For whatever reason it looks like the mobo makers didn't bother to read AMD's tech docs while they were working with Bulldozer engineeering samples as the new architecture has been quite a challenge for all of them including Asus who had the inside line with development boards for AMD.

Asus, Gigabyte and others keep cranking out new BIOS versions but in an effort to correct one issue, they create two new issues. As you can see with the Gigabyte BIOS they are on version F7e and still sorting out issues that should not have existed from the get go. IMO the mobo makers need to step up to the plate and fix ALL of the BIOS issues that exist. They've had plenty of time to resolve these issues by now.

To illustrate the point Gigabyte now has BIOS version F7h available as a beta on their website and I'm sure there will be many more versions before they sort all of the issues out.

One advantage this board from Gigabyte (like most motherboards from this company) has over most motherboards from about all other makers is that it uses the superior Realtek ALC889 integrated audio instead of the usual, lower-specs ALC 892.

For example, AFAIK, MSI is not using the ALC889 on any of its boards, while Asus is reserving this better audio chip only to a few of its most expensive models.

I expected better performance in this price class. It's better to decide either for a solid 150$ board or go for the ASUS Crosshair Formula which delivers a real oppurtunity to scale cpu performance together with paired graphic cards.