Asus Sabertooth 990FX Motherboard Review

Rating: 9.0.

Today AMD are launching their new 990FX chipset motherboards and we are looking at the Asus Sabertooth model which is a board loaded with a plethora of features. The Ultimate Force (TUF) Sabertooth 990FX has a 10 phase Digi+ VRM and it is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots which support dual channel DDR3 1866mhz. This connects to the 990FX chipset across a HyperTransport 3.1 link.

No one will argue that Asus make some of the finest motherboards on the market. Their Republic Of Gamers (ROG) and Asus Crosshair V Formula motherboards have won many awards across the globe. My personal favourite right now is the Asus Rampage III Black Edition X58, which scored a staggering 9.5/10 when it was reviewed on Kitguru in March.

The Asus Sabertooth 990FX also supports both Quad GPU SLI and Quad CPU CrossfireX. Is this one of the best AMD based gaming motherboards on the market? On paper it certainly looks like it.

Specifications Summary

• CPU: AMD socket AM3+ for AMD FX series CPU up to 8 core. Compatible with AMD socket AM3 for AMD Phenom II/Athlon II/Sempron 100 Series Processors.
• Chipset: AMD 990FX/SB950
• System Bus: Up to 5.2 GT/s HyperTransport 3.0
• Memory: 4x DIMM, Max 32GB, DDR 3 1866/1600/1333/1066mhz, ECC, Non ECC and unbuffered memory.
  -Dual Channel
• Expansion Slots: 3x PCI Express 2.0 x 16 slots (single @ x 16, dual @ x16, triple @ x16/x8).
  -1x PCI Express 2.0 x 16 slot (Black @ x4).
  -1 x PCI Express 2.0 x1 slot. 1x PCI Slot
• Multi GPU Technology: Supports Nvidia QUAD SLI and AMD Quad GPU CrossfireX
• Storage: AMD SB950 Chipset:
  -6x SATA 6Gb/s ports with Raid 0,1,5, 10 support.
  2x Micron JMB362 SATA controllers:
  -2x SATA 3GB/s ports.
  -1x Power eSATA 3GB/s port (green).
  -1x eSATA 3GB/s port (red).
• LAN: Realtek 81111E Gigabit Lan Controller
• High Definition Audio: Realtek ALC892 8 channel High Definition Audio CODEC
  – Absolute Pitch 192KHz/24bit True BD Lossless Sound
  -BD Audio Layer Content Protection
  -Supports Jack-Detection, Multi Streaming, Front Panel Jack Retasking
  -Optical S/PDIF out port at back I/O
• IEEE 1394: VIA VT6308P controller supports 2x IEEE 1394a ports (1 port at mid board. 1 port at back panel).

The Asus Sabertooth 990FX motherboard arrives in a nicely designed box with the name of the product on the front with ‘The Ultimate Force' (TUF) logo top left.

The box is a gatefold design which opens up to reveal a list of specifications and features.

We received a very early sample of the board with an incomplete bundle and software discs, but the retail version will contain: A user guide, a support DVD, 4 SATA cables, an Asus SLI Bridge Connector, a TUF ‘certification card', an Asus Q Shield, an Asus Q Connector Kit and a warranty manual (five year).

The board itself is an attractive ‘army camouflage' design with green and grey heatsinks populating the PCB. The ‘TUF' board design is no gimmick – it uses ‘TUF' chokes, solid capacitors and MOSFETs … military grade versions, independently certified outside the control of ASUS. TUF chokes are basically alloy chokes, made of a compound which combines various types of metal instead of just Iron, which is used in traditional versions. This can enable the support of up to 40A of current, 25 percent higher than regular designs. The single piece packaging should also eliminate the emission of vibration noise, aiding long term durability. This product also includes an exclusive ‘anti static chip' which is a protective circuit design to negate static damage to the board. It is built to the ATM Form Factor standard measuring 30.5cm by 24.4 cm.

The board utilises the ASUS DIGI+ VRM design to ensure the highest standards of power delivery. The 8+2 digital architecture provides high power efficiency, generating less heat to enhance longer component lifespan and to ensure minimal power loss. Digital 8+2 power phase design expands the modulation spectrum for improved stability and to lower VRM switching noise by dynamically detecting system load.

Asus claim an exclusive feature for this product, a switching power design which works not only for CPU and memory, but for other components such as graphics cards, LAN and USB 3.0.

