Asus Crosshair V Formula Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. Asus Crosshair V Formula: Packaging & Bundle3. Asus Crosshair V Formula: Motherboard4. Asus Crosshair V Formula: Software and BIOS5. Testing Methodology and Overclocking6. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage7. Synthetic: 3DMark 118. Synthetic: PCMark 79. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra 201110. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.511. Synthetic: Super Pi Mod 1.512. Synthetic: CrystalDiskMark13. Real World: Blu-Ray Playback with PowerDVD 1114. Real World: MKV Playback15. Real World: Flash HD Performance16. Real World: File Copying over USB3.017. Real World: Media Encoding with Cyberlink MediaEspresso 6.518. Gaming: DiRT 319. Gaming: F1 201020. Gaming: Grand Theft Auto IV: EFLC21. Gaming: Dead Space 222. Final Thoughts23. View All Pages

A few weeks back AMD launched their new 990FX chipset which provides support for the new AM3+ socket.  Motherboards based on this chipset and socket will support the new Bulldozer (Zambezi) line of CPUs when they are launched.  We looked at the Asus Sabertooth 990FX motherboard on launch day which left us with generally positive impressions but today we are looking at a different board from Asus.

Today for review, is the Asus' top-end 990FX motherboard, the Crosshair V Formula which is part of their RoG (Republic of Gamers) series of products.  Like the Sabertooth 990FX, this boasts an impressive specification that is sure to whet the appetites of enthusiasts.

It supports 3-way AMD CrossfireX and nVidia SLI so whatever your preference on GPU manufacturer, you'll be happy.  Other features worthy of note include six SATA3.0 (6Gbps) ports, six USB3.0 ports and 8+2 phase DIGI+ VRM.

Features

The packaging design that Asus have used for the Crosshair V Formula reflects the high-end nature of the motherboard.  The red colour scheme used for the box is standard across the Republic of Gamers series of products and will really help it to stand out on the shelves.

On the top of the box there is a flap which contains a breakdown of some of the motherboards features on the inside.  When it's opened it also reveals the motherboard within the box, through a plastic window.

The rear of the box contains a detailed table which displays the motherboards' specification alongside a few product images.

One of the key areas in which Asus differentiates their RoG motherboards from the competition is in the extensive bundle they include..  It consists of a manual, a quick start guide, a driver CD, six SATA cables, a CrossfireX bridge, both 2-way and 3 way SLI bridges, a selection of cable ties, a sheet of labels to help you identify different SATA cables, a large RoG sticker, a USB cable for RoG connect, a Q-Shield (I/O shield) and a couple of Asus Q-connectors.

Asus have used the standard RoG red and black colour scheme for the Crosshair V Formula which gives it visual wow-factor without going over the top.  This consists of a black PCB with a combination of red and black fittings.  The use of black and red will also make it easy for enthusiasts to colour co-ordinate their system.

The Crosshair V Formula features AMD's latest 990FX chipset which is essentially a 890FX with a few new features bolted on.  The most important new feature is support for AMD's upcoming Bulldozer (Zambezi) processors.  There are a few other notable additions, however, such as 3-way SLI support.  The motherboard features the latest AM3+ socket which is black in colour, making it easy to differentiate from previous-gen AM2+ and AM3 sockets which were white.

Surrounding the CPU socket there are a series of large heatsinks which cool the 8 + 2 phase power regulation circuitry.  Power can be delivered to the CPU socket either via the 8 pin connector or by the 4 pin connector.  Both of these are located at the top of the board.

Next to the CPU socket we find the four DDR3 RAM slots which can support capacities up to 32 GB with speeds to 2133 MHz when overclocked.  On the edge of the board near the RAM slots we find the 24-pin ATX power connector, a front panel USB3.0 header and a fan header.

Asus have included a comprehensive selection of expansion slots on the Crosshair V Formula.  There are no fewer than four PCI Express x16 slots which are complemented by a single legacy PCI slot and a single PCI Express x1 slot. With two cards installed, both will run at x16 provided that you install the cards in slot 1 and 3.  In triple graphics mode, however, the second two cards are restricted to x8 while the primary card will still run at x16.  Obviously, if you install a single graphics card in the system, it will run at x16.

In the bottom right corner of the board there are seven SATA3.0 (6Gbps) ports.  Six of these are angled perpendicular from the board and one faces straight out of the board.  These six are driven by the AMD SB950 southbridge and support RAID in 0, 1, 5 and 10 configurations.  The other port is driven using an ASMedia ASM1061 controller which also drives the eSATA port on the back panel.

Along the bottom edge of the board we find numerous USB2.0 headers alongside the front panel connectors and the HD audio connector.  There is also a power button, a reset button and an OC button which will automatically overclock your system.  In the top right hand corner of the board we find the MemOK! button which will let the system boot regardless of the memory installed.

