Asus Sabertooth 990FX AM3+ Motherboard Review

Andy Ruffell / 13 years ago

Final Thoughts
Though it may not be clear from the offset, the Sabertooth is a great board. It may not look like it in the benchmarks, but motherboards are very hard to benchmark in general due to the limiting factor they have. What we do have to look for are the improved features to gauge whether this board is firstly a good one, and secondly the right one for you (the consumer).

The board has got full AM3+ support, but whilst the Crosshair IV Formula does also have this, it doesn’t have the increased memory support that the Sabertooth includes. Other benefits of the Sabertooth include the CeraM!x cooling design which even though most won’t see any direct benefit from, we can assure you that it is doing a fitting job in the background.

The other feature that we were excited to see on this board was the UEFI BIOS. Ever since our initial viewing of this fantastic feature at an Asus event last year, we were keen to see it being implemented onto high-end motherboards. We slowly saw that become a reality when we looked at the Fusion board from Asus, and now we see it on the Sabertooth, giving easy configuration for novice users, yet everything we need for the more expert consumers out there.

We also see the addition of USB 3.0 native headers, directly on the motherboard, adding to the short list of benefits that the 990FX offers, but sadly only a couple of the rear I/O, which is a sad sight to see, based off what Intel boards shower us with currently.

Another benefit with this board that a lot of users (especially gamers) will love is SLI support. Up until now, AMD have been very foolish with their boards, expecting consumers to only buy AMD Radeon based graphics cards and nVidia not willing to offer the support needed, whereas now the nVidia fan boys have been given the chance to use their multiple nVidia based cards together on an AMD board. It’s unheard of i know, but an overall great improvement all round.

One thing we would love to see is testing this board, in comparison with the Crosshair IV Formula again when Bulldozer is finally released to see if some of the new technology such as Hypertransport Link 3.1 really makes a difference with regards to the increased DDR3 ram support. Sadly it didn’t seem to like our Kingston memory much at all, but either does our Crosshair IV so i don’t think Asus or AMD can really be blamed on that one.

Personally, if you have a board like the Crosshair IV Formula and are looking to upgrade to Bulldozer, wait for Bulldozer to actually be released to see if a motherboard upgrade really is needed. If you have something slightly older and want the full stability and reliability of a system then this is a worthwhile upgrade, but we feel this is only a taster to what is going to be on offer in the upcoming months. We believe that Bulldozer (once released) should unlock the true potential of this board and the 990FX chipset from AMD.

Until then, we’re just have to sit back and wait!

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