The ‘E.S.P (Efficient Switching Power Design)' dramatically improves system efficiency and reduces heat generation', according to ASUS.

The board has strategically positioned heatsinks to ensure that it delivers adequate cooling, even under high load, overclocked conditions. There is plenty of room around the CPU socket for installation of the biggest heatsinks, including the Noctua NH D14. Always a good initial indication that the engineers spent some time thinking about the layout. The heatinks are multi layered ridged design to ensure that heat is transferred quickly and radiated outwards.

Asus use ‘TUF CeraMIX', this is a heatsink coating technique which uses ceramics to actively conduct heat away from the system. This replaces the traditional anti oxidant to dissipate heat better with its microscopic irregular surface and enlarged area. Asus recommend that none of the heatsink modules are removed as it can bend the tubing. There is also a ‘TUF Thermal Radar' option added to the board … a fancy way of saying that there is thermal monitoring and subsequent fan control to ensure that temperatures remain in check. The Thermal Radar however can calculate ideal fan speeds based on user configuration.

The Sabertooth 990FX has support for 4 DDR3 DIMM modules, allowing a total of 32GB of memory. Speeds of 1866/1600/1333/1066mhz are supported in the bios. Next to the memory slots is the MemOK! button which ensures that the machine will boot, regardless of the memory installed. This rescue feature can help patch potential boot problems with specific modules and timings. We can honestly say we have never needed this feature, but it will certainly be a useful option if you are experiencing a memory boot problem on some level. There are also several fan headers in this vicinity (6 in total), which is good to see.

This board has a strong focus on delivering the ultimate gaming performance, it supports both SLI and CrossfireX configurations in 2,3,4 way implementations. (Configurable as x16, x16/x16, x16/x8/x8, (black slot x4) depending on how they're populated).

There are eight SATA ports on the Sabertooth 990FX motherboard, six of which are SATA 6GBps capable (bronze), these are controlled by the AMD SB950 Chipset. The two on the right are controlled by the JMicron JMB362 processor and are SATA 3GBps capable.

Along the bottom of the board is a SPDIF out header, an IE1394 header, two USB headers and a clear RTC header. To the right is the system panel connector, ASUS supply a handy Q-Connector Kit meaning you can fit all the header cables to the adapter outside the case.

Back panel connectivity is very comprehensive

• 1x PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse combo port
• 1x Optical S/PDIF Output port
• 1x Power eSATA 3GB/s port (green)
• 1x eSATA 3GB/s port (red)
• 1x IEEE1934a Port
• 1x Lan (RJ45) port
• 2x USB 3.0/2.0 ports (blue)
• 10x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
• 8 Channel audio I/O ports

Our AMD Phenom II X6 1100T installed.

The Asus Sabertooth 990FX motherboard is based around a truly excellent UEFI driven interface which works in a similar fashion to the latest Intel Sandybridge designs we have tested many times on Kitguru in the past.

Initially the user is presented with the basic overview of the hardware, including three presets which are ideal for inexperienced users to implement. The Boot priority section is particularly useful as it makes troubleshooting a boot problem much more intuitive. Power users will want to head straight into the advanced section, which is accessible from a button top right of this panel.

The main panel gives a quick overview of the system, the UEFI revision, processor name, system language and time.

Many of our readers will spend a lot of time in the AI Tweaker panel. Here you can control the speed of the processor, voltages and many system related frequencies and timings. The memory speed configurations are very thorough, with settings up to 2400mhz available. The XMP memory profile options are also highlighted here for a pain free configuration.

The advanced panel gives access to many of the motherboard settings, such as SATA, USB and Northbridge. CPU functionality can be adjusted in here also.

The monitoring tab is pretty self explanatory, allowing the user to check system temperatures. Especially useful when overclocking, changing voltage settings or after installing a new CPU cooler.

The boot menu gives fine adjustment over all the boot related options, and is a much more advanced mode when compared to the initial greeting screen. You can disable the startup logo, change the drives and configure the priorities. If the need arises this UEFI allows the user to replace the boot screen with custom, animated designs.

The last menu in the list gives access to a handful of the main configuration options, such as storing and loading current settings to the O.C. Profile section. The ASUS EZ Flash 2 utility lets the user upgrade the system bios from a flash drive.

