CPUs & Motherboards

ASUS TUF SABERTOOTH 990FX R3.0 Review

vortez
October 23, 2016 17 Min Read
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ASUS give the SABERTOOTH 990FX a long awaited refresh, updating the aesthetics and feature set to bring it up to date with the latest technology.


Product on Review: ASUS TUF SABERTOOTH 990FX R3.0
Manufacturer & Sponsor: ASUS
Street Price: £179 GBP / $219 USD

The ASUS TUF SABERTOOTH range was arguably an instant hit with its military themed camo colours of golden, greeny browns and the TUF promise of an extra rugged, extra strong design backed by a 5 year warranty. Today, the TUF lineup of products have matured aesthetically, delivering an unexpected degree of control over your system to ensure an absolute level of robustness. Of course, the 990FX chipset has something in common with the TUF lineup, it’s nearly the same age (within a year?). Despite that, competitive pricing of the FX chips present favourable value and it makes sense to refresh the tired old SABERTOOTH 990FX. Though there was a second revision of the SABERTOOTH 990FX, it mostly brought about minor changes, and underworks that the end consumer may not really notice, other than the heatsink colour change. This time, the R3.0 delivers a whole lot more.

The SABERTOOTH 990FX gets a complete facelift, more subtle colouring with hints of digital camo effects. There is a rear IO shroud, similar to that found on the Intel boards complete with a mount for a 40mm fan. There are now TWO internal USB 3.0 headers, improved audio, RGB lighting, reinforced PCIe safeslot, an M.2 slot, annnd finally, (drum roll)

FOUR USB 3.1 ports on the rear IO, one of which is the micro type C.

Connectivity, affirmative!


About ASUS
This visionary approach is the reason ASUS is able to bring high-quality innovation and design to all, and the reason for its widespread acclaim. ASUS products won 4,256 international awards and accolades in 2013 – that’s over 11 a day, every day. ASUS has consistently achieved significant year-on-year growth in terms of consumer notebook units shipped too, and closed 2011 on a high with revenues hitting US$11.9 billion.

Technical Specifications

CPU
AMD AM3+ FX™/Phenom™ II/Athlon™ II/Sempron™ 100 Series Processors
Supports AM3+ 32 nm CPU
Supports CPU up to 8 cores
Supports CPU up to 220 W
AMD Cool ´n´ Quiet™ Technology

Chipset
AMD 990FX/SB950

Memory
4 x DIMM, Max. 32GB, DDR3 1866/1600/1333/1066 MHz ECC, Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory
Dual Channel Memory Architecture

System Bus
Up to 5.2 GT/s HyperTransport™ 3.0

Multi-GPU Support
Supports NVIDIA® 3-Way SLI™ Technology
Supports AMD 3-Way CrossFireX™ Technology

Expansion Slots
3 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (dual x16 or x16/x8/x8) *1
1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 mode, black)
2 x PCIe 2.0 x1

Storage
AMD SB950 controller :
5 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s),
Support Raid 0, 1, 5, 10
AMD SB950 controller :
1 x M.2 Socket 3, gray, with M Key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 storage devices support (both SATA & PCIE mode)

LAN
Intel® I211, 1 x Gigabit LAN Controller(s)

Audio
Realtek® ALC1150 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC
– Supports : Jack-detection, Multi-streaming, Front Panel Jack-retasking
Audio Feature :
– Absolute Pitch 192kHz/ 24-bit True BD Lossless Sound
– Blu-ray audio layer Content Protection
– Optical S/PDIF out port(s) at back panel
– BD Audio Layer Content Protection
– Audio Shielding: Ensures precision analog/digital separation and greatly reduced multi-lateral interference
– Dedicated audio PCB layers: Separate layers for left and right channels to guard the quality of the sensitive audio signals
– Audio amplifier: Provides the highest-quality sound for headphone and speakers

USB Ports
ASMedia® USB 3.1 controller :
1 x USB 3.1/3.0/2.0 port(s) (1 at back panel, , Type-C, Reversible, Support 3A power output)
ASMedia® USB 3.1 controller :
3 x USB 3.1/3.0/2.0 port(s) (3 at back panel, teal blue, Type-A, Support 3A power output)
ASMedia® USB 3.0 Hub :
8 x USB 3.0/2.0 port(s) (4 at back panel, blue, 4 at mid-board)
AMD SB950 controller :
8 x USB 2.0/1.1 port(s) (4 at back panel, , 4 at mid-board)
Special Features