Asus would be hard pressed to cram any more connections onto the I/O back panel of the Crosshair V Formula.  From left to right we find a PSU port, two USB3.0 ports, two USB2.0 ports, an eSATA port, an optical S/PDIF connection, two further USB3.0 ports, an RJ-45 gigabit ethernet connector, 6 further USB2.0 ports (the white one is for RoG connect) and six 3.5mm audio connections.  There is also a handy CMOS reset nestled between two sets of USB ports on the left.

Asus includes a piece of software with the Crosshair V Formula which lets you overclock the system without having to enter the BIOS, activate automatic overclocking and to monitor various aspects of the system.  This makes overclocking with this motherboard a very simple process indeed.  See the screenshots below for more details.

The Crosshair V Formula features Asus' excellent UEFI driven BIOS interface, which is a doddle to use.  For some reason our sample was supplied with all of the onboard devices (USB3.0 controller, Audio Controller etc.) switched off.  We had to enable these before installing the drivers onto the test system.  We've included a full set of BIOS screenshots below.

Today we are using the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition processor to test the Crosshair V Formula motherboard.

Test System

Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T
Motherboard: Asus Crosshair V Formula
Cooler: Be Quiet Dark Rock Pro
Memory: 4GB (2x 2GB) Kingston HyperX Genesis 1600MHz
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon HD 6950
Power Supply: Thermaltake ToughPower XT 750W
Optical Drive: Samsung B083L Blu-Ray Drive
Chassis: Corsair Obsidian 650D
Monitors: Viewsonic VX2260WM
Boot Drive: Intel 320 Series 160 GB
Secondary Drive: OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS 240 GB (For CrystalDiskMark)

Software

Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
FRAPS Professional
SiSoft Sandra 2011 SP3
CPUz
GPUz
CPUID Hardware Monitor
Cinebench R11.5 (64-bit)
Cyberlink PowerDVD 11 Ultra
Cyberlink MediaEspresso 6.5
CrystalDiskMark
3DMark 11
PCMark 7
VLC Media Player
Performance Monitor

Games

DiRT 3
F1 2010
Grand Theft Auto IV: Episodes from Liberty City
Dead Space 2
Call of Duty Black Ops

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests across five closely matched runs and averages out the results to get an accurate median figure.

Overclocking

The Asus Crosshair V Formula has an automatic overclocking feature which enables users who don't have the technical knowledge or confidence to overclock their system to do so painlessly.  Using this feature we were able to achieve a clock speed of 3.7ghz which represents a 16% overclock.  This is sure to give your system a reasonable boost in performance and it takes less than a minute.

We decided to see how far we could push the system manually and achieved an impressive overclock of 4.21 GHz using a baseclock of 200MHz and a multiplier of 21x.  This was achieved using a core voltage of 1.45V.  This wasn't completely stable, though, as the system crashed after a few seconds of running a Prime95 blend test.  We tried upping the voltage to 1.475V but the system was still unstable.

So we were forced to drop the multiplier down one level to 20x, leaving the baseclock at 200Mhz, giving us a stable clock speed of 4.01 GHz, using a voltage of 1.45V.  The was completely stable under load so we used this overclock throughout our benchmarks.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

There was a good improvement in the CPU score in this test which resulted in an improvement in the overall score.  This shows how overclocking your CPU can boost real world gaming performance.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista. The benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.  We used performance settings for this benchmark.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

We also saw a decent improvement in the score in 3DMark 11 when the system was overclocked.

PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use.

In this test we see how much overclocking boosts performance in day-to-day tasks, showing improvements all round.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

In the first three SiSoft Sandra tests we saw a really big improvement in performance when the system was overclocked.  In the memory bandwidth test, the memory was clocked at the same speed when the CPU was overclocked so the memory bandwidth was the same.

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

In Cinebench, we can see how performance benefits from having six cores available instead of one, both at stock speeds and when overclocked.

Super Pi is used by a huge audience, particularly to check stability when overclocking processors. If a system is able to calculate PI to the 2 millionth pace after the decimal without mistake, it is considered to be stable in regards to RAM and CPU.

In this test we see again how overclocking and benefit performance.

A very important part of overall system responsiveness is down to hard drive performance. We use two of our favourite benchmark utilities Crystalmark X64 Edition to rate the OCZ Vertex 3 240 GB MAX IOPS SSD from the onboard SATA 6GBps controller.

In CrystalDiskMark we can see the benefits of having  SATA3.0 (6Gbps) connections for your drives as the performance recorded is very impressive.

Our good friends at Cyberlink kindly supplied the software for our BluRay and conversion tests.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 11 is one of the finest solutions for the BluRay experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the Blu-Ray Disc of Independence Day.

We saw a reasonable reduction in CPU usage when the system was overclocked, leaving more cpu cycles for other tasks in the background

Many people who have media systems will be familiar with the Matroska (.mkv) file format which is often used for high definition video.  In this test we will be using VLC Media Player to play a 1080P MKV file while recording CPU usage using Performance Monitor.

In this test the performance also improved when the system was overclocked, reducing the average CPU usage by a small amount.

Many people using this system will be enjoying Flash related content so we feel it is important to test with some of the more demanding material available freely online. Full hardware acceleration is enabled.