Overclocking via this motherboard was painless, and we managed to hit a prime stable 4.3ghz from the AMD Phenom II X6 1100T, similar to the levels we achieved in our overclocking article from late last year. This processor will hold stable at 1.6 volts @ 4.4ghz, but it is a little risky long term without moving to hardcore cooling solutions. 4.3ghz is set via a 19x multiplier and is usable 24/7 without a problem @ 1.57 volts. This is impressive considering we are using a mainstream ‘all in one' liquid cooler.

Today we are using the top of the line AMD Phenom II X6 1110T processor with the ASUS Sabertooth 990FX motherboard.

System Validation is available over here

Asus Sabretooth 990FX System:
Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1100T (gaming tests @ 4.3ghz)
Motherboard: Asus Sabretooth 990FX
Cooler: Antec Kuhler H20 920
Memory: Corsair Dominator 1600mhz 9-9-9-24
Power Supply: OCZ ZX 1250W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay SBC-06d1S-U
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Monitors: 3x Dell U2410 and Dell U3011 Ultrasharp.
HDD/SSD: Intel 40GB SSD & 1TB Samsung (OCZ Vertex 3 240GB for CrystalDiskMark & HDTach)

Graphics cards for primary game testing:
AMD HD6990 / QuadFireX
AMD HD6970 (3 screen testing) / 2 & 3 way CrossfireX
AMD HD6950 / 2 way CrossfireX
Nvidia GTX590
Nvidia GTX580 / 2 way SLI
Nvidia GTX570

Graphics card for secondary (non gaming) synthetic testing:
AMD HD5770

Software:
Windows 7 64 Bit Enterprise Edition
Fraps Professional
SiSoft Sandra
CPUz
GPUz
CPUID Hardware Monitor Professional
Cinebench R11.5 64 bit
CyberLink PowerDvd 11 Ultra
Cyberlink Media Espresso
CrystalMark
HDTach
HQV Benchmark V 2.0
3DMark 11
Unigine Heaven Benchmark

Games:
Far Cry 2
Resident Evil 5
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Tom Clancy HAWX 2
Alien V Predator
Lost Planet 2
Metro 2033
Dead Space 2
Batman Arkham Asylum
Battleforge
Crysis Warhead
Devil May Cry 4
Left4Dead 2
Total War: Shogun 2
Home Front

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.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11.

We test at 1080p so that all video cards can be compared throughout our reviews. Obviously driver updates might enhance performance slightly over time, but as a rule, its a useful way for us to present the findings.

Strong results for the Asus Sabertooth 990FX Motherboard, showing good scaling between the CrossfireX and SLI configurations.

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.

Again, great results with this Direct X 10 powered benchmark, showing solid scaling across the full range of cards in SLI and CrossfireX.

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.

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

3DMark 11 is the newest benchmark from Futuremark, and focuses on Direct X 11 performance. Again, the Asus board highlights excellent overall performance, scoring almost 14,000 points with two HD6990's in QuadFireX.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here.

An extremely high level of image quality from both HD6990 and HD6970 graphics cards.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here.

Nvidia hardware scores 192 points out of a possible 210, with the latest drivers installed. Very impressive image quality across the tests.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

This DirectX 10 game still looks great and although it becomes somewhat CPU limited with the higher end solutions, it still proves a good test with the last generation of games many people still play today.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparible throughout reviews.

This particular engine has always favoured AMD hardware although with the high end modern day hardware there are no problems powering through this engine at these settings with even a single HD6950 capable of maintaining 30fps+ at all times.

Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.

Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today.

Settings: 1920×1200, D3D10, Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High)

Far Cry 2 is still a popular title, with an epic open world environment catering to a wide audience of gamer who dislike linear gameplay. The Asus Sabertooth 990FX motherboard shows good scaling across the range of testing, highlighting very impressive levels of performance.

Lost Planet 2 is a third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Condition which is also made by Capcom, taking place ten years after the events of the first game, on the same fictional planet. The story takes place back on E.D.N. III 10 years after the events of the first game. The snow has melted to reveal jungles and more tropical areas that have taken the place of more frozen regions. The plot begins with Mercenaries fighting against Jungle Pirates.

After destroying a mine, the Mercenaries continue on to evacuate the area, in which a Category-G Akrid appears and attacks them. After being rescued, they find out their evacuation point (Where the Category-G appeared) was a set-up and no pick up team awaited them. Lost Planet 2 runs on the MT-Framework 2.0, an updated version of the engine used in several Capcom-developed games.

We are testing in DX11 mode with all settings on the highest. Direct X 11 features are on high.

