Asus M5A97 EVO Motherboard Review

Before we get into this new board from Asus let me go over some of the primary features of the chipset. This board uses the AMD 970 and the SB950 chipset. With these boards the AMD 970 is the Northbridge and this handles all of the CPU and memory functions. On the Southbridge you have the AMD SB950 which handles all of the peripheral interfaces.

AMD’s 970 is the mid-range level platform for their new 900 series chipsets. This simply means that it has fewer features than the 990X or FX series that was released earlier. These chipsets feature fewer lanes for graphics expansion and might also feature fewer SATA 3.0 ports. Aside from these small differences the AMD 970 is a very good chipset for the price and will still have many features that even some enthusiasts would be happy to have. This chipset also features the same amount of memory expansion as the other higher-end chipsets with about the same overclocking potential as well.

AMD’s SB950 chipset remains virtually the same on these boards when compared to their higher-end siblings. The only real difference is that the expansion capabilities have been scaled down as mentioned above. For most users this is going to make very little difference. In most applications and computing environments it isn’t going to make much a difference either. These boards are for those that aren’t looking to get the absolute most out of their hardware. These boards are mainly for the average user that wants to simply install it and forget it. If you find that you fit more into this category then you’re going to find that these are very good boards for the price.