Conclusion
| General |
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| The
Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 generally is an interesting board. If you like the
Sabertooth military design, then this is definitely an attractive board
with a higly level of attention to detail. This version of the AMD
Sabertooth board from ASUS also looks more grown up than others before. We especially like
the set of connectors this board features. There are not only more than
enough SATA ports also the number of USB 3.0 as well as USB 2.0 ports was
able to convince us. Additionally you get an extensive software bundle which
let's you control lots of parameters from within Windows. |
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Design
- Connectors |
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| Layout |
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Generally the ASUS Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 layout is well thought. Once more very practical are the angled SATA connectors. Unfortunately there are no practical power/reset buttons onboard and also for a debug LED you'd be looking in vain.
On the other hand the fan headers are easily accessible. We also liked the fact,
that it's possible to equip this board with up to three graphics cards. If you
should want to upgrade your gaming system a year or two after you bought this
board with another one or two graphics cards that would be no big deal.
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- Angled SATA connectors |
- No Power/Reset-Button onboard
- No Debug Display |
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| Performance |
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| A
closer look at the performance values shows that on average the
Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 ranges in the top-3 span. Which is very surprising
because the TUF series isn't know for performnace/efficiency but here most of the time the board
ends up close to the top if not on top. There are only two benchmarks
where the board didn't do well, SiSoft Sandra - Arithmetic and Street
Fighter. |
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- Performance
- SuperPi 1M, WPrime 32M |
- SiSoft Sandra -
Arithmetic
- Street Fighter |
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| BIOS / Overclocking |
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Regarding overclocking overclocking, the
Sabertooth wasn't a convincing product. The max stable clock we were
able to run our Phenom at is 160 MHz lower than what the processor is
actually capable of on better boards with same settings. In this case
our Phenom was overclocked to 4.21 GHz. Meanwhile it's 120 MHz better
than the previous Sabertooth model.
The ASUS UEFI-BIOS is very well structured
and very pleasant to look at. You'll quickly find the settings needed
and even the tool tips provide useful, additional information. |
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- Well structured BIOS
- UEFI-BIOS |
- Overclocking |
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Recommendation |
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| If you should be looking for a good and solid
AMD based gaming PC with a design motherboard, then the Sabertooth 990FX R2.0
is the only one of his kind. You can get this motherboard
for about CHF 165.- (est. EUR 136.-). |
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- Gaming PC |
- Office PC |
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| Rating |
| We give the
ASUS Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 good four out of five stars. |
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Author: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch
