Asus Crosshair V Formula Motherboard Review

Asus Crosshair V Formula AMD 990FX Chipset
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition (3.2Ghz) 6 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache
NZXT Havik
2x Kingston HyperX PC2133 4GB DDR3 (9-11-9-27)
NVidia GTX 580 PCI Express
Western Digital VelociRaptor 150BG SerialATA 10000RPM
LG 20x Super Multi GSA-H55L
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1050W
Windows 7 Ultimate 64Bit

Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5 AMD 990FX Chipset
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition (3.2Ghz) 6 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache
Cooler Master V6 GT
2x G.Skill RipjawsX PC2133 4GB DDR3 (9-10-9-28)
MSI Radeon HD6870 Hawk
Western Digital VelociRaptor 150BG SerialATA 10000RPM
LG 20x Super Multi GSA-H55L
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1050W
Windows 7 Ultimate 64Bit

Our motherboard testing suite has been compiled to subject the system to a variety of different scenarios that help uncover some of the subtle differences in motherboard design.  Normally these differences are driven by the processor and BIOS programming but with the advent of an IMC and PCI Express moving to the CPU we have discovered that raw performance numbers are virtually identical across the systems.  

Our new approach is to look at total system performance and minimize the variances.  The results will tell us how the system responded as a total package and also give us something to use in our comparisons.