Legit Motherboard Reviews

ASUS Sabertooth 990FX Motherboard Review

Manufacturer: ASUS
Product: ASUS Sabertooth 990FX
Date: Fri, Jun 24, 2011 - 12:00 AM
Written By: Dan Stoltz -
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AMD CrossFireX Scaling Performance

XFX Radeon HD 6950 2GB Graphics Card

As with the previous page where we tested the NVIDIA SLI scaling between the chipsets, we want to do the same for the AMD CrossfireX. When we decided to run this series of tests, we were able to get in touch with our friends over at XFX and they kindly sent over a pair of XFX Radeon HD 6950's.

ASUS Sabertooth 990FX Motherboard AMD CrossFireX Scaling in Aliens Vs. Predator

At 1280x1024 there was zero difference between the ASUS Sabertooth 990FX and the MSI 990FXA-GD80. At this lower resolution both boards saw a gain of 99.6%. At 1920x1080 we saw a slight difference in the gains though it's not shocking there is a minimal difference. The ASUS Sabertooth 990FX saw a gain of 100.9% across the three runs while the MSI saw a gain of 98.5%.

ASUS Sabertooth 990FX Motherboard AMD CrossFireX Scaling Total War: Shogun 2

Our Crossfire Results in Total War: Shogun 2 are much more promising than they were for SLI. At 1280x1024 the ASUS Sabertooth 990FX was able to average 47.25 frames per second with a single XFX Radeon HD 6950. Tossing in the second XFX Radeon HD 6950 the performance jumped by 83.3% for an average of 86.62 frames per second in CrossfireX. At 1920x1080 the performance gain was even more significant; we saw a single card performance of 33.98 frames per second and a Crossfire performance of 67.6 frames per second. That is a gain of 98.9% at 1920x1080.

MSI 990FXA-GD80 Motherboard AMD CrossFireX Scaling in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

In S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat the performance gains between a single XFX Radeon HD 6950 and a pair of them in crossfire aren't all that impressive, to be honest. At 1280x1024 the ASUS Sabertooth saw a gain of only 16%. This is slightly better than the 15.4% we saw on the MSI 990FXA-GD80, though still not impressive. 1920x1080 did yield better results, though still not great. The ASUS Sabertooth 990FX saw a gain of 26.5%. This is the first time that the MSI 990FXA-GD80 scaled better in Crossfire with 27.7%. Though the ASUS Sabertooth 990FX did have better frame rates in both single card and Crossfire configurations

Next Page - Futuremark 3DMark 11 Synthetic Benchmark


Review Index
Page 1 - ASUS Sabertooth 990FX Motherboard
Page 2 - ASUS Sabertooth 990FX Motherboard Retail Packaging and Bundle
Page 3 - ASUS SABERTOOTH 990FX Motherboard Layout
Page 4 - ASUS Sabertooth 990FX UEFI BIOS
Page 5 - The Legit Reviews Test System
Page 6 - SiSoft Sandra 2011 sp2 Memory Bandwidth
Page 7 - NVIDIA SLI Scaling Performance
Page 8 - AMD CrossFireX Scaling Performance
Page 9 - Futuremark 3DMark 11 Synthetic Benchmark
Page 10 - Rightmark Audio Analyzer
Page 11 - Network Throughput Testing
Page 12 - SATA III 6Gbps Performance Testing
Page 13 - SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Performance Testing
Page 14 - ASUS Sabertooth 990FX System Power Consumption
Page 15 - Overclocking the ASUS Sabertooth 990FX
Page 16 - Final Thoughts and Conclusion