TUF ENGINE! Power Design :
– 8 +2 Digital Phase Power Design
– TUF Components (Alloy choke, Cap. & MOSFET; certified by military-standard)
– ASUS DIGI+ Power Control Utility
Ultimate COOL! Thermal Solution :
– TUF Thermal Radar 2
Safe & Stable! Guardian Angel :
– TUF ESD Guards 2
– TUF LANGuard
ASUS Exclusive Features :
– USB BIOS Flashback
– MemOK!
– AI Suite 3
– Onboard Button : Power
– Front Panel USB 3.0 Support
– ASUS UEFI BIOS EZ Mode featuring friendly graphics user interface
– USB 3.1 Boost
– Turbo LAN

Remote Entertainment
– Media Streamer

ASUS EZ DIY :
– Precision Tweaker 2
– ASUS O.C. Profile
– ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3
– ASUS EZ Flash 2
– ASUS MyLogo 2
– Multi-language BIOS
ASUS Q-Design :
– ASUS Q-Shield
– ASUS Q-LED (CPU, DRAM, VGA, Boot Device LED)
– ASUS Q-Slot
– ASUS Q-DIMM
– ASUS Q-Connector
AURA: RGB Lighting Control

Operating System Support
Windows® 8.1
Windows® 8
Windows® 7

Back I/O Ports
1 x LAN (RJ45) port(s)
1 x USB 3.1 Type-C
3 x USB 3.1 (teal blue)Type-A
4 x USB 3.0 (blue)
4 x USB 2.0 (one port can be switched to USB BIOS Flashback)
1 x Optical S/PDIF out
5 x Audio jack(s)

Internal I/O
2 x USB 3.0 connector(s) support(s) additional 4 USB 3.0 port(s) (19-pin, beige)
2 x USB 2.0 connector(s) support(s) additional 4 USB 2.0 port(s)
1 x M.2 Socket 3 with M Key design, type 2242/2260/2280 storage devices support (Supports both SATA & PCIE SSD)
1 x TPM connector(s)
1 x COM port(s) connector(s)
5 x SATA 6Gb/s connector(s)
1 x CPU Fan connector(s) (1 x 4 -pin)
1 x CPU OPT Fan connector(s) (1 x 4 -pin)
3 x Chassis Fan connector(s) (3 x 4 -pin)
1 x S/PDIF out header(s)
1 x 24-pin EATX Power connector(s)
1 x 8-pin ATX 12V Power connector(s)
1 x Front panel connector(s)
1 x System panel(s) (Q-Connector)
1 x DRCT header(s)
1 x MemOK! button(s)
1 x Power-on button(s)
1 x Clear CMOS jumper(s)
1 x USB BIOS Flashback button(s)
1 x Water Pump header (4-pin)

Accessories
User’s manual
ASUS Q-Shield
4 x SATA 6Gb/s cable(s)
1 x SLI bridge(s)
1 x Q-connector(s) (2 in 1)
1 x TUF Certification card(s)
1 x TUF 5 Year Warranty manual(s) (by region)
1 x TUF Inside sticker(s)(white)

BIOS
64 Mb Flash ROM, UEFI BIOS, PnP, SLP2.1, DMI2.0, WfM2.0, SM BIOS 2.7, ACPI 2.0a, Multi-language BIOS,
ASUS EZ Flash 2, ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3, My Favorites, Quick Note, Last Modified log, F12 PrintScreen, F3 Shortcut functions, and ASUS DRAM SPD (Serial Presence Detect) memory information

Manageability
WfM 2.0, DMI 2.0, WOL by PME, WOR by PME, PXE

Support Disc
Drivers
Anti-virus software (OEM version)
ASUS Update
ASUS Utilities

Form Factor
ATX Form Factor
12 inch x 9.6 inch ( 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm )

Unboxing & Closer Look


The ASUS SABERTOOTH packaging looks sleek and industrious, selling that heavy duty factor and backing it up with th at fantastic 5 year warranty.


The rear side reveals a whole load of information about the ASUS technologies used in this motherboard, notably we get to take another look at the RGB AURA lighting which is nice as the AMD board doesn’t quite get the same full treatment as the Intel SABERTOOTH motherboards in regards to its aesthetics.


Inside we get everything needed to get the board running, including the ever hand manual, SATA cables, rear IO shield, a TUF case sticker, and EZ connect plug, M2 mount and screw and an SLI bridge.


The SABERTOOTH 990FX R3.0 not only has updated the technology, but has reinvigorated the aesthetics over the older (much older) SABERTOOTH 990FX. Though not quite getting the same treatment as the Intel motherboards, it is hard to deny that this is one sexy piece of technology.


