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.