Five $160 To $240 990FX-Based Socket AM3+ Motherboards

[Crashman]

Forty-two PCIe lanes give the 990FX a clear connectivity lead over competing Intel chipsets. We compare five class-leading products using AMD's FX-8150 to see which offers the best combination of performance, overclocking, integrated features, and value.

Five $160 To $240 990FX-Based Socket AM3+ Motherboards : Read more

 

[timbo1130]

How is this relevant to enthusiast? Bulldozer is out classed by Sandy Bridge I don't care if there are a few less sata ports. If you need to upgrade your better off going with Sandy bridge and z68 or p67 or wait for SB-E and X79.

 

[julianbautista87]

thanks for this article. I was waiting for it since some guy said that the 8150 was performing badly because of the mainboard used, but now I see that that was not correct.

 

[mayankleoboy1]

nice thorough review.
but great chipsets cant offset poor CPU's.

 

[ellmondo]

let the amd bashing begin...

 

[_Pez_]

Yeah If were to buy this boards would be with a Phenom real 6 core CPU 1100T 😀 that is the smartest choice. I think.

 

[theuniquegamer]

What about asus 990fx crosshair v formula motherboard?

 

[frostweaver]

I would wait till next year to decide. I still feel that windows 7 aint optimized for BD.

 

[Tijok]

First off, thanks for the great article, good to see Tom's is keeping up the top notch quality!

Secondly, I would really like to see a piece on extreme CFX/SLI configurations on rigs like this. It seems an article with reliable information on this would be beneficial to gaming enthusiasts, IT professionals, and HPC builders alike!

Hope to see an article along these lines soon!

 

[palladin9479]

I bought the Sabertooth during the summer and I can attest to how amazing that board is. It's really nice, lots of features and high quality. I'm running a Phenom II X4 970BE @ 4.3Ghz on water right now. Absolutely wonderful system.

 

[ta152h]

What a bunch of pretzel logic we have in this article.

Of course, a fan of Intel's work could argue against the need for 42 lanes of second-gen PCIe when the 36 native to X58 Express support multi-card graphics configurations just as capably. But such a comparison really isn't necessary. After all, we've known for almost a year that Intel’s lower-cost Sandy Bridge-based part outperform the pricey six-core Gulftown-based processors in many desktop benchmarks, including pretty much every gaming scenario we throw at the two platforms.

So, x58 is irrelevant, because SB beats it. Except AMD's offering is somehow relevant even though both x58 and SB beat it. What?????

If you ignore x58 because SB offers better performance, you ignore anything AMD has because a SB setup offers better performance. If you want 36 or less lanes, x58 still offers better processors than you can hope to get from AMD. Bizarre logic.

Not that AMD is irrelevant, just the logic is badly flawed.

 

[we_san]

Want to know if 990's abundant pci lane give significant benefit over z68 in gpu bottleneck scenario (SLI or crosfire off course).

 

[Crashman]

[citation][nom]TA152H[/nom]What a bunch of pretzel logic we have in this article.So, x58 is irrelevant, because SB beats it. Except AMD's offering is somehow relevant even though both x58 and SB beat it. What????? If you ignore x58 because SB offers better performance, you ignore anything AMD has because a SB setup offers better performance. If you want 36 or less lanes, x58 still offers better processors than you can hope to get from AMD. Bizarre logic. Not that AMD is irrelevant, just the logic is badly flawed.[/citation]That's what it looks like after copy-edit.

Originally it referred to AMD's insistence of comparing its FX-8150 to the 990X to prove that the FX-8150 had far better value. The original version of the paragraph referred to that comparison method a sham, and THEN referred to the SB vs BD debate. I guess it's neither nice nor necessary to call the 8150/990X price/performance comparison a sham, so the paragraph was altered to improve it's tone

 

[Device Unknown]

Fantastic guys! I have been researching which mobo to get the last 2 days for our mod... this saved me a lot of trouble. Asus it is

 

[jdwii]

The Sabertooth is such a good board i love it so much. I even think its the best bang for buck out of the 990FX boards. To bad i could not give such positivism for the Bulldozer.

 

[masterofevil22]

Hey, that my board 😀 Sabertooth 990FX with 1055t @4.1Ghz on a Noctua D-14. Waitin around for better AM3+ chips..

 

[kg2010]

Dear Tom's,

Please do a Tri-Sli review with 580's in it.

Compare the 8150 @ $279 vs the 2500K @ $215, who would you recommend?

Hint: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2011/11/03/amd_fx8150_multigpu_gameplay_performance_review/1

 

[g00ey]

I have read that the Gigabyte UD5 and UD7 motherboards have vdroop issues due to lack of an LLC unit. There has been a lot of talk about this in different forums with a lot of people getting disappointed about it. When I wrote to the Gigabyte support team they said that they have added the LLC in revision 1.1 of the UD7 motherboard in the review. According to your review you have the rev 1.1 of this motherboard and yet LLC features are missing in the BIOS, so there are still vdroop issues with this motherboard, am I to understand that this is correct?

 

[tmk221]

you use radeon hd 6950 while there is radeon 6970 on a picture

 

[nikorr]

Not bad at all!

 

[dkraptor]

Hmmm. So where is the most important of them all? Asus Crosshair V Formula?

 

[SessouXFX]

Sabertooth 990FX was my first choice, before I sprung for the Crosshair V Formula. Can't knock me for getting a great board for Open Box prices, because that was the only way I was going to get a Crosshair V.

[citation][nom]julianbautista87[/nom]thanks for this article. I was waiting for it since some guy said that the 8150 was performing badly because of the mainboard used, but now I see that that was not correct.[/citation]

As for MoBo's making a difference in how a CPU performs, it's about tweak-ability, or the lack thereof. Crosshair V is simply awesome in that regard. But if you do it wrong, you could end up with far worse performance than realized. I've seen a few posters on other sites dogging the board out, because they didn't have an understanding of what to look for and such. And as such, they resold or returned the board for something else.

 

[dkraptor]

[citation][nom]theuniquegamer[/nom]What about asus 990fx crosshair v formula motherboard?[/citation]
Sorry, dude, didn't see your post Still need to finish my morning coffee eheheh

 

[dkraptor]

thanks for making a bit of light, sessou by the way, do you think a future new chipset might improve some benchmarks?

 

[silverblue]

[citation][nom]SessouXFX[/nom]Sabertooth 990FX was my first choice, before I sprung for the Crosshair V Formula. Can't knock me for getting a great board for Open Box prices, because that was the only way I was going to get a Crosshair V.As for MoBo's making a difference in how a CPU performs, it's about tweak-ability, or the lack thereof. Crosshair V is simply awesome in that regard. But if you do it wrong, you could end up with far worse performance than realized. I've seen a few posters on other sites dogging the board out, because they didn't have an understanding of what to look for and such. And as such, they resold or returned the board for something else.[/citation]
I think the expectation came from the fact that the HardwareHeaven review used an ASUS 990FX Extreme4 board and it seemed to perform very well on one. Shame it's not in this review, however you couldn't really expect a motherboard to make a huge amount of difference.

[EDIT]ASRock, sorry, not ASUS.[/EDIT]