ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Professional (AMD 990FX) Motherboard Review

Introduction

As we've said a few times now, we're playing a bit of catch up on 990FX based motherboards as we were holding some back while we waited for Bulldozer. Some boards were waiting for the processor to launch in September before it was delayed again.

We're getting through the boards, though, and the latest one for us to fire up comes from ASRock and follows the Fatal1ty series. The ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX Professional looks the part, but today we'll see how it performs with the new AMD FX-8150 from AMD.

As usual, the first thing we'll do is check out the package to see what's going on. Once we've done that we'll start to move onto the board and see what features we've got on offer. After we've done that, we'll check out the BIOS to see what's going on before we get into the BIOS and have a look at that while also taking the time to overclock our processor.

The FX series processors haven't gotten off to the best start, but the 990FX has proven itsself in the past. Let's see if ASRock are able to continue the trend of good looking 990FX boards and see what kind of performance we can get out of our FX-8150 today.

The Package

Being part of the "Professional" line within the Fatal1ty series means we're dealing with quite a large box. We can see the front gives us a little bit of information, but opening up we get a whole lot more on the left with a look at the board on the right. Moving to the back of the box, you can see we get a bit more detail on the board and some more specifics.

Moving inside the package, we've got the normal paperwork and driver CD. Mind you, I forgot to put the driver CD in the photo; it's included, though. We've also got six SATA cables, auxiliary cable, two Molex to SATA connectors, SLI bridge and a rear I/O panel.

Along with all that we've also got a pair of USB 3.0 ports included in the package which can sit at the front of your case, or with the included backplate can be installed in the rear.