ASUS Crosshair IV Formula - 890FX/SB850 Motherboard

Introduction:

With the release of the 890FX chipset, ASUS steps up to the plate with their latest top of the line AMD motherboard, the Crosshair IV Formula. Most of the new features for the 8-Series chipset can be found in the SB850 southbridge, the most notable being native support for SATA 6Gb/s. Like the 790FX chipset, the 890FX has 44 PCIe 2.0 lanes, allowing for CrossfireX dual x16 graphics card support (or even three cards running x16/x8/x8). A new and unique feature of the 890FX chip is an IOMMU implementation. Much like Intel's VT-d, AMD's IOMMU should increase performance and security for virtualized environments.

ASUS takes all the features of the 890FX/SB850 chipset and adds in a few more goodies. First, there are a pair of USB 3.0 ports for next generation high-speed USB devices. Second, an additional SATA controller provides an eSATA port on the back, along with a 7th internal SATA header. This is very creative on ASUS' part as it allows for the six native SATA ports to be utilized in a RAID configuration, with the 7th extra port there for an optical drive. Third, ASUS added SupremeFX X-Fi audio, which provides the familiar Creative audio interface and some X-Fi features. Finally, with the ASUS TurboV EVO chip(s), there is a plethora of overclocking features and control over the CPU and memory components.