Again, we see a small reduction in CPU usage in the Flash HD Performance test when the system is overclocked.

We are now going to test the USB 3.0 and USB2.0 transfer speeds, so we used one a nippy drive, a Patriot Torqx 2 128 GB SSD within the Akasa Elite S USB3.0 enclosure.

In this test we can see just how much transfer speed can benefit from having USB3.0 on the system.  Please bear in mind that you obviously need USB3.0 peripherals to make use of the bandwidth available.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 1.09GB 720p MKV file (44mins) to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power. We are using the newest version of this program.

This test shows how every day tasks like media encoding can benefit from overclocking.  We saw a significant reduction in the time taken to encode the video.

DiRT 3 was only released about a month ago but has received much praise from gamers and reviewers across the globe.  It is the latest iteration of the Colin McRae Rally series, despite Codemasters dropping the Colin McRae branding.  It supports DirectX 11 which enhances detail and brings a number of other visual enhancements to the gaming experience.

DiRT 3 runs very well on this system and the framerates certainly benefit from the overclock.

F1 2010 is the first multi format high def Formula one title, having been in development for almost 2 and a half years now you can tell Codemasters are not messing around when it comes to releasing the best game they can. F1 2010 is packed with everything, from fine tuning your car setup, practising laps with goals to achieve, detailed stats, various difficulty settings for newbs and pros and even a helmet selection!

We also noticed an improvement in gaming performance in F1 2010 with a respectable increase in the framerate when overclocked.

Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City is a standalone compilation of the DLC episodes for Grand Theft Auto IV, containing both The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony on one disc. It was released alongside the DLC release of The Ballad of Gay Tony on 29 October 2009 for the Xbox 360 and released on 13 April 2010 for Microsoft Windows and Playstation 3. It does not require a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV to play, nor is an Xbox Live or PSN account necessary (except for multiplayer).

The engine is still extremely demanding for this game – even months later for the newest hardware. The latest version changes some of the rendering calls and is used partially within the latest Max Payne engine.  We tested the game using near medium settings as displayed below.

We saw a great improvement in GTA IV:EFLC when the system was overclocked as this game is very CPU intensive, meaning the framerate is heavily dependent on CPU performance.

Dead Space 2 is a survival horror third-person shooter. The player controls Isaac Clarke from a third-person point of view, looking over the character’s right shoulder. The game features no HUD elements, relying on holograms projected from the player character and his weapons to show information such as messages and ammunition count, respectively. Player health and stasis is shown by a visual indicators located on Isaac’s back. Isaac must fight an alien organism that infects and takes control of human corpses, turning them into “Necromorphs”, mutating their bodies.

Necromorphs must be dismembered as the alien organism controls host bodies via tentacles extending into their limbs. Other, larger types of Necromorphs that cannot be dismembered will often have yellow, glowing pustules, indicating weak spots. Occasionally, when an enemy gets close enough to Isaac, they will grab a hold of him, and the player must repeatedly press a key to fend off the enemy, with failure to do so leading to death of the player character.

The system had no trouble playing Dead Space 2 even when it wasn't overclocked, showing fantastic framerates across the board.

We doubt that there will be a mass adoption of 990FX motherboards until Bulldozer hits the market later this year, however whenever you plan to upgrade, we think this Crosshair V Formula is a great option.

The bundle supplied with the Crosshair V Formula contains everything you could possibly need (and more), from SATA cables to a USB Cable for RoG connect.  Asus also supply a full compliment of CrossfireX and SLI bridges for those who want to use 2-way and 3-way SLI setups.  Unlike the Sabertooth 990FX board we reviewed, the Crosshair V Formula doesn't support Quad SLI and CrossfireX but we can't imagine there are many people out there that will be put off by this, after all, only very few users will make use of a triple card setup.

We managed to achieve a stable 25% overclock with the AMD Phenom II 1090T which resulted in a decent performance boost in all of our tests.  The overclocked clock speed was 4.00 GHz.  Even if you don't have the expertise to overclock the motherboard yourself, the Automatic OC function managed a respectable clock speed of around 16% which would also boost performance in the benchmarks.  If you combine the Crosshair V Formula with AMD's top end 1100T model, we expect that you would be able to achieve a higher stable clock speed of 4.1 or 4.2 GHz.

The Crosshair V Formula can be yours for a shade over £180 at YOYOTech.  At this price we don't feel that it makes sense to upgrade from a previous generation 890FX motherboard, as you aren't really going to notice a performance improvement until it is combined with the upcoming Bulldozer CPUs. But, for those who are looking for their first AMD system or are upgrading from an earlier AMD system, we would definitely recommend this product.  We expect that this motherboard will still be one of the finest models available when Bulldozer launches, so we expect them to start flying off the shelves then.

Pros:

• Distinctive black and red design
• Great Bundle
• RoG Software
• Supports 3-way SLI and Crossfire
• Overclocks very well

Cons:

• A little pricey
• Current AMD CPUs can't compete with Sandy Bridge

KitGuru says: Another impressive motherboard from Asus that offers the whole package.

Become a Patron!