Our next set of motherboard recommendations sit at the feet of Sandy Bridge-E, the current de-facto platform for consumer throughput performance. If you have a non-GPU accelerated workload and a consumer budget, X79 offers a platform with quad channel memory as well as two 6-core processor SKUs with hyperthreading enabled. The only way to get more is to jump to Xeon processors, which can be 2-3x more expensive, or 2P/4P systems from both AMD and Intel, which offer a mix of benefits depending on how the software is programmed. X79 and Sandy Bridge-E were released in November 2011, with a cavalcade of motherboards in the first 12 months of launch. Now in 2013, new motherboard production has been slow, with only a...
ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Champion and X79 Professional Review: From a Gamer to Gamers
We have a long wait until Ivy Bridge-E hits the shelves, and until that point the dichotomy between the features and price of both Sandy Bridge-E and Ivy Bridge...
71 by Ian Cutress on 2/9/2013
Gigabyte X79S-UP5 WiFi Review: Ultra Durable 5 Meets the C606 Chipset
As part of the Computex 2012 show, Gigabyte demonstrated to us their new version of Ultra Durable. This fifth iteration of their power delivery combines their previous features...
16 by Ian Cutress on 9/6/2012
ASRock X79 Extreme11 Review: PCIe 3.0 x16/x16/x16/x16 and LSI 8-Way SAS/SATA
The end of summer marks the start of the X79 refresh line. We are, at best estimates, coming up to half-way in the Sandy Bridge-E life as the...
58 by Ian Cutress on 9/3/2012
ASUS Republic of Gamers and X79 ROG Review – Rampage IV Gene, Formula and Extreme
The Republic of Gamers (ROG) brand has been on the radar for a good five years now. Initially in the form of motherboards, the ROG brand aimed to...
34 by Ian Cutress on 8/3/2012
Gigabyte and the X79 Refresh
Intel's Sandy Bridge-E platform is slated to be with us well into 2013. Thus if you want the highest performing system with no expense spared, there is only...
8 by Ian Cutress on 6/4/2012
V3 Gaming PC Avenger Review: A New Challenger Appears
We've had a few boutiques come through here, but what V3 Gaming PC wanted to approach us with was something different than we're used to seeing. Many of the...
31 by Dustin Sklavos on 5/16/2012
MSI Big Bang-XPower II X79 Review – A World of Novelty Heatsinks
The cream of the MSI enthusiast range is the Big Bang series – in P55 we got the Trinergy and the Fuzion, for X58 we were treated to the...
45 by Ian Cutress on 2/25/2012
More Sandy Bridge E Laptops: Eurocom Panther 4.0 and Maingear Titan 17
Clevo was the first in line to release Sandy Bridge E based laptop a couple of days ago, which naturally means that all the usual suspects that use Clevo's...
10 by Kristian Vättö on 2/8/2012
Clevo Refreshes X7200 With X79-Based P270WM, AVADirect First in Line
Clevo's venerable X7200 notebook has gotten more than a little long in the tooth. The desktop hardware-based behemoth has been sporting the X58 chipset and support for LGA1366 processors...
9 by Dustin Sklavos on 2/6/2012
ASRock X79 Extreme9 Review - Price For Performance?
When you pay more for a product, you expect a better level of everything - performance, features, support. In a motherboard, I'd want all the upgrades - top...
13 by Ian Cutress on 1/24/2012
ECS X79R-AX (Black Extreme) Review
Over the past 12 months I have covered a number of ECS boards, from the Sandy Bridge and Fusion range, including one with a Hydra chip. Looking back...
36 by Ian Cutress on 1/13/2012
Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 Review
Over the years, Gigabyte has given us some interesting products. More recently in the past 18 months, Rajinder gave their H55N-USB3 motherboard a well deserved recommendation, and more...
40 by Ian Cutress on 12/26/2011
ASRock X79 Extreme4-M and X79 Extreme4 Review – Sandy Bridge-E meets mATX
In our series of X79 reviews, the next boards to face scrutiny are a pair of ASRock boards – the X79 Extreme4-M, one of the first mATX solutions to...
53 by Ian Cutress on 12/9/2011
Intel DX79SI Review: The Default X79?
Reviews of Intel manufactured boards are something of a rarity. They are not marketed in the same way other motherboards are – almost not at all in comparison...
58 by Ian Cutress on 11/18/2011
EVGA Shows Off X79 SLI, FTW and Classified Motherboards on Video
Early this morning we published our Sandy Bridge E review, as well as our first X79 motherboard review: ASUS' P9X79 Pro. We've got more SNB-E content in the works...
5 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/14/2011
Sandy Bridge-E and X79 – The ASUS P9X79 PRO Review
In the pursuit of sheer performance, a user should aim to combine the ultimate CPU with the ultimate everything else – motherboard, memory, and so on. The latest enthusiast...
55 by Ian Cutress on 11/14/2011
A Quick Look at MSI's X79 Motherboards
Sandy Bridge E is right around the corner and the amount of Socket-2011 related emails we're getting is going up. The latest is from MSI - we got an...
16 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/7/2011
Gigabyte Shows off Simplified "3D BIOS" Interface for X79 UEFI
We are getting closer to the launch of Sandy Bridge E and Intel's motherboard partners are eager to get out some early press about their motherboards. We saw a...
27 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 11/4/2011
First Look at Gigabyte's UEFI Setup on X79
As we mentioned in our X79 coverage yesterday, none of the motherboard manufacturers were allowed to show BIOS/UEFI screenshots out of fear of accidentally disclosing clock speeds. Gigabyte's X79...
7 by Anand Lal Shimpi on 9/14/2011