Behind the heatsink for the 10 power phases, there is a partial shroud that contains a mount for an optional 40mm fan for direct cooling. Along the top edge there are 4x 4pin PWM fan headers.


Alongside the DIMMs we find the ASUS MemOK! button for testing your RAM. Residing beneath the DIMMs is the first of two internal USB 3.0 headers.


There are 5x SATA 6Gb/s ports, the 6th has been tied to the M2 mount on the motherboard.


The primary PCIe x16 slot has been reinforced with metal to improve its strength, dubbed ASUS ‘safeslot’. The internal IO headers are placed along the bottom edge, including the front panel audio, COM, TPM, a power switch and a BIOS Flashback button, and the second USB 3.0 headset which is sat next to the front panel headers.


The rear IO has an impressive array of USB ports, including 4x USB 2.0, 4x USB 3.0, 3x USB 3.1 type A, 1x USB 3.1 type C, a RJ45 gigabit LAN port, followed by a S/PDIF optical out and 5x channel audio jacks.


The primary PCIe lanes have RGB LEDs which can be customised or you can select various effects, the LED on the south-bridge cooler however cannot.

BIOS Tour


After being greeted by the ASUS TUF logo, you enter the clean, well laid out ASUS UEFI BIOS EZ mode. From here you can arrange boot order and adjust some standard settings including the various ASUS power modes. Navigating through the advanced modes you will find a wealth of options for overclocking and many other advanced settings. It is quick and easy to move between each tab and I encounter no problems at all.







Software


The ASUS AI Suite has come leaps and bounds since its first inception and now it is starting to look like an advanced piece of software that is completely geared to controlling and monitoring every aspect of the motherboard. As this is part of the TUF series, there is advanced thermal monitoring where it displays the temperature across different points of the motherboard to enable you to provide optimal cooling. The Aura lighting app is not yet integrated into the AI suite, but as the Aura RGB lighting becomes more widespread it would be reasonable to assume that it may eventually. The lighting on the SABERTOOTH 990FX R3.0 is surprisingly awesome, as the LED lighting is from behind transparent PCIe catches and there is a whole host of effects available. The colour wheel isn’t that accurate in the sense of it, Yellow is green, orange is yellow, , red is orange/red/pink/purple in a short space, despite this, with a little trial and error checking the colour by eye, it renders the whole spectrum, including white, rather well.





Test Setup, Methodology & Overclocking

Test Setup
CPU AMD FX-8350,
Cooling Noctua NH-U12S
Motherboard ASUS TUF SABERTOOTH 990FX R3.0
Memory AMD RADEON 2x 8GB DDR3 2400MHz
Graphics GIGABYTE AMD R9 280X
Storage HYPERX 3K 240GB
PSU NZXT HALE 650W



Benchmarks
Cinebench R15 – CPU/OpenGL Score
x264 HD 4.0 – 1st and 2nd pass encoding
SiSoftware SANDRA 2014 – CPU & Memory benchmarks
AIDA64 – CPU benchmarks
PCMark 8 – Home Suite
3DMark FireStrike – DX11 3D Benchmark
Games – Tomb Raider, THIEF, Deus EX: Mankind Divided,


Other Software
CPU Specification Monitoring: CPU-Z


Overclocking
The SABERTOOTH 990FX R3.0 features many ASUS exclusive overclocking features to ensure a safe environment for your experimentation. No matter how far I pushed the settings, even ridiculously, the motherboard didn’t once fail to restart and kindly tell me that my settings didn’t work. The nicest side effect of this is when combined with the auto OC Tuner option in the AI Tweaker tab. This gave an automatic OC of 4.33GHz, which isn’t bad over stock settings. I then adjusted the memory speed to its rated 2400MHz to get an easy, stable OC used for testing.

To push the motherboard to its limit I raised the CPU frequency ever more to see what I could reach, and it didn’t have a problem at all getting the FX-8350 to 4.8GHz at all. I managed to boot into Windows at 4.9, 5, and 5.1GHz however I was unable to take a screenshot as stability/temperatures were becoming an issue. (This chip is known to be stable at 4.7/4.8GHz under good cooling).



Benchmarks: Power Consumption

It’s interesting to note the power consumption across all motherboards. Energy results can fluctuate between manufacturers and chipsets due to the features and specifications that are integrated. First of all, for the idle tests the system is cold booted into Windows and no additional applications are executed – the watts are noted on the external energy monitor we use and then the system is loaded with 3DMark FireStrike – watts are again monitored for the duration of the test and the highest rated wattage result is then noted down. Below are the results of this energy test.

