Gigabyte 990FX Gaming Motherboard Review

Gigabyte GA-990FX-Gaming - 990FX Chipset
AMD FX-9590 X8 Black Edition (4.7Ghz) 4 x 2MB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache
Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme
1x nVidia GTX 980Ti
2x GSKill RipjawsX PC2133 4GB DDR3 (9-10-9-28)
HyperX 3K 240GB SSD
HP dvd1260i Multiformat 24x Writer
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1050 Watt PSU
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit SP1.

Gigabyte GA-990FX-Gaming - 990FX Chipset
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition (3.2Ghz) 6 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache
Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme
1x nVidia GTX 980Ti
2x GSKill RipjawsX PC2133 4GB DDR3 (9-10-9-28)
HyperX 3K 240GB SSD
HP dvd1260i Multiformat 24x Writer
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1050 Watt PSU
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit SP1.

Our motherboard testing suite has been compiled to subject the system to a variety of different scenarios that help uncover some of the subtle differences in motherboard design.  Normally these differences are driven by the processor and BIOS programming but with the advent of an IMC and PCI Express moving to the CPU we have discovered that raw performance numbers are virtually identical across the systems.  

Our new approach is to look at total system performance and minimize the variances.  The results will tell us how the system responded as a total package and also give us something to use in our comparisons.

For this review I'll be testing the same motherboard using two different types of CPU.  The 1090T is an AM3 socket, still a fast processor but light on technology.  The FX 9590 is a 220W monster CPU for the AM3+ socket supporting faster memory, more cores and is currently the fastest AMD cpu you can buy.  Sadly the FX-9590 is pretty maxed out from the factory so overclocking wasn't really an option.