In the end, the 790FX is a bandwidth-rich new north bridge chip held back by a dated south bridge and flaky motherboard implementations. AMD will have to do better if it expects the Spider platform to take off with enthusiasts. In its current state, we simply can't recommend the 790FX.

If you want to pair a Phenom with NVIDIA graphics boards in SLI then the nForce 780a chipset is, as we mentioned, your only choice, and from that perspective the Crosshair II Formula is an excellently configured part to meet those demands (assuming you can live without eSATA). Outside of that narrow sphere, AMD's 790FX chipset is much better value if a Phenom CPU is your weapon of choice, and failing that the grass is still both greener and far more lush on the Intel side of the proverbial fence.