While AMD's new Phenom II chips support DDR2 and are compatible with existing AM2+ boards, their full potential is only realized when equipped with a few sticks of fast DDR3. Unfortunately, so far, the pool of available AM3 / DDR3 capable boards has been rather small with only a few choices. The majority of available DDR3 equipped AM3 boards also lack the multiple PCI-E x16 slots necessary to support full CrossFireX, beyond just two cards. One of the few boards with both DDR3 and full CrossFireX support is ASUS' M4A79T Deluxe, which we briefly checked out in our initial look at the AMD AM3 Phenom IIs. Today, we'll be examining the second DDR3 full CrossFireX capable AM3 board to hit our labs, the MSI 790FX-GD70, and we'll be putting it up against the M4A79T, head-to-head to see how it stacks up...
MSI 790FX-GD70 AM3 Motherboard
Marco Chiappetta
Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com
