The Asus Crosshair II Formula is a high-end AM2/AM2+ socket motherboard with tri-SLI capabilities through the NVIDIA nForce 780a SLI chipset. The Crosshair II has 3 x PCI-e Gen 2.0 x16 support for the NVIDIA tri-SLI capable GPUs (They operate as x16, x16, x8 or 3-way x8, x8, x 8 during tri-SLI mode). The Crosshair II supports 32 and 64 bit AMD Phenom FX, Phenom, Athlon and Sempron processors. It also provides HyperTransport 3.0 functionality as well as 4 DIMMS that support dual channel DDR2 1066+, 800 and 667MHz ram modules up to 8GB maximum. A special feature on this particular board includes onboard HDMI/DVI support through the GeForce 8 series onboard video GPU. It also provides 6 USB 2.0 ports as well as an additional onboard USB connector to hook up an extra 6 USB 2.0 ports. It also comes packaged with a LCD Debug "Poster" screen that alerts users as to common malfunctions during setup and during later use; it eliminates the long process of deducting what hardware failures exist within the system. Bundled with the motherboard is a copy of Company Of Heroes-Opposing Fronts; 3DMARK06; and Kaspersy Anti-Virus. The Crosshair II also has additional ports; a dual gigabit LAN, ATA133, 2 PCI-e, 2 PCI, 6 3GB SATA2 ports, an 8 channel analog audio output, IEEE 1394a, and 1x Optical and 1x Coaxial audio output. General consensus on many reviews is that the onboard sound quality is poor; and causes a lot of background noise during applications, media and game playback. The ASUS Crosshair II Formula has an MSRP price around $299.
