Motherboard Feature Comparison

The three motherboards I used in this test have different sets of features, which I've summarized in the table below.

All of these X79 boards are high-end products with enthusiast features like the ability to recover from a bad BIOS flash and solid capacitors, but the ASUS P9X79 Deluxe is obviously the fanciest: it has the most USB 3.0 ports, has the fanciest audio, a very elaborate power system, and all the other bells and whistles like diagnostic LEDs and POST code displays, as well as ASUS' dedicated "TPU" and "EPU" processors to help manage overclocking and power usage. It does however dispense with the legacy PCI slot, so those of you with a strong emotional attachment to your old Sound Blaster cards should look elsewhere.

Both ASUS boards also benefit from very elaborate and finely-adjustable digital power systems ("DIGI+") as well as SSD caching and extra SATA 6G ports. The Intel DX79SI's relatively stingy 6 SATA ports, with only two SATA 6G, puts it at a disadvantage.

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