Asus Sabertooth 990FX Motherboard Review

The Asus Sabertooth 990FX is certainly going to be well received by the AMD audience when it hits retail in the very near future. Over the course of a weeks testing the board proved to be rock solid, even when pushed to the limits … the ‘TUF' design clearly indicative of Asus' exacting engineering standards and not just another buzz word failing to deliver tangible real world benefits.

The PCB has a proven, logical layout with easy access to many troubleshooting sections and there are also a plethora of fan headers populating the board to ensure wide support for the most demanding gaming chassis. As an enthusiast platform it is not only great to see a formidable 8+2 digital architecture providing high power efficiency, but also the ASUS tuned UEFI bios is just as intuitive as those utilised on the latest Sandybridge boards we have used. Overclocking the 1100T proved to be as simple as we hoped, requiring only a moderate voltage increase to achieve stability at 4.3ghz. In fact 4.4ghz+ would be a possibility with higher grade water cooling, or even phase change.

AMD purists are finally getting treated to QUAD SLI and QUAD CrossfireX system support and we feel this portfolio expansion it is a good business move from Nvidia. While the Phenom II X6 1100T doesn't deliver the same level of grunt as the latest Intel Sandybridge designs it is certainly no slouch and under most conditions seems just as responsive.

UK pricing has not been confirmed at time of writing and we will update this page when we have more information.

Pros:

• Fantastic build quality
• good bundle
• Overclocks well
• SLI and Crossfire support

Cons:

• AMD processors can't compete against the latest Intel Sandybridge designs

KitGuru says: This is as good as it gets for AMD. A fantastic motherboard from Asus.

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