14 DAY TRIAL // Even though the first motherboards built on AMD's 900-series chipsets aren't expected to make their debut until the start of June, leaked images of a 990X-driven Asus M5A99X Evo AM3+ board have already started to make their way onto the Web.
Judging by its feature set, the motherboard seems to be targeting mainstream and performance users as it packs no less than three PCI Express x16 slots and features 2-way CrossFireX and SLI support.
Only the first one of the PCI Express slots will operate at x16 speeds as the second is limited at x8 while the gray slot, close to the motherboard's margin, has only four PCI-E lanes routed to it.
In addition to these slots, the M5A99X Evo also features two PCI-E x1 and one legacy PCI slots as well as six SATA 6Gbps and two SATA 3Gbps ports.
The former are driven by the AMD SB850 chipset, that also packs RAID 0/1/5/10 support, while the two other ports are connected to a third-party on-board controller.
According to XFastest, CPU power is provided by a 6+2 phase Digi VRM that is cooled by a blue heatsink.
Thanks to the redesigned AM3+ CCR (Combo Cooler Retention Module) this stands right in the path of the air blown downwards by top-flow coolers.
As far as the connectivity department is concerned, Asus has paired the M5A99X Evo with all the options that one would expect for such a motherboard, including four USB 3.0 ports (two are available through an on-board header), two eSATA ports and Gigabit Ethernet.
There is also a wide assortment of Asus technologies present, including the now-standard TPU and EPU switches, a MemOK! Button as well as a specially designed Asus UEFI BIOS.
No details regarding pricing are available at this time, but the board is expected to be officially announced on June 1 at Computex.