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What are the differences between Sabertooth R2 and the earlier model?

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is there any reason to revert back to 1102 for the avg overclocker? I went from the latest version back to 1102 just to see if I could back flash, the only issue I had was while unzipping the bios file using the windows 7 zip utility I would get an error about the file not being uefi compatible but unzipping it with winrar allowed be to flash the older version.

Depends on what you're overclocking and how high. My tests are from a benching standpoint. For stock 24/7 use, there is no noticeable difference between 1102 and 1604.
 
Oh man, I missed the discussion! Hold up, I know everything about everything!!! (for once)

You get 2 more usb 3 ports. And an extra processing chip by Asmedia for them.
You get 2 less usb 2 ports.
You get a vastly more stable esata experience, the jmicron chips are HORRIBLE. I have mine turned off to strip around 8 seconds off the boot time, ugh.
You lose the firewire port and processing chip (by via).

Caps have been moved all around, especially at the pcie slots, showing that the board tracing has been modified.
The VRM delivery system is indeed different, though I couldn't tell you how. I don't even know which one is better.


And finally, the bios chip is twice as big. It also seems to have two differences in the actual firmware standards.

I have the rev 1 sabertooth 990 FX, and have been plagued by system gremlins from day 1. Bootloaders in the wrong place, booting to one drive would boot to another, you don't even want to hear about my ghost uefi install accident. Memory unstable at 1600 Mhz. Ugh.
Bios updates reset the problems, but didn't fix them.

Also. Beware of the old bioses. There was a microcode bug in the FX series which made them incompatible with a number of games on steam (portal 2 would cause a blue screen) and they had to patch it with the bios. It was a DRM function, amusingly enough.
The last version with the problem was 0705. Don't use it!


Hope this was useful, sorry I didn't see this thread earlier.


EDIT: Here's the gallery shots of both boards, so you can look at the caps yourself. Also, the colors are a little different.
#1: http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/SABERTOOTH_990FX/gallery/
#2: http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/SABERTOOTH_990FX_R20/gallery/
 
Cool! You should shut off the jmicron sata controller if you aren't using it. It adds like, 8 seconds to the boot time. It was driving me crazy. Also, heads up about the ethernet port, mine stopped working. And newegg reviews have the same recurring problem.
 
I dunno if any of the big gun benchers have tried the latest Bios for the R2, but's it's been absolutely solid for me. Granted I'm not doing any benching for world records but it's running 2400 ram & a 4.6 OC flawlessly.
 
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