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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.
Great looking board that, as usual from Asus. We need the new processors however the current range is looking seriously dated.
quality products. love this company. Only thing I will say is that their pricing is normally a fair bit more compared to some others. more so recently I think
Will be the center of my next system, with a bulldozer CPU. not sure how long this will be, probably a few months off from the rumors online
This is going to sound like such a minor point, but I regret not buying ASUS for my last system. The reason being that I love their support website. Many of the other east makes download files at 5k. it drives me nuts for updates.
Asus just have the whole package right from the start
As much as this looks ‘great’, im all about the bios and overclocking and their products are very hard to match overall. UEFI bioses are so easy to use too.
cant go wrong with red and black 😉 ROG FTW
Read a few reviews of this now and it seems an all round good board. no faults of note.
I dont think ill be moving to AMD tho. waiting on the new intel platform end of year.
What they didn’t test or even mention in the review is that SLI or Crossfire do not work at all yet no drivers have been released to work with the new chipset so you may have two cards but they won’t work together till they release the software to use them with the new board. I was all set to buy this board a few weeks ago when it first came out till I found this out. If this if fixed I will pick one of these up asap.
what? the crossfire is not working properly? F ** k! I already buy one of these with 2 XFX RADEON HD 6870.
crossfire is ok no prob with me with 2x xfx 6770
the driver currently available working fine