Introduction

At the end of last month during Computex we saw the AMD 990FX chipset launch which brought with it some strong features. One of the more appealing ones was that it supports the new Bulldozer CPUs that are due out later this year. Because AMD aren't changing the socket, though, for the first generation of Bulldozer we can have boards now that support it while also supporting the current crop of CPUs from AMD.

At launch we looked at the Crosshair V Formula from ASUS. It's a great board, but at $239.99 US it might be a bit more money than you want to spend. In steps the M5A99X EVO from ASUS; priced at $164.99 US it might be a more attractive option for you and your bank account.

At $75 US less, is the M5A99X EVO an option that people really want to look at, though? What does $75 US less get you? We'll find that out and more today as we dive into the M5A99X EVO. Outside of being part of the ROG series, the board we're looking at also carries the 990X chipset instead of the 990FX chipset we saw on the C4F.

Before we get into the performance side of things, though, let's start by looking at the package. Once that's done we'll check out the board itself before we look at the BIOS. Once we've done that, we'll look at our testbed before getting into the overclocking side of things and then the performance of the board itself.

The Package

The front and back of the box gives us a bit of a run down on what we're dealing with. The back shows us a picture of the board and goes on to cover some of the main ASUS only features that are present on the board like UEFI BIOS and Auto Tuning to name just a couple.

Inside we haven't got a huge package going on, but everything we need to get up and running. We've got a manual, driver CD, I/O back plate, four SATA cables and a SLI bridge. Along with these, we've also got our little quick headers that make plugging in your system panel a little easier.