KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
The Asus M4A89GTD Pro/USB3 is certainly one of the best featured AMD boards on the market as it includes everything that we could ask for. Although it doesn't have an front panel USB3 header like some Sandy Bridge boards we've looked at, USB3 is included on the rear I/O panel for those who require it. But for those who don't, there is an identical version of the board available for less money without a USB3 controller.
Many users will favour the black and blue colour scheme of the board which makes it easy to match other components aesthetically. Crossfire X is supported, despite each PCIe lane being limited to x8 when two cards are installed. Even though Asus insist in their manual that we must use the VGA switch adapter when using one card to enable x16 in the primary PCIe lane, we found that the difference in performance without the adapter was very small with our Zotac GeForce GTX 470 graphics card.
The final decision on what motherboard to buy will probably come down to price for a lot of customers. And, at a price of £115 at YoYoTech, some users are likely to be deterred as there are equally well featured boards out there for less money like the ASRock 890GX Extreme4 motherboard we looked at a while back which can be had for about £20 less.
KitGuru says: A well featured board that performs well, despite being a little more pricey than alternatives.
I know ASROCk get a lot of praise recently but im still not sold, id rather pay extra for something like this ASUS product for quality.
Can anyone answer if ASROCK and ASUS are the same company? I heard they were the same parent owned company.
It shows how little the pCIe x16 slot really does. always believed it.
I like these lower cost boards, its always nice to focus on the ultra high end things for the wow factor, but they dotn sell much.
Great review, like the pictures. good layout, but weird choice on the addon for 16x, most boards are self switching.