The AMD 900 chipset series is identical to the AMD 800 chipset series except for the fact that it is only found on Socket AM3+ mainboards, whereas its predecessor is only found on Socket AM3 mainboards. It was released in 2011.
This allows consumers to easily identify the Socket through the chipset name. Socket AM3+ supports solely Bulldozer (microarchitecture)-based FX-processors.
In support of AM3+ CPUs, AMD has validated the 9-Series chipset for use with HyperTransport 3.1 (up to 6.4GT/s). They also worked with NVIDIA to bring SLI support to this chipset series.[1] AMD OverDrive is supported for simplified overclocking.
Four physical PCIe 2.0 ×16 slots @ x8 electrical which can be combined to create two PCIe 2.0×16 slots @ x16 electrical, six PCIe 2.0×1 lanes in various combinations of 1x 2x or 4x slots, and an additional PCIe 2.0x4 slot that does not exist on the 990x or 970 the chipset provides a total of 42 PCIe 2.0 lanes and 4 PCIe 2.0 for A-Link Express III solely in the Northbridge
ATI CrossFireX supporting up to four graphics cards
19.6 Watt TDP
Southbridge: SB950
Enthusiast discrete multi-graphics segment
990X
Codenamed RD980
One physical PCIe 2.0×16 slot or two physical PCIe 2.0×16 slots @ ×8, one PCIe 2.0×4 slot and two PCIe 2.0×1 slots, the chipset provides a total of 22 PCIe 2.0 lanes and 4 PCIe 2.0 for A-Link Express III solely in the Northbridge
One physical PCIe 2.0 ×16 slot, one PCIe 2.0 ×4 slot and two PCIe 2.0 ×1 slots, the chipset provides a total of 22 PCIe 2.0 lanes and 4 PCIe 2.0 for A-Link Express III solely in the Northbridge
One physical PCIe 2.0 ×16 slot, one PCIe 2.0 ×4 slot and two PCIe 2.0 ×1 slots, the chipset provides a total of 22 PCIe 2.0 lanes and 4 PCIe 2.0 for A-Link Express III solely in the Northbridge
The SB950 is the companion southbridge that provides I/O support. It provides the following additional capabilities:
RAID 0, 1, 10, 5 support
Southbridge issues (SB9x0)
Linux platform:
HPET operation with MSI causes LPCDMA corruption on devices using LPC DMA (floppy, parallel port, serial port in FIR mode) because MSI requests are misinterpreted as DMA cycles by the broken LPC controller[3]
Enabling multiple MSI vectors for the SATA controller when three or more SATA ports are used results in loss of interrupts and system hang.