Asus Crosshair III Formula coming

[perkam]

IMHO the newest MSI is still the best flagship AM3 board there is to date, followed by the GBT.


Where is Foxconn in all of this BTW?

We're all doubting Asus before official specs have even been released.

Asus doesn't make mediocre high end motherboards. If it is placed above the M4A79T-Deluxe, then there will be a valid reason for it.

Perkam

[Macadamia]

Asus doesn't make mediocre high end motherboards.
Perkam

C2F was quite bad for ASUS's normal standards.

[saaya]

Asus doesn't make mediocre high end motherboards. If it is placed above the M4A79T-Deluxe, then there will be a valid reason for it.

so your saying their boards rock until proven otherwise?
dont you think thats a bit biased?

what oficial specs do you mean?
we can all see it has one nic and 5 sata, no xifi onboard sound, 2 pciE slots, a standard passive heatsink...

[[XC] gomeler]

Why make a high-end 790FX motherboard and not include 3 PCIe slots for tri-fire? Same flaw Gigabyte has with their 790FXT-UD5P, great board but can't use 4770/4890 Tri-fire.

IMHO the newest MSI is still the best flagship AM3 board there is to date, followed by the GBT.


Where is Foxconn in all of this BTW?

You ever use any of the MSI AM3 motherboards? They are pieces of garbage with VRM that can barely handle a X3 720

[Oldguy932]

I needs this board.

I think the number of pcie slots was kept down at 2 because most people don't buy more than 2 cards for xfire. Vdroop I haven't noticed to be a problem on any board built with the 790Fx chipset from Asus. The original crosshair depended on what cpu was in. Not sure about the second one because I didn't get that one. How many sata ports does one person need? I would say at most 5 for the average person if they decided to run raid 0+1 and had an sata dvd-rw drive.

[largon]

4+1 phases with double inductors and all of a sudden it's 8+2 phases...

[G.Foyle]

How many sata ports does one person need? I would say at most 5 for the average person if they decided to run raid 0+1 and had an sata dvd-rw drive.

I am using 6 right now: 4 HDDs, one DVD burner and one for front panel eSATA. 5 is not enough, especially for a high end board, and even more so when your competitor has twice as many.

[Manicdan]

i like the simple and clean look, im not a fan of UV explosion style MBs. as far as SATAs, 4 is enough to max out the southbridge raid anyway, so that dosnt seem to be a problem. but wtf is that wide white slot in the center, who uses old PCI anymore. and is it just me or does this look shorter than a full atx

[saaya]

lol really? thats a shame, msis boards have great slot layouts usually...

I needs this board.

I think the number of pcie slots was kept down at 2 because most people don't buy more than 2 cards for xfire. Vdroop I haven't noticed to be a problem on any board built with the 790Fx chipset from Asus. The original crosshair depended on what cpu was in. Not sure about the second one because I didn't get that one. How many sata ports does one person need? I would say at most 5 for the average person if they decided to run raid 0+1 and had an sata dvd-rw drive.

yeah but most people dont buy an rog highend board either...
the point of a highend board is... its highend and exactly for those few people that run way beefier hardware than others...

4+1 phases with double inductors and all of a sudden it's 8+2 phases...

ha, really? are you sure?

[largon]

saaya,
No way they could fit enough fets in there to make it really 8+2. On top of that, there's no phases controller out there that would be able to deal with 8 phases. And ofcourse, Asus has been doing such tricks for long.

[saaya]

before i left foxconn they told me that theres a new 8 phase controller certified by amd... but maybe they were wrong...
but even if they use a 4 phase controller, they could do the same as on their other rog boards and just double the phases up... not pretty, but gets the job done... IF you sort out the current control PROPERLY otherwise your limited in current draw, but im sure asus figured that one out by now

anyhow.. are you sure they only use 4 phases? they could use 4 pairs of phases... id be really surprised if asus did the same as gigabyte and just doubled the chokes...

[Frodin]

What's with the idea that "it's a high end board so it needs to have OMGWTFBBQ heatsinks"? 790FX has a TDP of what, 11 watts? And the south bridge, 1 watt?

[biohead]

looks like just another 790fx board to me.

[Blacky]

Me want moar pcie's!! why only two

[BababooeyHTJ]

Atleast swap the top pci-e 1x and pci or even toss the pci on the bottom slot and only 5 Sata slots. I'm using 6 sata slots now.

Even the R2E GENE has 3 pci-e 16x slots and thats a micro atx board.

[breakfromyou]

With how bare the bottom half of the board is, I think that's just a bad angle to take the picture at. The top looks kind of highend-ish.

[Zorlac]

Looks good to me!

I am still hoping for mobo makers to ditch PCI, PS2, IDE, Floppy and onboard NICs/audio completely. Love how ASUS and DFI sometimes have the onboard audio as a separate card for folks that want to use aftermarket cards instead.

To me the motherboard should strictly be the foundation with no extra crap onboard that most Xtreme folks will buy a dedicated card for anyways.

[ILikeCosmosS]

looks good but not good
1. lacks pcie slots like the gd 70 would and probably could be a board for waterblocks but then again i might wrong

i have to disagree zorlac they have to ditch with onboard audio and ide can still be used as back up drive of some sort if you have 1 lying around and there should be only 1 ps2 and pci well it still has to be there until we get stuff moved to pcie x1 besides recievers and sound cards as far i would know of

why are people perfering the 4770 over the 4890?

