ASUS Sabertooth X79 TUF Motherboard Review

Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
Model Number: The Ultimate Force Sabertooth X79
Product Name: Intel X79 Express Motherboard
Price as Tested: $339.99 at Newegg

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by ASUS.

TUF: The Ultimate Force. ASUS' most stable and reliable motherboard is backed by the industry's best five-year warranty. To attain this honor, the ASUS Sabertooth X79 motherboard endures extreme critical environmental testing that covers low to high chamber room temperatures up to 55°C at 90% humidity. TUF Thermal Armor combined with US mil-spec electronic components ensures this motherboard will remain mission-ready regardless of how extreme an overclocking experiment gets. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests the ASUS Sabertooth X79 TUF motherboard with Intel's Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition CPU.

Designed to support second-generation Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition processors for the LGA2011 socket, Intel's Sandy Bridge Extreme X79 Express motherboards raise the standard for performance computers. ASUSTek, the largest of Intel's partners, is using this occasion to debut some impressive technology of their own: the ASUS Sabertooth X79 TUF motherboard. Standard are features such as SuperSpeed USB 3.0, SATA 6Gb/s, 14-phase digital power, and PCI-Express 3.0 compatibility. Complete with quad-channel DDR3 1866MHz system memory support, ASUS enables SSD caching and RAM-disk opportunities for high-demand tasks. A fresh new UEFI (BIOS) allows risk-free USB flashback, while digital power regulators now control every voltage on the system.

Based on more than a decade's worth of experience building computer systems with ASUS components, it seemed as though the ASUS P8P67 EVO Motherboard was a crowning achievement that offered so many robust features it would be a very long time before it was outdone. ASUS needed just under a year, since they've managed to pack so many new proprietary features in the ASUS Sabertooth X79 TUF motherboard, once again setting the bar impossibly high for competing manufacturers. This review will focus on these new technologies, and explain how they integrate into the technical demands of hardware enthusiasts.

Of the many new features available on the ASUS Sabertooth X79 TUF motherboard, the most notable are:

• 3-Way NVIDIA SLI and AMD CrossFireX support
• Quad-channel DDR3 1866MHz XMP 1.3 system memory support
• SuperSpeed USB 3.0 for both front panel and rear IO ports
• Native and supplemental SATA 6Gb/s ports
• PCI-Express 3.0 support on compatible devices for up to 32GB/s
• Digital voltage regulator units for both CPU and RAM

Beyond these platform improvement, some ASUS-specific motherboard features include:

• DIGI+ Power Control voltage regulator modules for precision tuning and control
• TUF Thermal Armor provides direct wind-tunnel airflow onto heat-critical components
• TurboV Processing Unit (TPU) advanced monitoring enables expanded overclocking
• ASUS SSD Caching uses a SATA-based SSD or RAM-Disk with any hard drive to boost system performance
• USB BIOS Flashback enables firmware updates without any CPU/RAM/GPU present
• USB 3.0 Boost goes beyond SuperSpeed USB transfers by using USB Attached SCSI protocol
• ASUS AI Suite II consolidates all system utilities into one comprehensive software package
• MemOK! enables the system to boot when memory compatibility becomes an issue
• ASUS UEFI (User Extensible Firmware Interface - a BIOS replacement) with Graphical User Interface

Proprietary features are what separate the many motherboard solutions from one another. Generally speaking, without these special features overall system performance would be approximately identical between Intel X79 Express motherboard platforms. Tested using the same graphics card, system memory, central processor, and storage device on motherboards of the same platform, performance differences only appear when the manufacturer has introduced additional technology or made design sacrifices that penalize pipeline performance. This article compares several Intel X79 Express motherboards against previous Intel and AMD platforms.

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