| ASUS Sabertooth X79 TUF Motherboard |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Motherboards | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Written by Olin Coles & David Ramsey | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Monday, 14 November 2011 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Intel X79 Express ChipsetIf you look at the block diagrams of the Z68 and X79 chipsets side by side, the X79 seems functionally identical to the Z68, except that it lacks the digital display support and Intel Smart Response Technology. The lack of the latter is disappointing, since our tests with Intel Smart Response Technology showed that its use of an SSD as an intelligent cache to a hard drive could dramatically improve storage performance. Perhaps to make up for this, the X79 does permit overclocking via raising the base clock (BCLK) frequency, something that's almost impossible on the previous Sandy Bridge chipsets since most of the other clocks on the board were derived from the base clock, and raising it more than a few MHz would make the entire board unstable.
LGA2011 processors, like the Sandy Bridge Extreme series shown above, require the new X79 Express chipset. Intel provides this handy block diagram: 
As with the Z68 and earlier P67 chipsets, there are 14 USB 2.0 ports and 6 SATA ports, of which only two are SATA 6G. Notably missing is Intel's "Light Peak" (aka "Thunderbolt") interface, which Intel has touted as a reason for not supporting SuperSpeed USB 3.0. And it's really odd that only two of the SATA ports are SATA 6G, since 6G devices are becoming more common, especially among SSDs. For a cutting-edge platform, this is impossible to justify. At least AMD gives you a full six SATA 6G ports. One nice thing is the abundance of PCI-E lanes, an area Intel has historically been a little skimpy on, especially on their LGA1155/1156 platforms. The Sandy Bridge E provides a full 40 PCI-E lanes from the processor, more than twice the 16 lanes of an LGA1155 Sandy Bridge CPU, and an additional eight lanes from the X79 chipset...the same as from the P67/Z68 chipsets. Together, that's a full 48 PCI-E lanes, besting even AMD's 42. Triple-card SLI/CrossFireX systems will run at 16/16/8 with eight lanes left over for SATA 6 and USB 3.0 use. So the X79's a mixed bag: only two SATA 6G ports and no USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt, but plenty of PCI-E lanes.
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Comments
Thorough, detailed, and on the cutting edge as usual.
Not to mention that it coincides with their timely reviews of the new CPU chips and the Intel "Extreme"(cough) motherboard - its put them all together in perspective so we know where to focus Mom's xMas gaming and upgrade cash!
I have a previous X58 Sabertooth motherboard that has the Intel Raid chip supporting 6x3gb sata drives plus the Marvel chip that adds another 2x6gb ports. I have my C: Drive SSD and another SSD for virtual machines on the Marvell and two raid 5 arrays on the six sata ports.
One question is: with the new configuration that has 2x6gb asus ports plus 2x6gb chipset ports plus 4x3gb ports, will I be able to support both of my raid 5 arrays?
i.e. are all six of the chipset ports on the same controller, or are they logically split so raid arrays must stay within each set of ports?
Thanks BMR!
But in the comparo-graph on this web page:
#benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=833&Itemid=69&limit=1&limitstart=2
for SATA this for this motherboard it says:
4xSATA 3G, 4xSATA 6G
Please clarify, am I reading one of these pages wrong?
Also, not really an issue, but on this page it says:
"there are 14 USB 2.0 ports and 6 SATA ports"
and
"touted as a reason for not supporting SuperSpeed USB 3.0"
which doesn't explicitly say that there are no USB 3.0 ports, but it sort of reads that way to the casual reader. On the other page listed above it says for USB for this motherboard:
"6xUSB 3.0, 14xUSB 2.0"
Thanks for the wonderful reviews of this cutting edge stuff! Its great to get all of this info so quickly after they are released.
ASUS adds extra SATA 6G ports and USB 3.0 via third party controller chips, which is part of the "added value" they bring to this board.
Love the review... nice and thorough.
Question (as I have been looking for a suitable upgrade & replacement for my P67 Sabertooth board...
Will this board allow me to run my two GTX580's in SLI @ 16x, and allow the Revodrive3 x2 to run in the bottom PCI-E okay?
In my present rig, I have to drop a GPU.
Thanks