The ASUS 990FX Sabertooth is packed with features. Finally, keeping with backward compatibility, the chip still supports the aging PCI 2.2 and parallel ATA. There are four additional PCI-E 2.0 x1 lanes available on the chip. Still, we would prefer to see USB 3.0 natively supported. To be fair, the latest Z68 chipset only supports 2 SATA 6Gbps and does not offer USB 3.0 support. The lack of USB 3.0 is a bit of a disappointment. It supports six SATA 6Gbps and 14 USB 2.0 ports. While the chip is a year old, it’s not completely outdated so it is still a good choice. The Southbridge for the new platform is still the same old SB850 except it is being renamed to SB950. The 990FX’s 10 extra PCI Express 2.0 lanes are split in one PCI-E x4 and six PCI-E x1 which can be used for additional expansion cards or to interconnect other devices such as USB 3.0 and Ethernet. The chipset supports 2-way and 3-way SLI. After a few years of preventing AMD systems from running SLI and forcing motherboard manufacturers to rely on third party chips like the Lucid as seen on the ASUS Crosshair IV Extreme, NVIDIA finally granted the SLI license to AMD. Here is the kicker the new chipset brings NVIDIA SLI support back to the AMD platform. It is not a surprise that the board will support AMD CrossFireX in 2 or 3-way configurations. 32 of the 42 lanes are split between the two PCIE x16 slots for multi-GPU support in 2×16 or 16+2×8, or 4×8 configurations. The 990FX sports 42 PCI Express 2.0 lanes. The chipset is manufactured by TSMC’s 65nm fabrication process just like the 890FX. The 990FX is essentially the same chipset as the 890FX. The 990FX represents the flagship chipset targeting the enthusiasts and hardcore gamers. AMD has a good history of offering backwards compatibility, making it a favorite of more mainstream users who don’t necessarily need the extreme performance offered by Intel CPUs, and also don’t want to spend money on a new motherboard every time they upgrade their processor. The ASUS 990FX Sabertooth uses the AM3 + socket, which fits a large number of AMD processors. The board comes with a plethora of features, all of which we’ll cover. Today we’re looking at the ASUS 990FX Sabertooth, which is meant to be ASUS’ offering to the enthusiast market. Intel’s steady march forward had created enormous pressure on AMD to release their long-delayed Bulldozer. In addition, 2011 has seen the launch of the Sandy Bridge-E series extreme processors, and 2012 will bring the Ivy Bridge die shrink. So far, Intel has wowed the computer industry with its P67 and Z68 chipset boards, designed to go with their newest Sandy Bridge architecture. Keep reading to see how well it does in our benchmarks! The ASUS 990FX Sabertooth is a good offering for the 990FX chipset, and would pair well with the recently released Bulldozer CPU’s.
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