Introduction

With our FX-8150 well and truly having done the rounds in launch coverage, it's time to see what's going on with some of the boards that we've been collecting here over the past few weeks prior to the launch of Bulldozer.

We've got boards from ASRock, ASUS and GIGABYTE, but we'll start off today by checking out the MSI offering - the 990FXA-GD80. As usual, we'll start off by checking out the package before we take a closer look at the board itself.

Once that's done we'll move into the BIOS to see what's going on before we get into the performance side of things. Normally we'd also cover overclocking, but unfortunately, like what has happened to other sites, our FX-8150 has moved to greener silicon.

We're in the process of getting another FX-8150, but we'll be tossing up later if we choose to continue overclocking the processor, as the last thing we want to do is have a second die on us. Hopefully there's just a few dud ones floating about and this isn't a problem we'll see show up more and more as time goes on.

For now, though, let's get into the package of our MSI 990FXA-GD80 and see exactly what's going on.

The Package

Checking out the box, it's pretty typical of the GD80. We've got the front and back and as usual the front opens up to give us a larger run down on some of the main features that the motherboard offers while also giving us a closer look at it.

Getting inside the package, we've got an absolute bucket load of paperwork to go along with our driver CD. You can see we've got a quick setup and normal manual present along with a couple more manuals explaining some of the software that's on offer.

In the cable department we've got six SATA cables, two Molex to SATA connectors, three SLI bridges, I/O back plate and some little headers which make adding cables like USB and front panel connectors a little easier.

Along with all that, we've got a USB 3.0 connector included in the package that can be installed at the back of your case. The added extra is pretty typical from the higher end MSI boards and we're not going to complain about more USB 3.0 ports.