Official ASUS AMD 900 Series Overview

[Mason@ASUS]

For those of you who have been anxiously awaiting the new AMD 900 series chipsets and motherboards, this post will give you an idea of some of the performance numbers as well as list some of the features of ASUS’ new 900 series AMD motherboards. As well as features and functionality of the chipset, I’ll also go over the ASUS specific additions on our new AMD 900 series motherboards. These chipsets and motherboards are optimized for current generation CPUs, e.g. hexa-core Thubans, as well as AMD’s upcoming Zambezi “Bulldozer” octa-core CPUs. The socket will be AM3+ but will be backwards compatible with socket AM3 CPUs.

The 900 series chipset is the replacement to AMD’s 800 series so our new boards will be replacing boards like the Crosshair IV Formula, Crosshair IV Extreme, and M4A89GTD PRO to name a few. Three of our main 900 series boards are the M5A99X EVO, Sabertooth 990FX, and Crosshair V Formula. Both the Sabertooth 990FX and the Crosshair V Formula will be available at launch and the M5A99X EVO and Thunderbolt version of Crosshair V Formula will be available later.

Some of the advantages of 900 series over the 800 series as well as some ASUS specific features on our new AMD 900 series boards are USB 3.0 on the new and speedy ASMedia USB3 controller, SLI, UEFI BIOS, our DIGI+ VRM, native SATA 6G with RAID support, AI Suite II with EPU and TPU switches, Auto Tuning, optimized layout with dual slot spacing of PCI-e slots, advanced fan controls with all have at least two 4-pin fan headers that allow for fan control

These new boards are the first AMD board to have UEFI BIOS and fully support 2.2+ TB hard drives and they are the first AMD boards to feature our DIGI+ VRM for enhanced stability and overclockability. Also, these will be the first AMD chipset boards to support SLI.

The Sabertooth 990FX and the Crosshair V Formula both support 3-way SLI. The Crosshair V Formula also supports 4-way SLI using ASUS’ ROG Xpander.
To give you an idea of the performance on our 990FX boards, here are some results of various benchmarks comparisons between the Sabertooth 990FX and our 890FX ROG board, Crosshair IV Formula. The tests on both motherboards were done using an X6 1055T Thuban, 4GB of 1600MHz CAS 9 memory, and an ASUS GTX570. These tests were done with no overclocking.



The following hard drive performance tests were done using SATA III SSDs connected to SATA III ports.

Sabertooth 990FX HD Performance with C300 128GB


Crosshair IV Formula HD Performance with C300 128GB


Sabertooth 990FX HD Performance with Vertex 3


MaxxMem^2 1.95 Single – Sabertooth 990FX


MaxxMem^2 1.95 Multiple – Sabertooth 990FX1.8


MaxxMem^2 1.95 Single – Crosshair IV Formula


MaxxMem^2 1.95 Multiple – Crosshair IV Formula


USB3 Performance Vertex3 ASMedia Adapter – Sabertooth 990FX


If you would like detailed information on these boards, features, and performance, check out these next 4 videos containing unboxings, overviews, Q&A, etc. The first video features a Q&A session regarding our new AMD 900 series motherboards.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh76e...eature=related

The video below features an unboxing of our Sabertooth 990FX.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JsTK...eature=related

The next video contains an overview of the Sabertooth 990FX.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cubX...eature=related

And lastly, check out the Crosshair V Formula unboxing below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3FmX...eature=related

[andos]

So basically, Sabertooth is a better buy.

[FlanK3r]

it can by only BIOS...I updated BIOS at C5F and stock performance is now a bit better (in superpi, R10 and R11.5 Cinebenchs)

[XRL8]

Im interested in M5A99X EVO ,does it support dolby digital live and/or dts interactive via spdif ?Thats a must feature for me as im using 5.1 sound system with a spdif connection.
Also.

Some of the advantages of 900 series over the 800 series as well as some ASUS specific features on our new AMD 900 series boards are USB 3.0 on the new and speedy ASMedia USB3 controller, SLI, UEFI BIOS, our DIGI+ VRM, native SATA 6G with RAID support, AI Suite II with EPU and TPU switches, Auto Tuning, optimized layout with dual slot spacing of PCI-e slots, advanced fan controls with all have at least two 4-pin fan headers that allow for fan control

I dont see any 900 over 800 advantage there .its all either been there or is chipset agnostic or am i missing something ?

[zoomee]

Thanks Mason - A great breakdown - not much in the performance just a slight improvement.

One thing that would definately tempt me away from my CHIV would be improved UEFI bios - i.e. That it boots super quick. At the moment I believe it is exactly the same in terms of boot times....thanks

[Kobaltrock]

Thanks Mason - A great breakdown - not much in the performance just a slight improvement.

Wonder if popping in a BD if that "unlocks" any extra performance from the chipset ?

And ditto on the thanks.

[XRL8]

Wonder if popping in a BD if that "unlocks" any extra performance from the chipset ?

And ditto on the thanks.

BD allegedly has faster HT link at 3200Mhz.

[Formula350]

I don't understand why ASUS laid out the CVF's PCIe slots the way they did... I'm looking at buying a sound card, but that means putting it in the last PCIe slot, which is fine except... what about a person running 2 graphics cards? A person is left with using onboard :\ I think 8 expansion slots are something that should start becoming a standard now, to allow for better layout on the enthusiast boards. A number of cases have the slot space, and a couple are even budget models too!

It's a bummer with 990FX right now heh The CVF has poor layout, and the MSI GD80 has rather sketchy performance :\ The only upside for them is they can potentially fix it with a BIOS update, where ASUS needs a board revision, something that'll irk anyone already having purchased one at launch. Sapphire's 990FX-N is the same, but it's interesting implementation of the NF200 chip sure offsets that (with the need for an expansion card)!

I'm still interested in the Thunderbolt model though, since as I said, I'm looking to get a sound card. It actually was going to be a Xonar anyways, so that kills 2 birds with 1 stone I just don't understand why you guy don't do like Gigabyte with the X-Fi and integrate the Xonar directly into the motherboard That would make it's expansion layout irrelevant.

[Mason@ASUS]

So basically, Sabertooth is a better buy.

Do you mean Sabertooth 990FX is a better buy than CIVF or CVF? I didn't show any results from the CVF in this post. These results were just a comparison between Sabertooth 990FX and the Crosshair IV Formula 890FX chipset. I'm working on a CVF guide.