Asus M5A99X EVO
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM3Plus/M5A99X_EVO/

CPU: AMD FX-8150 8 Core (3.6ghz - 4.2ghz) Bulldozer, Zambezi core
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/processors/amdfx/Pages/amdfx-model-number-comparison.aspx
Bios: v.705 (2011-08-23)
Onboard NIC (Realtek) Enabled, shows gigabit.
Onboard Sata-6g set to AHCI, works
64bit - Yes, AMD-V, 64 bit guest tested.
VT-D - No, (at least I haven't spotted the option and vsphere shows no passthrough)

16gb
2gb Sata drive on the 6g sata port, setup as AHCI.
Asus HD5450 PCIe video card added since the board doesn't have onboard video.

ESXi 5.0.0 469512
Stock install, no OEM.tgz needed. NIC and Storage controller work.

Ran iperf2 from a guest on this host to a physical system on the same gig switch for 5 minutes and averages 907Mbit/s:

Hi

Do you know if the VT-D support, dependens on the CPU or the motherboard ? .

Im planning to procase a MSI 890FXA-GD70 and the AMD FX-8150 CPU

Both . .the bulldozer proc should support it, but in my case it appears the board doesn't.
For the AMD chipsets, it'll be an 'IOMMU' option in the bios. The Asus M5A99X EVO has an iommu option that is either 'disabled' or '64mb' and doesn't seem to make a difference to esx when it comes to passthrough.

I read in a few places the ###X AMD based chipsets won't have the ability to do pass-through but the ###FX will but it's up to the board manufacturer whether to make it available.

This thread at MSI seems to indicate the board you are considering will have it in one of the later bios updates: http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=139125.0
The last post seems to confirm it: I've been using the latest version of v1.7b5 that's frequently updated on MSI's ftp server.
So far it's working great with VMDirectPath I/O. I've thrown in my DELL PERC 6/i and it works flawlessly in a 08R2 VM., though that was a year ago, so would have been using a CPU other than the new zambezi core.

I still don't have a firm opinion on how well the new 8 core performs compared against other procs. The system has been stable, I've been compiling in 32 and 64 bit VM's fairly constantly for the last 20 or so hours; I just can't say if it performs better than say a 6 core Phenom or 4 core sandybridge yet.

I'm in the process of designing a VM server but i'm stuck whether to go with AMD FX-8150 or X6 or sandybridge i7, would love to know how its all working for you and how many VMs you have running at the same time without any slow downs.

Thank you

With the new Bios 901 you can use ESXi VMDirectPath (IOMMU / AMD-Vi).
A guest NexentaStor 3.1.1 can use the SATA-Controller SB950.

This MB and the Phenom II 1100T worked out of the box for me. I also have a FX 8150 CPU in my workstation but I haven't tried it in the ESXi server yet. With BIOS 901, DirectPath seems to be available but I haven't tried it yet.

The only issue I have right now is that my USB external drives that are configured to connect directly to a Windows 2008 R2 x64 VM seem to disappear under heavy usage. I don't remember my old ESXi (890 chipset with 1055T) setup having this problem.

I have to physically unplug and replug the USB connector of the HD from the ESXi server. Ideas are welcome!