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

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a b V Motherboard
November 7, 2011 3:00:04 AM

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

More about : 160 240 990fx based socket am3 motherboards

November 7, 2011 4:19:07 AM

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.
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-19
November 7, 2011 4:23:56 AM

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.
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2
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November 7, 2011 4:36:17 AM

nice thorough review.
but great chipsets cant offset poor CPU's.
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4
November 7, 2011 4:56:20 AM

let the amd bashing begin...
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11
November 7, 2011 5:09:16 AM

Yeah If were to buy this boards would be with a Phenom real 6 core CPU 1100T :D  that is the smartest choice. I think.
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14
November 7, 2011 5:23:29 AM

What about asus 990fx crosshair v formula motherboard?
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5
November 7, 2011 5:30:55 AM

I would wait till next year to decide. I still feel that windows 7 aint optimized for BD.
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-2
November 7, 2011 5:34:59 AM

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!
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9
a b V Motherboard
November 7, 2011 5:58:27 AM

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.
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4
November 7, 2011 6:08:59 AM

What a bunch of pretzel logic we have in this article.
Quote:
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.
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14
November 7, 2011 6:32:00 AM

Want to know if 990's abundant pci lane give significant benefit over z68 in gpu bottleneck scenario (SLI or crosfire off course).
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6
a b V Motherboard
November 7, 2011 6:32:35 AM

TA152HWhat 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.
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 :) 
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1
November 7, 2011 7:21:24 AM

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 :) 
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November 7, 2011 7:33:40 AM

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.
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2
November 7, 2011 7:51:42 AM

Hey, that my board :D  Sabertooth 990FX with 1055t @4.1Ghz on a Noctua D-14. Waitin around for better AM3+ chips..
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1
November 7, 2011 9:36:16 AM

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?
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November 7, 2011 9:47:15 AM

you use radeon hd 6950 while there is radeon 6970 on a picture :) 
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4
a c 329 V Motherboard
November 7, 2011 10:48:37 AM

Not bad at all!
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0
November 7, 2011 11:00:21 AM

Hmmm. So where is the most important of them all? Asus Crosshair V Formula?
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-3
November 7, 2011 11:02:02 AM

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.

julianbautista87thanks 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.


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.
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2
November 7, 2011 11:02:25 AM

theuniquegamerWhat about asus 990fx crosshair v formula motherboard?

Sorry, dude, didn't see your post :)  Still need to finish my morning coffee eheheh
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November 7, 2011 11:07:09 AM

thanks for making a bit of light, sessou :)  by the way, do you think a future new chipset might improve some benchmarks?
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November 7, 2011 11:22:00 AM

SessouXFXSabertooth 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.

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]
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November 7, 2011 11:41:23 AM

Depends...

Naturally, a few things willing improve. The 890/990 wasn't that bad to begin with. I wouldn't mind seeing it carry on for awhile personally. But none of it will matter much if the CPU won't perform worth anything on it's end.

Like with the Bulldozer, I knew from my first experience with Phenom, it's better to wait for the 2nd-3rd Gen chip to be on the safe side, thanks to teething issues. I doubt AMD saw the whole TLB Erratum saga approaching after release. After B2 and B3 stepping, things changed for the better. It may not have been a barn burner, but Phenom eventually became a real value and powerful chip for what it was. And during that time, they went from one chipset to the next, improving as they went along.

Vishera (Enhanced Bulldozer) should be out by Q3 next year. If they don't improve things by then, AMD will be in serious trouble. In fact, I'd go as far as to say, they should just sell their stock to Intel or ARM and close their doors if things haven't changed by then. I personally have my reservations about a 8 core chip, when they haven't shown that it's worth having anything more than a 6 cores at this point. But if they intend to increase performance, they better think about the here and now, and focus more attention to single thread performance. That's what biting them in the rear.
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1
November 7, 2011 12:43:16 PM

The IPC is what really hurts them. Even by having one super-fast core for single-threaded workloads, I can't see that being enough.
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0
a c 150 V Motherboard
November 7, 2011 1:00:42 PM

I went with the Sabertooth myself this past summer as I was building to last, and the five year warranty was particularly impressive. I had hoped Bulldozer would be good, but even if I never get one, the 970BE I'm running should meet my needs for the foreseeable future. I would like to have seen a comment about the MemOK feature of the Sabertooth though, as it is another useful feature that distinguishes this board from the others in the roundup.
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0
November 7, 2011 2:36:33 PM

Quote:
Asus proclaims quad-GPU SLI support, referencing a pair of dual-GPU GeForce GTX 590s. In fact, that arrangement is supported by all SLI-capable motherboards. Our problem with the quad-GPU terminology is that it almost appears to be an attempt to confuse neophytes into believing this four-slot board will take four cards working cooperatively. Asus clearly indicates on Page 2-16 of its manual that this is a triple-card SLI design, though.


Quick question .. is it still possible to run 4 separat cards into quadfire/crossfire-x; quad-sli? I remember a long time ago in a SBM 4x4850 (or something similar). So ... are there still cards out there with that option?