Lost Planet 2 is a dull game, but the Direct X 11 engine is a good test of modern hardware, even if it is somewhat slanted towards Nvidia hardware.

Homefront is speculative fiction, set in a near-future, post peak oil world that features a significantly diminished United States, and a united Korea that has built a massive alliance in East Asia. The Gate Corporation (a major private military company) also plays a minor role. The game focuses on the collapse of the United States, subsequent occupation by the Greater Korean Republic—a united Korea under the rule of Korea—and the American Resistance that fights said occupation. The player is invited to join the American Resistance, “using guerrilla tactics, commandeering military vehicles, and utilizing advanced drone technology”.

Homefront’s PC version has been outsourced to Digital Extremes, a Canadian developer responsible for numerous Unreal Tournament games and Bioshock ports. Frank Delise, the executive producer of the PC version has stated that the PC version of the game will feature exclusive content and dedicated servers. Additional exclusive features include clan support, DirectX 11 graphics, and first person vehicle cockpits.

CrossfireX scaling isn't great with this game, but it is not a fault of the hardware, just the game design.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style flight action game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft. After the events of the first game, the H.A.W.X squadron is sent to Middle East, where a high level of violence is being registered, and the appearance of various insurgents leaders in various hotspots. The team also has to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Russian nuclear weapons. The player will be controlling three groups: one American (Hunter), one British (Munro) and one Russian (Sokov), each with its own pilots and supporting characters. There will also be references to other characters in the Tom Clancy universe.

We are testing in full DX11 mode with all settings to maximum.

HAWX 2 is a fun game and one that runs particularly well on Nvidia hardware as can be seen from the results above.

Metro 2033 is an action-oriented video game with a combination of survival horror and first-person shooter elements. The game is based on the novel Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. It was developed by 4A Games in Ukraine and released in March 2010 for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows.

The game utilizes multi-platform 4A Engine, running on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Windows. There is some contention regarding whether the engine is based on the pre-release X-Ray engine (as claimed by Sergiy Grygorovych, the founder of GSC Game World, as well as users who have seen the 4A Engine SDK screenshots, citing visual similarities, shared resources, and technical evaluation of the pre-release 4A Engine demo conducted at the request of GSC Game World), or whether the engine is an original development (as claimed by 4A Games and Oles’ Shiskovtsov in particular) who claims it would have been impractical to retrofit the X-ray engine with console support). The PC version includes exclusive features such as DirectX 11 support and has been described as “a love letter to PC gamers” because of the developers’ choice “to make the PC version [especially] phenomenal”.

A taxing engine, especially at this resolution. Both AMD and Nvidia high end solutions really deliver a great gaming experience.

Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.

All settings are pushed to ultra with hardware shadows and SSAO enabled.

An intensive engine which currently runs faster with AMD hardware. Great results in all the test however.

BattleForge is a video game developed by EA Phenomic and published by Electronic Arts. It was released on Windows in March 2009. A demo was released in the same month. BattleForge is a card based RTS. It revolves around trading, buying and winning through means of micro-transactions. Micro-transactions are not required for playing the game, only for buying new cards.

It supports DirectX 11 providing full support for hardware tessellation.

An average of 35 frames per second highlight the excellent gaming performance from the HD6970 and Asus Sabertooth 990FX motherboard.

Medal of Honor’s single-player campaign uses a heavily-modified version of Unreal Engine 3, and its multiplayer uses the Frostbite Engine. The single player campaign takes place in 2002 in Afghanistan.

For half of the game, players assume the role of a DEVGRU operator codenamed “Rabbit”, of AFO Neptune. For the remainder, the player alternates between the roles of a Delta Force sniper code-named “Deuce”, of AFO Wolfpack, as well as Army Ranger Specialist Dante Adams of the 75th Ranger Regiment, and AH-64 Apache gunner Captain Brad “Hawk” Hawkins.

A great gaming experience from the AMD powered ASUS system.

Devil May Cry 4 is an action game that was published and developed by Capcom in 2008 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows platforms. The game is the fourth installment to the Devil May Cry series.

In the game, the player controls both Nero and Dante, the game’s protagonist and the series’ title character as they fight enemies in close combat using firearms, swords, and other weapons. The characters Lady and Trish from previous games in the series makes an appearance, along with new characters Nero, Kyrie, Credo, Gloria, and Agnus. The game is set after Devil May Cry but before Devil May Cry 2.

