Asus Crosshair IV Formula Motherboard Review

Testing Methods

With the exception of HD Tach which we use to measure the performance of a motherboards SATA controllers, all of our benchmarks use real applications that give you a great idea of how well a product fares when performing the tasks you're likely to want it for.

We test with our own Media Benchmarks suite which can be downloaded so you can test your own system. It uses a combination of Gimp image editing, H.264 encoding with Handbrake and multi-tasking with 7-zip file compression combined with HD video playback. Finally, for our game testing we benchmark the board running Crysis and record the minimum and average frame rates.

Our benchmarks include stable overclocked results too, so you can gauge how much performance potential there is in the motherboard, and how much value this adds to your purchase.

Test Setup:

Motherboards:

• Asus Crosshair IV Formula (890FX/SB850)
  
• MSI 890FX-GD70 (890FX/SB850)
  
• MSI 890GXM-G65 (890GX/SB850)
  
• Asus M4A89GTD Pro/USB (890GX/SB850)
  
• MSI 785GM-E65 (785G/SB750)

Common Components:

• 2.8GHz AMD Phenom II X3 720 Black Edition CPU (14 x 200MHz)
  
• 4GB of Corsair 1,600MHz DDR3 CL8 memory
  
• 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 SATA hard disk
  
• 1GB Asus ATI Radeon HD 5870 graphics card
  
• Intel X25-M 80GB SSD
  
• PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750W PSU
  
• Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
  
• ATI Catalyst 10.1 WHQL

Overclocked Settings:

• Asus Crosshair IV Formula3 x 3.7GHz, 285MHz HTT clock, 1,425MHz dual-channel DDR3 memory 8-8-8-22-1T, 2.565GHz CPU-Northbridge and HT Link clock. Read How to overclock the Asus Crosshair IV Formula for more details;
  MSI 890FX-GD70: 3 x 3.65GHz, 203MHz HTT clock, 1640MHz dual-channel DDR3 memory at 8-8-8-24-1T, 18x multiplier, 2.436GHz CPU-Northbridge clock, 2.03GHz HT Link clock;
  
• MSI 890GXM-G65: 3 x 3.6GHz, 15.5x multiplier, 235MHz HTT clock, 1,410MHz dual-channel DDR3 memory at 8-8-8-20-1T, 2.12GHz CPU-Northbridge and HT Link clock;
  
• Asus M4A89GTD Pro/USB: 3 x 3.69GHz, 11x multiplier, 335MHz HTT clock, 1,340MHz dual-channel DDR3 memory at 8-8-8-20-1T, 2.35GHz CPU-northbridge and 2.0GHz HT clock;
  
• MSI 785GM-E65: 3 x 3.1GHz, 15.5x multiplier, 200MHz HTT clock, 1,600MHz dual channel DDR3 memory at 8-8-8-22-1T, 2GHz CPU-Northbridge and HT Link clock.