[devguy]

I think the 790x board is the better value. With PCIe 2.0, most cards aren't bottlenecked by the 8x lane, so having dual 16x lanes is a moot point (trust me, I have the 790fx/sb600 board and the difference of crossfire with everything else the same is under 5% with both 3870 & 4870s).

Aside from that, the only real differences between the 790fx/790x gigabyte boards is that the 790fx board has the heatpipe connected to the southbridge, and has a second gigabit lan and two more SATA ports (from the gigabyte controller) BOTH have the 8+2 power phase!

Although, does anyone know what that other heatsink beneath the southbridge is cooling? It is not there on the 790x board. Perhaps it is cooling a better Gigabyte RAID controller? If it is say a hardware controller, then it might be really nice. It is labeled "363_HS".

And one of the reasons I will continue to buy Gigabyte boards because they seem to be the only board company that uses the much superior ALC889A onboard audio. No other manufacturer uses this one, so I cannot get my DTS: Connect fix without a dedicated sound card.