We used Super high settings with HDR on high and 8aa and 16af to improve the image quality as much as possible.

Devil May Cry 4 looks great across multiple screens and the HD6970 is capable of averaging 70 fps with the Sabertooth board and overclocked AMD Phenom II X6 1100T.

F1 2010 is a video game based on the 2010 season of the Formula One world championship. It is the sequel to the 2009 video game based on the same series. It was released in September 2010 on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows platforms. The game was confirmed by Codemasters on 23 April 2009. The game engine is based on the new EGO 1.5 engine, an unofficially titled evolution of the EGO 1.0 engine that was created specially for the title.

We are testing across three screens with 4aa and 8af enabled and ultra quality settings in DX11 mode.

F1 2010 is a great driving game which is a good stress test at this resolution. The system manages to keep the frame rates at the sweet spot of 25 fps or higher at all times.

Left 4 Dead 2 is a cooperative first-person shooter game. It is the sequel to Valve Corporation’s award-winning Left 4 Dead.

Like the original, Left 4 Dead 2 is set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, and focuses on four survivors fighting against hordes of the infected. The survivors must fight their way through levels, interspersed with safe houses that act as checkpoints, with the goal of reaching a rescue vehicle at the campaign’s finale. The gameplay is procedurally altered by an artificial intelligence engine dubbed the “Director” that monitors the players’ performance and adjust the scenario to provide a dynamic challenge. Several new features have been introduced: new types of infected, melee weapons, and a story-arc that connects the game’s five campaigns together.

Valve's Source Engine causes no problems for this system, even across 3 screens, never dropping below 40 fps at any time.

PCMark Vantage is a PC benchmark suite designed for Windows Vista offering one-click simplicity for casual users and detailed, professional grade testing for industry, press and enthusiasts.

A PCMark score is a measure of your computer’s performance across a variety of common tasks such as viewing and editing photos, video, music and other media, gaming, communications, productivity and security.

From desktops and laptops to workstations and gaming rigs, by comparing your PCMark Vantage score with other similar systems you can find the hardware and software bottlenecks that stop you getting more from your PC.

A solid set of results for the Sabertooth AMD Phenom II X6 1100T powered platform.

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.

PCMark 7 is the newest Futuremark benchmark and we have only started using it in the last week. This is an ideal way to compare your own system against the Phenom II X6 1100T build.

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

Exactly what we would expect from an AMD Phenom II X6 1100T at these speeds. The system scored slightly higher in the Cryptography test than on our MSI 890GXM-G65 board.

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.

The Sabretooth/1100T powered system puts in a great result, scoring 6.51 points without overclocking the CPU.

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 and HD Tach to rate the SSD and HDD.

The OCZ Vertex 3 SSD is a fantastic performance drive and it highlights the benefits of moving to one of the new Sandforce powered units.

I have been using HDTach for many years now and always find it is an invaluable benchmark to ascertain potential levels of performance. HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random access read/write storage devices such as hard drives, removable drives (ZIP/JAZZ), flash devices, and RAID arrays. HD Tach uses custom device drivers and other low level Windows interfaces to bypass as many layers of software as possible and get close to the physical performance of the device.

An average measured speed of around 375 MB/s is a good score for HDTach, even though it falls far short of the actual drive's real world performance levels.

AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. AIDA64 Extreme Edition provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. AIDA64 is compatible with all current 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

The Phenom II X6 1100T gives a good reference set of results when used with the Asus Sabretooth motherboard, much in line with figures we have achieved before.

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 new Bluray Disc of TRON LEGACY.

No challenge for the 1100T, averaging 8 percent demand across the test area of the disc.

CPU load ranges from 2 percent to 16 percent, indicating that the system has plenty of processing power left over for multitasking.

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.

No problems dealing with HD Flash content, averaging a 7 percent usage demand with our media file.

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 3.3GB 720p MKV file (2h:12mins) 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.

The AMD Phenom II X6 1100T is slower at encoding than the Sandybridge processors but it still delivers a strong result, at just over 18 minutes. This is over 2 and a half minutes faster than the cheaper 1055T.

We are now going to test the USB 3.0 and 2.0 speed, so we used one of the fastest drives we have, the Kingston HyperX Max 3.0 128GB, which is an Toshiba based SSD product within a USB 3.0 capable enclosure.

We copied a 3.9GB MKV file to and from the Kingston and OCZ drives.

Great results across both the USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 bus.

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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