What we have here is a motherboard that comes in at a very affordable price point but one that could be at the heart of a considerably potent and very capable high end machine! To trade blows (and quite often better) a high end board like the Crosshair IV Extreme is something else. Of course there are caveats in that updated chipset drivers could have a noteworthy effect on scores but in all honesty I couldn't see the boosts being so great that the A9DA-S would get left behind.