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ASUS refreshes the Crosshair V Formula, adds a Z

by Alistair Lowe on 3 September 2012, 12:30

Tags: ASUSTeK (TPE:2357)

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With AMD's enthusiast processors seemingly stuck-in-a-rut since the Phenom II - first released back in 2008, aside from competitive prices in the mid-range, it's difficult to claim that AMD currently offers a CPU for high-end enthusiasts at this moment in time. We know for a fact that Steamroller is coming and, that it'll start the firm slowly moving forwards once again, though, what about right now?

Much of the development in the motherboard segment is focused on Intel, with the latest and greatest features typically found only on Intel's boards. Even if you wished to make an enthusiast out of AMD, it's quite difficult, however, ASUS plans to change this and has announced a refresh of the Crosshair V Formula, the Crosshair V Formula-Z.

ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z

Most notably and perhaps, most importantly for a dual-channel system, ASUS is now employing its T-Topology memory system, which creates tracks of equal length to both memory DIMMs, ensuring a perfect match of data travel time, allowing for greater obtainable frequencies and greater stability at those frequencies. In fact, the Formula-Z is now certified for 2,400Mhz up from the 2,133MHz of the original variant.

Increased memory stability is backed by increased overclocking stability through an upgrade of the Digi+ engine to the Digi+II which, amongst superior fine-tuning, features higher-quality capacitors to increase stability.

The previously integrated SupremeFX II soundcard has been upgraded to a SupremeFX III, which features a capacitor-bank for smooth and powerful analogue delivery, mixed with ASUS Redline and PCB shielding technology to provide EM shielding from the rest of the motherboard.

New support for Windows 8 fast-boot has been supplied, which ASUS claims allows for consistent boot times of 2-3 seconds with a Solid State Drive, enabled by UEFI bios hand-off optimisations.

Minor changes are an upgrade from Intel's GameFirst LAN controller to GameFirst II, more SATA 6Gb ports and more USB 3.0 ports.

All-in-all, this is the same Crosshair V Formula that we all know and love, only better. Perhaps not an upgrade for existing owners who are comfortable with their current performance, though certainly enticing for those who wish to overclock with AMD. We'd love to get a review out on this board soon.



HEXUS Forums :: 8 Comments

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I thought the AMD Bulldozer chips were released in mind for the Enthusiasts which will most likely be superseded by the new CPU layer this year. But one thing I have noticed is that they are focusing heavily on APU's which are annoying to and extent that when people use them for business applications not all of the RAM is available due to the APU stealing some if not a lot for its graphics.
I have to say I agree with your points. Yes the Bulldozer chips being advertised heavily as “A true 8-Core CPU” (Not quite true) come across as enthusiast chips, but it does also seem that AMD are starting to lean more heavily to the home/media pc market and are leaving the more hardcore fans a bit in the cold.
Dog this MBO looks crammed! :) It also looks very sexy and HQ. Nice work, Asus.

Yes, there's no reason to upgrade if you have a Phenom II based PC, since the newer AMD CPUs are just not so much more powerful to justify the upgrade. However, I have a feeling these new “Vishera” CPUs with “Piledriver” cores might be worth it. What bothers me is that AMD CPUs still use a little bit too much power, and when they finally release these new 32nm based CPUs in 2013 that could be really nice and worth an upgrade.
SineWave
Dog this MBO looks crammed! :) It also looks very sexy and HQ. Nice work, Asus.

Yes, there's no reason to upgrade if you have a Phenom II based PC, since the newer AMD CPUs are just not so much more powerful to justify the upgrade. However, I have a feeling these new “Vishera” CPUs with “Piledriver” cores might be worth it. What bothers me is that AMD CPUs still use a little bit too much power, and when they finally release these new 32nm based CPUs in 2013 that could be really nice and worth an upgrade.

depends on how you look at it really, Bulldozer do have a few nice upgrades over Phenom II CPU's, like instruction sets and the ability to run 8 threads pretty well, but yeah I'm also sticking to my Phenom II 965 for the moment, I'm pretty sure I will upgrade to Vishera, unless something turns out to be completely wrong with it, but next year it will probably be time to retire my Phenom II, must admit it's still a solid CPU.

I have the first Crosshair V, it's a really sweet board, although I must admit I've actually filled out every single Sata 6 port there is, and I'm using E-sata as well, so if I ended up having too much money I probably would consider this board, but atm I'm quite happy with the first one.
And the new price for this piece of kit will no doubt be heavily inflated. I personally like the Sabertooth 990FX, and only Ā£135 ish