The 990FX Chipset Arrives: AMD And SLI Rise Again

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If you want to turn all the eye candy on, there's very little difference between the two platforms. Some might say that's the point of using a multi-card setup.

I distinctly remember an article a couple of years back where an AMD-NVIDIA setup performed better than the i7-NVIDIA setup whereas the AMD-ATi setup fared worse than the i7-ATi setup. I doubt NVIDIA would purposefully cripple performance on the only modern performance platform they can create chipsets for.
 
I just want to see some "BD" benchies. We all know the 890FX and the 990FX are basically the same chip as they keep describing. So that won't make much of a difference.

Do wish though I could magically get a few thousand dollars to buy the new 990FX setup or the new P67 setup.
 
This wasn't a very good test. To provide a real value in terms of improvement, it would have been better to compare a 890 mobo to the 990 mobo using the same processor, memory, graphics card, etc. Also, AMD is a platform brand. You should have used all AMD parts and graphic card to provide a real comparison for those looking at upgrading or building a computer with AMD parts. We all know how great Intel is and how most software is written to their specifications. This test really didn't answer any questions since it was 2 completely different platforms.
 
[citation][nom]f-gomes[/nom]Come on, not another 200$ board!!! These are the reason why people have moved to sub-pair performing laptops or even consoles... More than 100$ for a board is insane![/citation]
It's an enthusiast board. AMD makes a whole range of chipsets, in order to address different market segments. Someone willing to settle for a laptop or console does not need 6x SATA III ports and 3 graphics card slots.

IMO, pairing a $200 board with probably $500-$1000 worth of CPU + graphics is utterly reasonable. If you're going for lower-end CPU/graphics or don't need all the features of AMD's high-end chipset, then buy a lower-end model with fewer features. If AMD's marketing dept did their job well, you won't even miss the 990FX's extra features.
 
[citation][nom]jtt283[/nom]July is the month I expect the parasites' efforts to destroy the value of the dollar will start coming to their fruition.[/citation]You have that exactly backwards. It's the parasites who want a strong dollar. Those who actually produce something want a more equitable exchange rate so they can sell goods abroad.

Nobody talks about the trade deficit, these days, but simple economics will tell you that it needs to be brought down if we're going to make any real progress on the federal debt.
 
[citation][nom]Yuka[/nom]you said you wanted to test AMD's SLI on their 990FX vs Intel's SLI. So, IMO, you need less graphics horse power: like 2 GTS250's or 2 GTX460's or 2 GTX560's (not ti's) to tax the graphics subsystem and really show the differences. Maybe up the resolution also to really show if there is a difference between AMD's or Intel's SLI.[/citation]Yuka makes a good point, here. If you want to see how well the system implements SLI, then you need to focus on scenarios where the graphics are the bottleneck.

Whatever involves the most communications between boards, actually. Maybe that's going to be the highest resolutions with just enough features to create a bottleneck?
 
[citation][nom]josejones[/nom]I'm not satisfied with the 990FX chipset. I was hoping that the AMD 9-series motherboards would've also included PCI Express 3.0 and at least Hypertransport rev 3.1 - AMD doesn't even mention USB 3.0[/citation]
PCIe 3.0 would have been nice, but Intel doesn't even have it yet & people were surprised that they're even going to have it this year.

As for USB 3.0, what do you care whether the chipset supports it or whether the board has a 3rd party chip? Okay, maybe it increases the price by a couple bucks, but that's about the only downside.

I thought HT 3.1 was supported for the faster CPU models. In any case, HT 3.0 is still way better than what Intel's socket 1155 gives you, and probably not a bottleneck until support for PCIe 3.0 is added.
 
from asus site SABERTOOTH 990FX product page

"Furthermore, the single piece packaing also elimates the emission of virbation noise, delivering superb charactoristics as well as durability under extreme conditions."

lmao
 
Its not that useless of a test... If you have an old AM3 cpu and thinking of upgrading to a AM3+ because of SLI... you can see what preformance your AMD will do on the SLI.

However, this article was not what i expected to see, I expected there to be more of a direct comparison of INTEL Nvidia SLI and AMD Nvidia SLI. Having Greater GPU bottleneck would just compare the difference of the SLI's.... Having a CPU bottleneck would just compare CPU's....
In the end they compared items in the Price Range.
 
Wow, what a major disappointment - none of these new 990 motherboards even have HyperTransport (HT) rev 3.1 and they still only have PCI ex 2.0 yet, they're all way over priced.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007625%20600138080%20600166242&IsNodeId=1&name=AMD%20990FX

At those prices they should have HT 4.0, PCI ex 3.0 and Light Peak too! I'm not buying anything without at least HyperTransport (HT) 4.0 and PCI Express 3.0 .

I realize that the main difference between the 890 and 990 is that the 990's will support the new CPU's but, what's the point of that if the mobo specs are old? How can one expect to get the full potential of these new CPU's like Bulldozer with 2 year old or more specs?

Searching the HT website and PCI history, according to the 'HyperTransport Consortium' website HT 3.0 has been out since 2006 and rev. 3.1 has been out since 2009. Is HT rev. 3.1 just a matter of a bios update? Plus, PCI Ex 2.0 has been around since Jan of 2007.

http://www.hypertransport.org/default.cfm?page=Technology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#PCI_Express_2.0

It really is time for HT 4.0 and PCI Ex 3.0.

I expect HT 4.0 to come out along with PCI Express 3.0, which should be about anytime. So, the recent 990 with the 5 year old HT 3.0 & 4 year old PCI 2.0 just seems odd for these new next generation CPU's. Maybe they'll come out with HT 4.0 and PCI 3.0 by fall or in time for Xmas?

PS

I notice the Sabertooth has some updates on lag (at .27) and ping (at 1:30) though in the Asus youtube video -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE6TAyJbqso

That's pretty cool to me since I do play some online games where ping & lag are a real problem. I'd like to see more about that. I wonder just how much better is it, really?
 
My bad, just above I stated "and rev. 3.1 has been out since 2009"

It actually came out in 2008. The newer rev's A & B came out afterward, obviously.
 
HOW MUCH IS BLIZZARD PAYING TOMSHARDWARE? Keep seing catas fps .but cata has some awfull graphics compared to RIFT . Rift does take more power to run and I need to see constant benchmarks of that game ,even if its not a blizzard game.
 
The reason to upgrade is I'm running an old AM2 DDR2 board with SLI that had a bios upgrade to support phenom IIs. So I have a Phenom II in an old board and I need SLI because I already have two GTX 460s. costs me under 300 to upgrade where switching over to intel would have been 400-500. AMD lets me space out my purchases and in return i tolerate worse performance :|
 
The reason to upgrade is I'm running an old AM2 DDR2 board with SLI that had a bios upgrade to support phenom IIs. So I have a Phenom II in an old board and I need SLI because I already have two GTX 460s. costs me under 300 to upgrade where switching over to intel would have been 400-500. AMD lets me space out my purchases and in return i tolerate worse performance :|
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AMEN!
 
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