Also ... if it's a motherboard round up .. how come there's no LAN, audio, esata, usb tests going on?
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2
Anonymous
a b V Motherboard
November 7, 2011 3:03:51 PM

I hated AMD before it was cool.
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-2
a c 150 V Motherboard
November 7, 2011 3:06:26 PM

The Crosshair V has an expander board that can supposedly run four cards all at x8, but I don't think the Sabertooth has anything like it. It looks like the Gigabyte board in this roundup can do it though.
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a b V Motherboard
November 7, 2011 3:43:49 PM

Wow, this article couldn't be more well timed since I just posted something yesterday about wanting to get a motherboard suitable for my 1055T that I'm not using right now. Now I'm having a hard time deciding between the Sabertooth and the UD7.
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a b V Motherboard
November 7, 2011 4:09:28 PM

g00eyAccording to your review you have the rev 1.1 of this motherboard and yet LLC features are missing in the BIOS
Please try reading the entire page instead of the first three paragraphs, it says the LLC setting missing from one menu is found in another.
dkraptorHmmm. So where is the most important of them all? Asus Crosshair V Formula?
Asus had to make a choice since, at 2-3 days per board, there wasn't enough time to give everyone the option to include two boards.
jtt283The Crosshair V has an expander board that can supposedly run four cards all at x8, but I don't think the Sabertooth has anything like it. It looks like the Gigabyte board in this roundup can do it though.
You do understand that expander boards are used for bench testing only, right? I mean, it's no like you're going to put cards that stick out too far in a case :) 
jtt283I would like to have seen a comment about the MemOK feature of the Sabertooth though, as it is another useful feature that distinguishes this board from the others in the roundup.
I tried it to recover from a bad O/C, believing it would temporarily lower the actual settings without changing the programmed settings. I was wrong, using it deleted my programed settings. So rather than fuss about how it sort of works but not as well as expected, I ignored it.
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a c 150 V Motherboard
November 7, 2011 4:35:55 PM

I wondered about that, although it isn't a feature I'd ever need myself. One card has been sufficient for me (although I'm wondering if Skyrim might change that).
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a b V Motherboard
November 7, 2011 5:56:47 PM

But the UD5 I've chosen was $10 cheaper than the Sabertooth, and has all the features of the UD7 except for quad SLI. It really was the ideal board for me, and the superior overclocking makes it a win in my book.

Anyway thank you very much for this article. Seems everyone has written off BD a a fail, but there are reasons to be hopeful for the future. Even without a Bulldozer CPU, I like my Gigabyte board very much and find that I really don't care about a lack of UEFI.
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a b V Motherboard
November 7, 2011 6:00:28 PM

g-unit1111Wow, this article couldn't be more well timed since I just posted something yesterday about wanting to get a motherboard suitable for my 1055T that I'm not using right now. Now I'm having a hard time deciding between the Sabertooth and the UD7.


Take a look at the UD5
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a b V Motherboard
November 7, 2011 11:35:20 PM

buzznut said:
But the UD5 I've chosen was $10 cheaper than the Sabertooth, and has all the features of the UD7 except for quad SLI. It really was the ideal board for me, and the superior overclocking makes it a win in my book.

Anyway thank you very much for this article. Seems everyone has written off BD a a fail, but there are reasons to be hopeful for the future. Even without a Bulldozer CPU, I like my Gigabyte board very much and find that I really don't care about a lack of UEFI.



Fail is a little to harsh, more like underwhelming. It's an increase from Phenom II X4 era but not enough of one to justify it's costs. It's barely faster then the X6 and even slower in some areas. It does provide you with a very wide set of processing resources, but unless your coding your software specifically for it then those don't really matter. And it seems to have some severe L2 Cache issues, so severe that it's crippling the chips performance.

Recommendation now is to just wait it out for revision 2 or 3.
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Anonymous
a b V Motherboard
November 8, 2011 4:25:19 AM

I don't care Tom's. I want Crysis benchmarks !
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-1
Anonymous
a b V Motherboard
November 8, 2011 6:26:48 AM

MemOK! - you're using it wrong. Save your settings to a testing profile before you reboot. If it fails, press MemOK! and it'll boot with defaults. Reload your OC profile and figure out where you went wrong. It's awesome.
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2
a b V Motherboard
November 8, 2011 7:05:37 AM

asusmemok4872MemOK! - you're using it wrong. Save your settings to a testing profile before you reboot. If it fails, press MemOK! and it'll boot with defaults. Reload your OC profile and figure out where you went wrong. It's awesome.
But I could do that with CLR_CMOS. So, what's "awesome" about MemOK?
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a b V Motherboard
November 8, 2011 7:52:45 AM

Crashman said:
But I could do that with CLR_CMOS. So, what's "awesome" about MemOK?


MemOK is just a press button for testing the upper limits of memory, it's an extension of the built in overclocking system. Generally it's only useful for testing how high your base memory clock can go before memory becomes unstable (204/210 ect..).

Interesting note on the Sabertooth board. The original BIOS was set to do stability testing ~every time~ the system powered on, meaning its BIOS POST time was a good 30+ seconds. If the board detects a CPU / Memory failure then it will auto-revert to base known-good defaults and alert you that there was a overclocking failure. The second BIOS for it fixed it so that it only does this test the first time you change settings then skips it afterwards.

