ASRock 890FX Deluxe3 Motherboard

Slots

As mentioned, the AMD 890FX chipset has 42 PCI Express x1 lanes controlled by 11 engines – just to put things into perspective, the AMD 890GX chipset has 22 lanes controlled by eight engines. This allows this chip to provide a very high-end slot configuration.

On 890FX Deluxe3 ASRock decided to hook up these lanes like this: the first PCI Express x16 slot (blue) always work at x16, independently of how many video cards are installed; the second PCI Express x16 slot (blue) always work at x16; and the third PCI Express x16 slot (white) always work at x4.

It is important to note that motherboards from other manufacturers may use a different configuration. With 42 available lanes it is possible, for instance, to have four PCI Express x16 slots working at x8 at the same time.

ASRock made a nice job using different colors to identify the speed of the PCI Express x16 slots. So if you want to install two video cards make sure to use the blue slots.

Another terrific thing ASRock did was to give enough space between these slots. This means you won’t have any trouble installing two dual-slot video cards on this motherboard (in this case the first video card will cover one of the PCI Express x1 slots and the second card will cover one of the standard PCI slots). You can only install a third dual-slot video card if you have a case with eight or more slots (ATX cases by default have seven), and even then you will cover two SATA-600 ports, one USB header, the floppy disk drive port, the power and reset buttons and the POST diagnostics display.

This motherboard offers support to CrossFireX technology, of course, but not to SLI. The product, however, doesn’t come with CrossFireX bridges.

890FX Deluxe3 also comes with two PCI Express x1 slots and two standard PCI slots.

Figure 2: Slots.