Here is the complete socket AM3+ motherboard first-wave of ASUS, the M5A series, short and sweet. Based entirely on AMD 9-series chipset, including 9-series southbridge chips, the first-wave caters to gamer, performance, and enthusiast market segments, and only includes those chipset models that rely on discrete graphics (leaving out AMD 980G, 990GX). The lineup even includes models from ASUS' gamer/enthusiast-oriented Republic of Gamers (ROG) family, and The Ultimate Force (TUF) family.

The lineup starts with three models based on AMD 970 + SB950 chipset, which is a single discrete graphics card platform. The M5A97 is the entry-point, it bases itself entirely on what the chipset offers, plus two USB 3.0 ports. Moving up is M5A97 Pro, which has everything its little sibling has, plus a stronger 6+2 phase Digi+ VRM, and two eSATA ports. The M5A97 EVO, which was pictured a little while ago. This has everything the Pro variant has, plus two front-panel USB 3.0 ports, and FireWire.While the M5A97 boards do feature two physical PCI-E x16 slots, the second (black) slot is wired to the southbridge, and runs at x4 speeds, it might support ATI CrossFire since Catalyst doesn't care how two GPUs are connected to the system as long as there's an AMD or Intel chipset; but there's definitely no NVIDIA SLI.

Moving up the food-chain, there's the most affordable AMD motherboard that supports both ATI CrossFire, and 2-way NVIDIA SLI. Based on the AMD 990X + SB950 chipset, the M5N99X EVO features two PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots that run at x16/NC or x8/x8 speeds, depending on whether the second slot is populated. Again, there's a third black electrical x4 slot. That aside, the board features two internal SATA 3 Gb/s ports apart from the six SATA 6 Gb/s ports that are standard with every M5A board; and a Power eSATA port apart from regular eSATA.

The top of the line AMD 990FX chipset has no standard ASUS model, rather it dives right away into two of ASUS' reputed enthusiast motherboard lines, with the TUF Sabertooth 990FX, and the ROG Crosshair V Formula. The Sabertooth intends to provide enough durability to boot GlaDOS after it wakes up hundreds of years later, while the Crosshair V has everything the overclocker and big-ticket gamer would ever need.

The TUF Sabertooth 990FX uses Digi+ VRM, ultra-high grade electrical components, three PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots (electrical x16/x16/NC or x16/x8/x8), and a PCI-E x16 @x4. This board supports ATI CrossFireX and NVIDIA 3-way SLI. Its main selling points are a unique ceramic-surface heatsink called TUF CeraM!X, a "thermal radar" that can tell you how warm a specific part of the board is running, anti-surge circuitry, efficient power-switching, and military-standard components. Otherwise, this board has the same feature-set as the M5A99X EVO, as a failsafe, it even lacks DRAM multipliers to go above DDR3-1866 (FX processors are capable of that out of the box).

The ROG Crosshair V Formula uses bleeding-edge components for overclocking, including 10-phase ExtremeDigi+ VRM, three PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots (x16/x16/NC or x16/x8/x8), an x16 @x4, 7 SATA 6 Gb/s ports, one Power eSATA 6 Gb/s, Intel-made GbE controller, and very high memory multipliers (DDR3-2133 MHz out of the box capable). It comes with an ASUS Thunderbolt card bundled (not to be confused with Thunderbolt IO). Thunderbolt is a PCI-Express addon card with SupremeFX X-Fi audio and Bigfoot Killer NIC on one PCB. That apart, there are several ROG-exclusives such as GameFirst, CPU LevelUp, and COP-EX (mechanism that protects individual components from frying up).

The SB950 southbridge that's common between all boards embeds a six-port SATA 6 Gb/s RAID controller, and an 8-lane PCI-Express hub for onboard devices. The southbridge connects to northbridge over a faster chipset interconnect with 4 GB/s bandwidth.

ASUS' motherboard lineup will be out in mid-June.Image Courtesy: Sweclockers