ASUS 990FX Sabertooth leaked

[bamtan2]

getting closer http://mb.zol.com.cn/slide/230/2301310_13.html

missing the double nic, missing the double PS/2, missing the doable digital out, missing more USB3, and why only one power-esata and one no-power-esata.

but still, a $300 or $400 motherboard needs to get it right. double ps/2, double digital audio jack format, the usb+firewire+esata block, a 4 usb3 block, a 4 usb block, a NIC and usb block, another NIC and usb block, and analog audio block. and smaller than normal cmos and system reset buttons. order it up.

[Oberon]

Going by the prices of the previous Sabertooth boards, this thing won't be anywhere near $300.

As for me, I'm kind of wary of these boards. I had two in a row die on me after first boot (x58 boards) before I decided to go with Gigabyte instead.

[Eldonko]

I kinda like it, looks cool.

[formula M]

Probably a $180 board. Only dreamers want stuff they don't need.

[Tomasis]

not bad is that.. lets see new gigabyte :p

[FischOderAal]

Idk. The heatsinks look like toys :-x My money is on Gigabyte's new color scheme as well as MSI (loving my P55-GD65).

[Shadov]

Idk. The heatsinks look like toys :-x My money is on Gigabyte's new color scheme as well as MSI (loving my P55-GD65).

How much time daily do you spend looking on a MB inside your desktop? :-)

Even with a huge glass window it would be a secondary buying decisions for me.

[NEOAethyr]

I kinda like, and kinda don't.
I'de probably buy it though if it ended up being the top of the line, best there is.

No dual bios, no onboard x-fi (I've gotten used to that on the ch4 and I like it...).

What I don't like about gb's dual bios is that both are soldered to the board.
With asus setup, there's 2 sockets.
On this board though just one socket, that 2nd chip could come in handy.

I think I've killed the bios on my board once some time ago.
It was able to auto recover.
That's cool and all, but if I flashed a bunk mod and it was fail, well, I'de be screwed.
2nd bios chip in a socket would be nice for a $200 board.

And some attention to the ferrite shielded coil filters on the mem and chipsets please in the future, I'de like to see more, I can't complain though.

Edit:
Oh, 2 nic's onboard of course...
I myself don't mind seeing the ps2 ports tossed out for room.
Digi ports for audio, I prefer coax in/out, some don't.

Anyways the board looks like a winner to me.
Pretty sure there will be a ch5 formula though, and perhaps an extreme.
Those 2 boards will probably give this one a run for it's money.

[saaya]

Lol@ bullet vs vest Hahaha

How much time daily do you spend looking on a MB inside your desktop? :-)

Even with a huge glass window it would be a secondary buying decisions for me.

Yeah, looks don't matter at all, that's why asus is making such an effort on heatsink design and colors to make it LOOK clearly different from other boards

I'm surprised how many people like the colors.
Not my taste, but good for them!
I'm glad to see more diversification between mainboards when it comes to looks!

[Shadov]

Lol@ bullet vs vest Hahaha



Yeah, looks don't matter at all, that's why asus is making such an effort on heatsink design and colors to make it LOOK clearly different from other boards

I'm surprised how many people like the colors.
Not my taste, but good for them!
I'm glad to see more diversification between mainboards when it comes to looks!

I guess im to practical and features/price/performance are more important to me then something inside the box that I don't get to see very often.

Though of course on the marketing side looks sell and we can observe it even here - an enthusiast forum.

[[XC] Oj101]

Looks nice???? Two different shades of brown with toxic green?
I guess I have a weird taste but this looks awful to me. I'd prefer pink n purple and white over this

This board would rock as part of a Quake 3 mod, the colouring fits several levels all too well

can't really think why they thought that a plastic shroud will enhance any thermal dissipation at all ...

Plastic is not a good thermal conductor ... it's more the other way around, it conserves heat ...

It's not supposed to act as a heatsink, it's supposed to direct airflow from (I think) the CPU fan across the board. A tower cooler won't give that affect and the board will run warmer due to the lack of airflow. I think it was only really made with stock coolers in mind.

