After testing the ASUS M2A-VM I was a bit dissapointed with its performance and assumed all AMD RS690 motherboards are just a bit slower. After benchmarking the Sapphire PI-AM2RS690MHD I realized that this is not the case. Sapphire's board can keep up easily with RD580 based high-end boards in most benchmarks. The BIOS options are well rounded, so tweaking and overclocking is easy.
Sapphire did a great job with this board, it has HDMI on-board, which supports audio over HDMI as well of course. The on-board audio is working quite well too, thanks to Realteks' ALC882D which features Dolby Digital Live output.
In the past buying Sapphire motherboards has been a bit difficult because not so many retailers were carrying their boards. If Sapphire can get the board out fast and in numbers I think this board can be a great seller.