14 DAY TRIAL // At the beginning of June, AMD plans to make official the company's 900-series chipsets for Zambezi FX processor and Asus is planning no less than six new motherboards based on these controllers, including the top of the line ROG Crosshair V Formula and the TUF Sabertooth 990FX.
All the models will be compatible with the AM3+ Zambezi FX desktop processors built on the Bulldozer architecture as well as with the current AM3 CPUs.
Making our way from top to bottom, the most powerful board to be released by Asus is the Republic of Gamers (ROG) Crosshair V Formula that is built using the 990FX and SB950 chipsets.
As a result the motherboard is compatible with both 2 and 3-way CrossFireX and SLI configurations as it features no less than four PCI Express x16 slots.
Storage is provide by seven SATA 6Gbps connectors and the motherboard also features 8-channel SupremeFX X-Fi 2 sound, an Intel Gigabit Ethernet controller, six USB 3.0 ports and a powered 6Gbps eSATA port.
The CPU is powered by an Extreme Engine Digi+ 8+2 phase VRM and the board also packs a wide assortment of Asus specific technologies, such as ROG Connect, MemOK! or the TurboV Evo application.
Select models will include the Asus Thunderbolt add-on card that packs together a Killer NIC Ethernet controller and a headset amplifier.
Next in line is the TUF Sabertooth 990FX that sports a similar feature set with the Crosshair V Formula, but drops all the ROG specific features of the former model.
In addition, users also lose two of the USB 3.0 ports available in the CVF and, quite strangely, Asus has swapped the Intel Gigabit LAN controller for a Realtek NIC.
The other four models that Asus plans to launch in June are the M5A99X Evo, M5A97 Evo, M5A97 Pro and the M5A97.
I will skip right over the M5A99X Evo as we detailed this motherboard yesterday and move right to the three M5A97 models.
As their name implies, these are based on the AMD 970 chipset which is paired together with the same SB 950 south bridge found in Asus' more powerful solutions.
As a result, the motherboards keep the six SATA 6Gbps ports that are available with their older brothers, but have to make do with just two PCI Express x16 slots (the second one runs in an x4 mode), a reduced number of USB 3.0 ports and also drop SLI support.
All Asus 900-series AM3+ Bulldozer motherboards are expected to become official on June 1 during Computex 2011. (via Sweclockers)
