The Republic of Gamers has had the Crosshair IV Formula for AMD gamers and tuners for some time now, and it’s upping the stakes with the more hardcore Crosshair IV Extreme. This board is dedicated to the new AMD 890FX architecture with the SB850 southbridge configuration, identical to the previous Crosshair IV, which was also conceived to tap the power of Phenom II processors. However, this variant offers a deeper bench of features for the performance hungry.
Preliminary impressions
We’ve yet to really put this one to the test, but it’s easy to tell ROG has put a lot of thought into it. Not just the design, but the feature set. The ATX factor Crosshair IV Extreme (C4E) brings back tools like RC Bluetooth for overclocking and monitoring from a Bluetooth device, ROG Connect benchmarking and overclocking from an external PC via USB cable, and CPU Level Up, an auto-overclocking utility.
AM3 socket CPUs and overclocked DDR3 can come into their own with these features, and the thermal design looks very promising, so once more, ROG has a good venue for experimental tweaking for those thus inclined. We expect this to become a hit with the overclocking scene.
Several triple and quad PCI arrangements are possible for multiple graphics cards solutions, and of course both CrossFire and SLI are supported. 
Lucid
One of the neat aspects of the C4E is its inclusion of Lucid technology, a dedicated bridge chip that makes it possible to use two graphics cards, and not only in the by-now traditional CrossFire and SLI stance. We mean any two graphics cards, regardless of vendor. Should be an interesting setup for further tooling around, and certainly a major innovation. 
There are actually quite a few more features to the C4E, but we’re going to have to learn more about them before spilling the beans, so check back soon.
