CROATIAN DISTRIBUTOR of Gigabyte kit, Ve-mil received a shipment of motherboards from Gigabyte, containing a set of MA790FX-DQ6 motherboards. As soon as one of our readers tipped us off, we showed up in a near-by store to shop for some bananas, and took the plunge of paying 180 quid (252 EUR, 366 USD) to get our mitts on a board. If you're falling from your feet about the price of the motherboard, don't worry - it will carry a more normal cost in countries without 22% VAT.

If you take a look at the Ve-mil's price list, the board is still listed, for 180 quid for cash, and 190 quid if you pay with plastique.

So, what did we actually buy?

First of all, 1.17 kilo of Bananas (75 pence), imported from Costa Rica (Bonita). Secondly, a MA790FX-DQ6 motherboard

The retail packaging sports Phenom FX, Phenom, Athlon 64 X2 and 790FX logos, while the spec sheet reveals that this board has no less than 42 PCIe 2.0 lanes, or a massive 84 PCIe 1.0a lanes (when talking about bandwidth, of course). Two of the slots are PCIe Gen2 x16, two are PCIe Gen2 x8. Power-wise, two can deliver 150W, two can deliver 75W (Gen2 x8 Electrical), but quite frankly - how could this board deliver theoretical 450W using nothing but conventional 24+8-pin plus 4-pin Molex is above our level of comprehension. Then again, this chipset eats only 8 Watts, a testament to the engineering capabilities coming from AMD Canada and TSMC.

Look what we have here, a Phenom FX logo... too bad AMD execs did not have the balls for FASN8

Inside reveals an ad for teamed 1GbE network adapters, which means AMD took a page from Nvidia's nForce 590 book and brought this feature into the world of AMD motherboards. We'll show you a more detailed look in an upcoming article.

These slots are just dying to get four RV670 boards... or CrossFireX

We are running tests right now, and we will be bringing you a review of this part of AMD's Holy Trinity (Spider "platform") soon, for a quick comparison what changed in a year, with Nforce 590 and AMD's own 580X motherboards. µ