The UD3 and UD5 now come in R5 flavors. The biggest difference, beyond looks, seems to be an updated BIOS and integrated sound chip.
With so many "updated" AM3+ boards being released, it is somewhat surprising to a lack of attention, or round-ups, paid to them. Then again, more surprising might be the fact that new boards are still being made for an EOL product.
What? A good revision of the Ud5? Nooooo thats never happened before. lol. Small things but its better then nothing :)
Interesting.
Why do they even bother? Isn't manufacturing and designing quite a process?
Maybe a lot of people still keep buying FX CPUs and they just want to have a bigger market share in the AM3+ side of things.
I remember when ASUS had an AMA over at Tom's Hardware, they did a brief overview of what it took to come up with a design for either a TUF or ROG motherboard. It was a pretty intensive process. They made an off-handed comment, though, about how some other motherboard manufacturer's save costs by rehashing/reusing certain designs. Since the changes to the motherboards seem to be mostly aesthetic (the PCB looks, on the surface, a lot more "clean"), I imagine that it didn't take too much resources to update the audio and BIOS.
I could be completely wrong, as I have no clue how hard it is overhaul a bios. I know that, at some point, the UD3 went form having a standard BIOS to a UEFI. I think that was Rev. 3? But then they still had VRM heating issues, so then they slapped on an huge heatsink.
... As for why they bother, I can only speculate. The fact that some motherboards are being sold USB3.1 PCIe add-ins, with a premium, seems kind of silly to me.