Conclusion:

The features of this mobo, like GameFirst and ROG Connect, are very useful. There's no PATA since this is a high-end solution. It's also very important that secondary functionality doesn't interfere with key features, this mainboard is among the leaders in terms of overclocking and performance.

Overclocking:

An AMD Phenom II X4 810 was overclocked @3822MHz and an AMD Phenom II X4 965 @4100MHz.

Compared to:

Gigabyte GA-890FXA-UD7

Test Setup:

• Memory: 2 x 2GB Apacer DDR3-1333
• Hard drive: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (SATA, 7200rpm)
• video card: ATI RADEON HD4850, 512 MB GDDR3
• Power supply: AcBel ATX-550CA-AB8FB
• Operating system: Windows Vista x64

Benchmarks:

7-Zip 4.65 x64, WinRAR 3.80, XviD 1.2.1, x264 r1129 x64, FarCry 2, Crysis, Devil May Cry 4, World in Conlict, RightMark Audio Analyzer 6.2.3, power consumption.

Conclusion:

This mobo has a good layout, but the overclocking results stay behind, even though the ROG series are known for high overclockability. This board is also very intuitive in the process of setting up the BIOS, but it wasn't able to convince with a BCLK of 239 MHz, when compared to the 274 MHz of the Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT.

Overclocking:

An AMD Phenom II 955 BE was OCed @3832MHz.

Compared to:

• Asrock M3A790GXH/128M
• ASUS M4A78T-E, ASUS M4A78 HTPC/RC
• DFI Lanparty DK790FXB
• Gigabyte GA-MA790FXT-UD5P

Test Setup:

• RAM: 2x2GB Mushkin DDR3-1066 XP3 12800
• HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F1 320 GByte
• PSU: Cougar CM Power 700 Watt

Benchmarks:

SuperPi, 3D Mark 2006, 3D Mark Vantage, Crysis, Resident Evil V, Sisoft Sandra, Street Fighter IV, wPrime. In the gaming benches an Nvidia GTX 280 Graphics card was used.

Conclusion:

Allthough various BIOS issues need to be ironed out, there is barely anything at all negative to say about this board. The northbridge and southbridge could use a proper TIM application and this board could really use a multi-BIOS system. Where is the POST code reader? AMD has a winner on its hands with the 890FX/SB850 chipset and the Athlon II 640. It's not the most expensive 890FX board, but the feature set and abilities definitely make it worth every penny.

Overclocking:

An Athlon II 640 was OCed @4138.9MHz. The 3D Mark 2006 overall score increased 25.99%, with a CPU score increase of 26.66%. Vantage scores increased 13.52% and an impressive CPU score of 30.61%, respectively.

Test Setup:

• CPU Cooler: Thermalright Venomous X with two Delta fans.
• MEMORY: DDR3-2000 G.Skill Trident 9-9-9-24
• Video Card: Gigabyte 5870 SOC
• Power Supply: Cooler Master Silent Pro M600
• OS: Windows 7 Prof x64

Compared to:

an Intel i5 655K @ stock frequency of 3.2GHz.

Benchmarks:

Call of Pripyat, SuperPi 1M, WPrime 32M, PiFast, 3DMark06 and 3DMark Vantage.

Conclusion:

This mobo is a very capable gaming system at relatively low costs. Allthough the Phenom II X6 1090T was not highly overclockable, it's still an interesting niche. The addition of features like Turbo Key II, Gaming First LAN connection, X-Fi audio and CrossfireX add to the value here.

Overclocking:

A Phenom II X6 1090T was oced @3.981GHz a gain of 700MHz which can be considered a low result. The reviewers also had a look at TurboV and ROG connect.

Compared to:

ASRock P55DE3, ASUS P7P55 WS Supercomputer, ASUS Maximus III Extreme, EVGA P55 FTW.

Test Setup:

• Memory: 4GB Kingston KHX1600C9D3T1K3/6GX
• HDD: Kingston SSDNow M 80GB SSd
• Air cooler:Cooler Master Hyper 212 + Extra Fan
• Power Supply: Cooler Master UCP 1100

Benchmarks:

HyperPi, Lightwave 3D, AutoGK, Call of Duty Modern Warfare, Battlefield Bad Company 2, Temperature, @Power Consumption, 3D Mark Vantage, Cinebench, Far Cry 2, Lavalys Everest Ultimate, PC mark vantage, PC mark vantage x64, Sisoft Sandra. In the gaming benchmarks an AMD Radeon HD 5870 1GB was used.

Conclusion:

The performance of this mobo was excellent, with an amazingly high HTT overclock of 345MHz. Even this overclock did not significantly improve benchmark performance as compared to the older Crosshair III motherboard. The performance potential however is a lot bigger, with Tri-CrossFireX, SATA3 and USB3 support. These new features should make this board a lot faster. The appearance and layout are spectacular and the construction quality was very good.

Overclocking:

An AMD Phenom II X6 1090T BE was OCed @4140.3MHz, 12X345 without raising the vCore voltage. The memory was 4GB DDR3 Corsair Dominator GT 2000.

Benchmarks:

EVEREST Ultimate, CINEBENCH 11.5 x64, FuPC Mark Vantage x64, Battelfield: Bad Company 2, Unigine Heaven DirectX 11 Benchmark. In the gaming benches an ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics card was used.

Compared to:

ASUS Crosshair III Formula. (790FX)

Power Consumption:

Not measured.

Conclusion:

The Crosshair IV Formula has a lot of features, is very easy to use, stable, very overclockable, innovative, and brings quality to the market, this mobo is for those who want the highest quality. The price is very high though, many other boards cost less, if you don't plan to get everything out of your board than there are cheaper options.

Overclocking:

The Manual Overclock was devided into three sections:

1. MAX BCLK: After a few voltage changes, the reviewers reached 320MHz, with a Phenom II X4 925, an increase of 60%.
2. MAX Memory: Kingston HyperX DDR3-1600 was raised to 955MHz, which resulted in a final 1910MHz overclock.
3. MAX CPU: A Phenom II X6 1090T BE was OCed @4.2GHz stable, vCore just under 1.5v.

Compared to:

This board was not compared to another motherboard.

Benchmarks:

No benchmarks were tested.