Sabertooth 990FX Firmware
Although it was the GUI that often scared new overclockers away from the BIOS, underlying limitations of that technology were the driving force behind Asus’ switch to UEFI. Nevertheless, we enjoy and appreciate the BIOS-like simplicity of the Sabertooth 990FX's UEFI interface.
Spanning three pages, Asus’ Ai Tweaker menu provides a wide range of clock and voltage controls that, unlike those of many competitors, actually work in a predictable manner. For example, when we disabled AMD Turbo Core to stability-test our maximum continuous overclock, the Sabertooth 990FX actually locked in the speed we set.
A little experimentation with Asus’ multi-stage Load Line Calibration revealed that the “High” setting kept our overclocked CPU very close to the continuous voltage we desired.
Asus-specific features are primarily limited to operational modes for its PWM, though all of the expected CPU, DRAM, and chipset voltage settings are also available.
Primary, secondary, and tertiary memory timings are individually selectable from Ai Tweaker’s DRAM Timing Control submenu.
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.
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.
nice thorough review.
but great chipsets cant offset poor CPU's.
let the amd bashing begin...
Yeah If were to buy this boards would be with a Phenom real 6 core CPU 1100T
that is the smartest choice. I think.
What about asus 990fx crosshair v formula motherboard?
I would wait till next year to decide. I still feel that windows 7 aint optimized for BD.
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!
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.
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.
Want to know if 990's abundant pci lane give significant benefit over z68 in gpu bottleneck scenario (SLI or crosfire off course).
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.
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
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
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.
Hey, that my board
Sabertooth 990FX with 1055t @4.1Ghz on a Noctua D-14. Waitin around for better AM3+ chips..
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/201 [...] e_review/1
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?
you use radeon hd 6950 while there is radeon 6970 on a picture
Not bad at all!