14 DAY TRIAL // Asus has just announced the release of a new BIOS for Crosshair IV Extreme and Crosshair IV Formula motherboards which adds support for AMD's upcoming FX-Series processors based on the Bulldozer architecture.
Asus has announced back in March of this year that select motherboards from their AM3 series will be compatible with FX-Series CPUs using the AM3+ socket.
The list of motherboards with AM3+ compatibility released back then also included the Crosshair IV Extreme and Crosshair IV Formula, which have now received BIOS support for these chips.
Both the Crosshair IV Extreme and Crosshair IV Formula are built around the AMD 890FX chipset, which is paired with the SB850 southbridge.
As a result, the motherboards are compatible with 3 and 4-way CrossFireX configurations, respectively since the Formula provides three PCI Express x16 slots, while its older brother has four such slots.
Storage is provide by six SATA 6Gbps connectors, and the motherboards also features 8-channel high-definition audio (SupremeFX X-Fi in the Formula), a Gigabit Ethernet controller, two USB 3.0 ports and a powered 3Gbps eSATA port.
In addition, the Extreme version also gets support for DDR3 memory up to 2133MHz, Lucid's Hydra technology, two more SATA 3Gbps ports and Bluetooth connectivity.
The CPU is powered by an 8+2 phase VRM and the boards also pack a wide assortment of Asus specific technologies, such as ROG Connect, MemOK! or the TurboV Evo application.
The new BIOS, version 3017, doesn't bring any other features except the support for AM3+ processors, so Asus doesn't recommend the update unless such CPUs should be installed.
The BIOS files for both motherboards are available from download from our website, by following the links listed bellow. As usual, the whole BIOS updating procedure should be treated with extreme caution.
Download 3017 Beta BIOS for Asus Crosshair IV Extreme Download 3017 Beta BIOS for Asus Crosshair IV Formula