Probably cos the bullet off your G1 heatsinks turned out to be a misfiring blank

[vitaminc]

what? no tactical vest!

i always thought that Sabertooth P67 vest/cover is pretty stupid; doesnt stop dust, poor ventilation, hard to reach knobs, etc.

[SubZero.it]

Looks nice???? Two different shades of brown with toxic green?
I guess I have a weird taste but this looks awful to me. I'd prefer pink n purple and white over this

I care about hardware and layout, not colors
Hope they do a 990fx as the 990x saw some week ago without marketing purposes, just a plain and nice vanilla version like it has been for 890fx

[FischOderAal]

How much time daily do you spend looking on a MB inside your desktop? :-)

Even with a huge glass window it would be a secondary buying decisions for me.

I don't even have a window in my case but I know how it looks inside my PC. Guess just because I won't look inside I should not bother about cables at all and just connect them instead of trying to hide them etc.

Usually I keep mainboards for a long period, in difference to CPUs, graphic cards and RAM. Consequently, I want good looking boards. I have quite a few lying around at home. After my studies, when I settle I plan to hang them on my wall behind my PC.

[Ket]

Board itself looks capable enough, I have my doubts about the heatsinks they look like they have been designed for "bling" and not functionality. I hate any manufacturer that does that. The real proof in the pudding though will be if Asus actually fix the bugs users report.

[xBanzai89]

I do like the specs of the board, but I am afraid on the color scheme a bit since I have a window. Blue LED fans doesn't really go with this lol.

Does anyone remember seeing a specifications sheet for upcoming 900 series motherboards made by ASUS recently? I can't find it anywhere and it had at least this board and the Crosshair V on it.

[saaya]

I guess im to practical and features/price/performance are more important to me then something inside the box that I don't get to see very often.

Though of course on the marketing side looks sell and we can observe it even here - an enthusiast forum.

I totally agree, but let's face it, unless your pushing for the max the difference between boards are very small these days... most stuff is integrated, so features are all about the same too... design and BIOS are the only real differences between boards these days that I see... again, if your not pushing them on cold that is... and with sb even on air there are differences when pushing them to the max... but not that much...
It's not like a few years ago where the difference between cheap and great boards was a different world of performance and features.

I see it this way, boards are very close these days, so if I have to choose between them, the one with a nice design that I like will obviously be preferred, possibly even if features are a little worse or price is a little higher...

[saaya]

Board itself looks capable enough, I have my doubts about the heatsinks they look like they have been designed for "bling" and not functionality. I hate any manufacturer that does that. The real proof in the pudding though will be if Asus actually fix the bugs users report.

Well, as long as they still work good enough...
And if they can be replaced easily... I don't mind if they are a piece of art and not that functional... as long as I like thee design...
Iin this case they look not functional enough to me, and I agree that they look like plastic toys from China

Iirc the previous boards were cooled well enough though, so I think they are functional enough, even if they don't look that way. For normal operation t least.
And the plastic toy look... well a lot of people seem to like it.

Galaxy got away very well with their plastic toy vga heatsink as well to my surprise so... like I said, more choices and more style is good news in my book, even tho I personally don't like this board

[FatAlbert]

I am waiting for Crosshair V Extreme

I hope it will be showed faster than C4E was

[Ket]

Well, as long as they still work good enough...
And if they can be replaced easily... I don't mind if they are a piece of art and not that functional... as long as I like thee design...
Iin this case they look not functional enough to me, and I agree that they look like plastic toys from China

Iirc the previous boards were cooled well enough though, so I think they are functional enough, even if they don't look that way. For normal operation t least.
And the plastic toy look... well a lot of people seem to like it.

Galaxy got away very well with their plastic toy vga heatsink as well to my surprise so... like I said, more choices and more style is good news in my book, even tho I personally don't like this board

I'm just old skool, if something isn't designed to be functional and provide optimal cooling, its not good enough. Especially with the insane spiraling costs of high-end mainboards these days.