Benchmarks: X264 HD

Simply put, this test measures how fast your machine can encode a short, DVD quality MPEG-2 video clip into a high-quality x264 video clip. What’s x264, you ask? It’s more or less the next-generation Xvid/DivX codec. I think it’s ideal for a benchmark because the application (x264.exe) reports fairly accurate compression results (in frames per second) for each pass of the video encoding process, and it uses multi-core processors very efficiently.



Benchmarks: AIDA64

AIDA64 Product Page
This simple integer benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and the misprediction penalties of the CPU. It finds the solutions for the classic “Queens problem” on a 10 by 10 sized chessboard. At the same clock speed theoretically the processor with the shorter pipeline and smaller misprediction penalties will attain higher benchmark scores. For example — with HyperThreading disabled — the Intel Northwood core processors get higher scores than the Intel Prescott core based ones due to the 20-step vs 31-step long pipeline. CPU Queen test uses integer MMX, SSE2 and SSSE3 optimizations.





Benchmarks: Cinebench R15

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Iron Man 3, Oblivion, Life of Pi or Prometheus and many more.



Benchmarks: SiSoftware SANDRA

SANDRA isn’t always a benchmark that is included in hardware reviews but I believe it shouldn’t be ignored. SANDRA provides a vigorous package that tests your system in a rather large array of benchmarks. There are many aspects of benchmark that can be executed. We will be considering – CPU and memory tests.








Benchmarks: 3DMark – Firestrike

3DMark FireStrike Product Page
Fire Strike is our new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is our most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today. Fire Strike will only be available in the Windows editions of 3DMark initially.



Benchmarks: PCMark 8

PCMark 8 combines performance benchmarking with battery life measurement and includes tests based on popular Adobe and Microsoft applications. Whether you are looking for long battery life, or maximum power, PCMark 8 will help you find the devices that offer the perfect combination of efficiency and performance for your needs. It’s the complete PC performance benchmark for home and business.



Gaming Benchmarks: Tomb Raider, THIEF & Deus Ex:MD

It’s important for us to perform a number of game benchmarks as well as the synthetic tests because gamers will want to know if there are any significant benefits. So here we have two popular and recent gaming titles which feature a dedicated benchmark tool within them to display results.





Conclusion


Despite the age of the 990FX platform, this refresh is one of the more exciting ones we have seen regarding actual end user benefit as well as a major overhaul to the aesthetics. Yes, sure, I recognise that the heatsink design is the same as the original 990FX, except on the southbridge, but overall, the design is a lot more coherent, modest, and less garish. The PCB digital camo print is subtle, and hasn’t gone over the top. The AURA lighting is actually really attractive, giving your graphics/expansion cards a backlight which can change to the beat of whatever audio source you are listening to. As RGB lighting effects go, when say compared to some mechanical keyboards, it is still fairly primitive, and the colours could be calibrated a little more accurately regarding the software, but the fact it is there, it works, and it looks good, is always a huge positive.



The TUF SABERTOOTH 990FX R3.0 delivers hard in the connectivity, giving the latest USB standards and some. In our testing, there was no major ground broken regarding performance of the FX CPUs, overall things were positive. Our overclocking experience was actually enjoyable, if not, fantastic! It has been a while since I have booted this FX 8350 in at over 5GHz (maybe its due to the season changing) but I have no doubt that this would make a great board for those who wish to put their FX chip under water (figuratively). The components and TUF reassurance literally guarantees stability, and while that is for ‘normal operation’ I am beginning to wonder how long it will be before I see a Challenger II or an Abrahms coated with ASUS SABERTOOTH motherboards.

Sure I could continue down the path of railing on the ancient AM3+ platform, but there is still some value and life left in it, and until AMD release anything new the ASUS TUF SABERTOOTH R3.0 is likely going to be the best motherboard available (regarding chipset and contemporary features) for AMDs FX CPUs. It is also an exciting reminder that AMD are stirring and new things are coming.

The TUF SABERTOOTH 990FX R3.0 delivers more than a facelift, not only is reliability guaranteed (backed by the 5 year warranty), it is packed with all the contemporary connectivity you could wish for.

Pros
+ Awesome aesthetics (It’s like a ninja wearing Christmas lights)
+ Solid performance (standard and overclocked)
+ ASUS safeslot
+ 4x USB 3.1 ports
+ Supports CrossFireX and SLI
+ M.2 slot
+ Easy to use BIOS
+ A load of ASUS exclusive technologies
+ 5 year warranty

Cons
– Price

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