Also the board is a little -too- smart for it's own good. I put in a set of four 4GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 memory sticks. The SPD settings are DDR3-1333 but the XMP settings are DDR3-1600. The sticks are rated at 1.5v and are quite sensitive to voltage. Took me forever to figure out how to get them to run at 1600 speed. I had to manually set the voltage to 1.5 rather then leave it at auto. What was happening was when I put in the manual timings are set it to DDR3-1600 speed, the BIOS would try to auto-set the voltage to 1.6 and the sticks would stop working and never POST. Setting the voltage manually prevented this from happening.

Next is during my OC on the Phenom II x4 970BE on water. Stock speed is 3.5Ghz. I can get a stable POST at 4.5 but windows bombs out trying to boot. I can get a successful boot at 4.4Ghz but windows randomly reboots / shuts down. 4.3Ghz it lasts longer but eventually will crash / reboot, Prime95 has it crashing in minutes. 4.2Ghz has been running fine for awhile now, Prime95 goes for 6+ hours no issues. Something I noticed during this time is that you don't have to set the voltage on the CPU, it will automatically adjust it for you. With the CPU voltage set to auto and 4.2Ghz clock I would run CPU-Z and CPUspeed program. You can see the voltage starting at 1.45~1.47 with the CPU at 4.2ghz. Start up prime95 and it starts running, you immediately see the voltage spike to 1.5. I don't allow the board to set it higher as I'm not sure what the highest "safe" setting could be before damaging my CPU.

Overall the Sabertooth is a great overclockers board if a bit too smart for it's own good.
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a b V Motherboard
November 8, 2011 8:28:25 AM

palladin9479 said:
Overall the Sabertooth is a great overclockers board if a bit too smart for it's own good.
Sabertooth is an AWESOME overclocking board but I wish there was a way to force it to boot at default settings while storing previous settings (boot failed, press F1 to load defualts or DEL to enter BIOS) etc.
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a b V Motherboard
November 8, 2011 9:40:05 AM

Crashman said:
Sabertooth is an AWESOME overclocking board but I wish there was a way to force it to boot at default settings while storing previous settings (boot failed, press F1 to load defualts or DEL to enter BIOS) etc.



Actually there is kinda. Under tools there is a place to save your current settings to a profile. I made profile #1 be my default profile (it is by default) and made profile 2 my OC settings. You can store up to 7 or 8 separate OC settings.

If the systems detects a OC failure it will revert to default "safe" settings and prompt you to go to setup "F1". It will appear that your settings were wiped but they aren't. If you reboot (don't save) then it'll try to boot with what you had previously and fail again. Instead go to where you had your profile saved and tell it to load whatever profile you were testing. *POOF* everything is back again. Now go find your failed setting and test again. I did ALOT of this when I was trying to find right OC settings for my rig.
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a b V Motherboard
November 8, 2011 4:12:24 PM

palladin9479 said:
Actually there is kinda. Under tools there is a place to save your current settings to a profile. I made profile #1 be my default profile (it is by default) and made profile 2 my OC settings. You can store up to 7 or 8 separate OC settings.

If the systems detects a OC failure it will revert to default "safe" settings and prompt you to go to setup "F1". It will appear that your settings were wiped but they aren't. If you reboot (don't save) then it'll try to boot with what you had previously and fail again. Instead go to where you had your profile saved and tell it to load whatever profile you were testing. *POOF* everything is back again. Now go find your failed setting and test again. I did ALOT of this when I was trying to find right OC settings for my rig.
Yes, I've done this with CLR_CMOS a bunch of times too.
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November 8, 2011 10:19:54 PM

Very nice review but TT,.TT you miss Crosshair V Formula~~
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a b V Motherboard
November 8, 2011 11:41:16 PM

Crashman said:
Yes, I've done this with CLR_CMOS a bunch of times too.


CLR_CMOS is only for when the system won't even get to POST which would indicate a basic failure of the CPU / memory subsystem. A hotkey to "default" BIOS wouldn't work then anyway, the keyboard controller wouldn't of had time to be initialized by the failed CPU. Maybe 10 years ago when things were pretty much hardwired on startup but nowadays everything is soft loaded by the CPU during system POST. The best you can hope for is a rear mounted CLR_CMOS button so you don't have to open the case, but honestly I'd be afraid of having something like that near the back of my box.
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a b V Motherboard
November 9, 2011 12:28:39 AM

andywork78Very nice review but TT,.TT you miss Crosshair V Formula~~
Nope, have the CVF, Asus picked the Sabertooth instead.
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1
November 9, 2011 12:33:03 PM

200$ for a BD motherboard??? Isn't this like buying a toilet seat? I mean, what you will drop there will be shit, anyway...

PS: I am a huge AMD fan, I really am.
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-3
November 9, 2011 10:16:29 PM

"990FXA-UD7 includes a lighted CLR_CMOS button" shouldn't "lighted" be "lit" or "backlit" or something? Other than that cheers for a great article Thomas!
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