Conclusion

Allgemein		+	-
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.		- Design - Connectors
Layout		+	-
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.		- Angled SATA connectors	- No Power/Reset-Button onboard - No Debug Display
Performance		+	-
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.		- Performance - SuperPi 1M, WPrime 32M	- SiSoft Sandra - Arithmetic - Street Fighter
BIOS / Overclocking		+	-
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.		- Well structured BIOS - UEFI-BIOS	- Overclocking
Recommendation		+	-
If you should be looking for a good and solid AMD based gaming PC with a design motherboard, then the abertooth 990FX R2.0 is the only one of his kind. You can get this motherboard for about CHF 165.- (est. EUR 136.-).		- Gaming PC	- Office PC
Rating
We give the ASUS Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 good four out of five stars.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 8 - Futuremark
Page 2 - Specifications / Delivery	Page 9 - SiSoft Sandra 1
Page 3 - Features	Page 10 - SiSoft Sandra 2
Page 4 - Layout	Page 11 - Super Pi / wPrime
Page 5 - Connectors and I/O	Page 12 - Games
Page 6 - BIOS	Page 13 - Overclocking
Page 7 - Test setup	Page 14 - Conclusion

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Author: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch