ASUS Crosshair V Formula review - Introduction

At Computex the AMD 990FX chipset was released, and that release took us a little by surprise, I mean here we have this all new motherboard series yet are lacking the Bulldozer FX processors to show off the (hopefully) true muscle power.

Meanwhile all reviews and tests that are published are based on the latest 3.7 GHz Phenom II processors, and on a 990FX motherboard well you are just not going to see anything different in features and not in performance with one exception.

The one thing different is SLI support from NVIDIA on the 990FX series, but truth to be told you really do want to see the perf difference in-between say Sandy bridge based Core i7 2600 processors and then a Phenom II on this 990FX motherboard. So we'll be waiting on AMD's upcoming new high-end processors for that developed under codename Bulldozer (the upcoming FX series processors).

Meanwhile the motherboard manufacturers chunk out the most beautiful hardware. I mean look at what we are reviewing today, it is the Crosshair V Formula from ASUS, recently they pimped out the 990FX chipset with additional features, lasted and plastered it all onto a nice black/red ROG styled motherboards and are going in for the kill.

So once again we pop in a Phenom II processor and have a look at it's performance, which will be the same as it has been for a year now. Yep, AMD completely released the 990FX chipset in the wrong time, it should have been released alongside the Bulldozer FX series processors. But ah well, what can you do...  have a peek at that lovely looking Crosshair V Formula and then let's head onwards into the review.