[saaya]

I'm just old skool, if something isn't designed to be functional and provide optimal cooling, its not good enough. Especially with the insane spiraling costs of high-end mainboards these days.

True... I actually miss the white box days...
Mainboard makers should offer white boxes again...
No money wasted on packaging, accessories, no driver cd, no cables, no heatsink whatsoever or only the cheapest basic crap... sigh...

Then we could choose between marketing and no marketing, and marketing would have to step up its game to offer enough value for the higher price...

[[XC] Oj101]

Intel still does, as does Asus (at least in South Africa?).

[EniGmA1987]

Any speculation on price? More or less than P67 Sabertooth?

probably less. My guess would be around $199

[trans am]

sabertooth=abit FATA1TY

its ironic the ROG series is the name they give to the ocers fav boards. they should call the sabertooth ROG series and rename ROG series to ROC series.
regardless the board looks awesome! I am still on the sabertooth x58 as my 24/7 rig. its a very solid board. but its just no Rampage in terms of ocing.
I hope some day we see some dedicated x8 pcie slots for the high end raid cards. It sucks that I have to plug a x8 raid card into a x16 slot and them my x16 slot for the video is running at 8x pcie/ or I plug the raid card in the bottom slot that is physically like a x16 slot but it runs at 4x.
so no matter what you lose bandwidth. what is the chipset capable of supporting? does anyone know the 990FX bandwidth of all the x16 slots? is it x8/x8 or x16/x16 or x16/x8 16x/4x? just curious.


***EDIT***
according to the diagram it says grey 2x 16x pciex
brown pcie8x

dk brown 4x
if those all run at x16/16 8x 4x all together this is awesome!
this is exactly what ive been waiting for in terms of a non server board with x16/x16 and a real 8x I can use. You guys with the fancy raid cards will get how important this is. this is exactly what we need.
for a 24/7 gaming rig /raid card setup this is perfect. asus nailed it! I love all the posts about the aesthetics of the board. shame on you guys. look at the big picture.

for example most of the boards that promote triple x16 slots like my x58 sabertooth goes like this:

you have 2 x16 pcie for crossfire/sli
if you populate one slot you have x16 (full bandwidth to your vga card)
you populate 2 x16 slots and it cuts in in half so now its x8/x8
great I spent money on 2 cards for crossfire/sli but the chipset is running them at half the bandwidth.
then throw in a raid card like lsi 9260 that runs at x8.

so say I have a single vga but I want that card in there and plug it in the other x16 slot. well even if that card only runs at x8 since both slots are populated youre vga is running at x8 and your raid card is at x8. great my raid card is running at full bandwidth but my vga is running at half bandwidth.
so I take the raid card and put it in the bottom slot that looks like a x16 slot but its actually only running at 4x. so not the vga is running at x16 but now the x8 raid card is running at 4x.

do you get it?

this board fixes all that. I am excited to see how the new chipset does onboard raid. Intel has dominated the onboard raid performance. I am curious to see how much attention amd gave their onboard raid this time around.

[generics_user]

sabertooth=abit FATA1TY

its ironic the ROG series is the name they give to the ocers fav boards. they should call the sabertooth ROG series and rename ROG series to ROC series.
regardless the board looks awesome! I am still on the sabertooth x58 as my 24/7 rig. its a very solid board. but its just no Rampage in terms of ocing.
I hope some day we see some dedicated x8 pcie slots for the high end raid cards. It sucks that I have to plug a x8 raid card into a x16 slot and them my x16 slot for the video is running at 8x pcie/ or I plug the raid card in the bottom slot that is physically like a x16 slot but it runs at 4x.
so no matter what you lose bandwidth. what is the chipset capable of supporting? does anyone know the 990FX bandwidth of all the x16 slots? is it x8/x8 or x16/x16 or x16/x8 16x/4x? just curious.

the northbridge has 38 pcie lanes for slots (x16/x16/x4/x1/x1), another 4 for the southbridge (x4) and the southbridge offers another 4 x1 lanes

the X16 slots can be devided into 4 x8 slots and all slots are pcie 2.0