[zanzabar]

so your saying their boards rock until proven otherwise?
dont you think thats a bit biased?

what oficial specs do you mean?
we can all see it has one nic and 5 sata, no xifi onboard sound, 2 pciE slots, a standard passive heatsink...

the site that its from says xfi ad in card, and i dont see the need for 2 onboard nics. with the current ones there is no hyperV so that throws out the performance vm farm and u can get a much better nic for $30 for gaming or anything else, then the HS dosnt need much NB or sb cooling and the pwm area looks sufficient and it should fit the NB max sfittech block. +no floppy, if they keep this up for the 8xx chipset i might have to go back to asus if dfi dosnt have something


and i like the slot placement u get a sound slot at the top and 3 slot space for the 16x cards, then u have no sli chipset so thats a huge advantage and at this rate NV will be putting sli on amd chipsets since they have nothing new thats been announced and there isnt really a reason to buy their cards for sli at the moment.

[perkam]

Me want moar pcie's!! why only two

Because the third card doesn't scale for sh*t. Sorry for the language. Thought it was common knowledge.

Perkam

[saaya]

What's with the idea that "it's a high end board so it needs to have OMGWTFBBQ heatsinks"? 790FX has a TDP of what, 11 watts? And the south bridge, 1 watt?

its about looks, not cooling performance... the board looks rather empty and scarce on the lower side, a big heatsink with a nice design could cover that and make it look much sexier

the site that its from says xfi ad in card

that would be nice!

and i dont see the need for 2 onboard nics. with the current ones there is no hyperV so that throws out the performance vm farm and u can get a much better nic for $30 for gaming or anything else

your one of the very few people who dont want 2nics then... i made a poll and asked loads of people, while almost nobody uses both nics, at least permanent, they all want 2...
and you can buy a good 30$ nic card... so what?
and you can buy a 30$ soundcard and a 30$ sata raid card and and and... whats your point? you might as well say there should be no onboard nic at all then since you can buy a good one for 30$ :P

then the HS dosnt need much NB or sb cooling and the pwm area looks sufficient and it should fit the NB max sfittech block.

yeah, the cooling is fine for sure... watercooling this would be a bit overkill...

+no floppy, if they keep this up for the 8xx chipset i might have to go back to asus if dfi dosnt have something

usb floppy?

and i like the slot placement u get a sound slot at the top and 3 slot space for the 16x cards

yepp, totally agree on that!

then u have no sli chipset so thats a huge advantage and at this rate NV will be putting sli on amd chipsets since they have nothing new thats been announced and there isnt really a reason to buy their cards for sli at the moment.

actually they did... they modified their last amd chipset, which is 1 year old i think, and added some small upgrades... so no, nvidia wont allow sli on amd chipsets... i highly doubt that...

Because the third card doesn't scale for sh*t. Sorry for the language. Thought it was common knowledge.
Perkam

actually it does... check xbitlabs and anandtechs 3way and 4way sli vs xfire articles... 4 is where it stops scaling and is sometimes slower than 3, they improved scaling over the past years, notably...
3way gtx285 beats 4way gtx295 sli in quite some scenarios... not by much, but it does...

so in theory 3 gtx275 cards oced beyond gtx285 speeds will get you better performance for around 650$ than 2 oced gtx295 cards for 900$

[Smartidiot89]

Why not Quad-Fire or atleast Tri-Fire option?

Using the DFI LP 790FXB layout for PCI-E slots on this board would be awesome, maybe ASUS are aiming at those with to much money to spend that are gonna use X2 cards?

[Jamesrt2004]

then where should it be? anywhere else and it would block the second vga if you run xfire or sli...


huh? why? you can run 2 dualslot vgas, plus a pci card, plus a pciE x1 card... what more do you guys want???



lets see...

amd
new chipset
best ocing options
overdrive
active support from amd

nvidia
costs more
runs hotter
old chipset
not the best ocing options
ntune lacks a lot of features and doesnt work as good as overdrive

i think it was right of them to go for the amd chipset... its unlikely that people who spend a lot on 2 nvidia highend vgas buy an amd platform which is slower and cheaper than intel platforms...

yeah i feel the same... too small heatsink i think... and more sata... a bigger heatsink covering some more of the pcb, maybe in some nice design and colors, and more sata plugs and it would look a lot more like a real highend board.

single ethernet, 6 usb, 5 sata... it really looks more like a value board from the specs and from the layout/design...
if it would be matx i could understand this, but full blown atx...

it has all it needs, but it doesnt really look like an rog highend board...

I only say the slot thing cos i cant use it my 4870 = 3 slots, no pci card for wireless = angry me lol

[Jamesrt2004]

the site that its from says xfi ad in card,.

Fake x-fi (bane of my life)


(eek sorry for double posting!!)

[zanzabar]

Why not Quad-Fire or atleast Tri-Fire option?

Using the DFI LP 790FXB layout for PCI-E slots on this board would be awesome, maybe ASUS are aiming at those with to much money to spend that are gonna use X2 cards?

u do get quad fire (2 x2) and there isnt scaling with 3 cards well since afr only works well with 2 gpus. and they gave the top slot for the shound card so thats all that u need for a gaming board is 2 slots for gpus with good space for coolers to fit and the sound slot

your one of the very few people who dont want 2nics then... i made a poll and asked loads of people, while almost nobody uses both nics, at least permanent, they all want 2...
and you can buy a good 30$ nic card... so what?
and you can buy a 30$ soundcard and a 30$ sata raid card and and and... whats your point? you might as well say there should be no onboard nic at all then since you can buy a good one for 30$ :P

out of that pole it would be interesting to see who uses 2 or who wants them, and what are the uses for a gateway server/bridge (not likely), teamed cables (no use for home consumers) or virtulization that the marvel and broadcom dont work with. i just fail to see the point i would rather have 2 more USB