX motherboard. So we'll be waiting on AMD's upcoming new high-end processors for that developed under codename Bulldozer (the upcoming FX series processors).

In the meantime motherboard manufacturers are chunking out the most beautiful hardware. I mean look at what we are reviewing today, it is the 990FXA-GD80 from MSI, recently they pimped out the 990FX chipset with additional features, plastered it all onto nice black/blue styled motherboards and are going in for the kill.

So once again we pop in a Phenom II processor and have a look at its performance, which will be the same as it has been for a year now. Yep, AMD completely released the 990FX chipset at the wrong time, it should have been released alongside the Bulldozer FX series processors. But ah well, what can you do... have a peek at that crazy sexy looking GD80 and then let's head onwards into the review.