My thoughts are similar to XenonMan's. At the original $1100 price, the 990 offered a lot of value. Pressures induced by HDMI v1.3 and time in production have paired to yield an even lower price for the 990 (we're at $700 instead of $1100), so I think that if you go that route it's very hard to argue against it. On the other hand, Sunfire's processors are undeniably solid products. Will it sound better? For movies, the answer is probably "no" - but for music, there may be some benefits (although it's hard to quantify those, and they are likely to land solidly in the realm of "diminishing returns"). If you don't need HDMI v1.3, either option is fundamentally sound.