Asus, MSI or Gigabyte

Forgive me but are you saying that you have an 1st generation Intel® Core™ i7-9XX processor and you are looking to get a motherboard to go with it?

The reason I ask is that the X58 chipset that supports these processors are officially discontinued and while you can still pick up some boards that will suppport these processors, I would advise that you make a little bit better investment with the 2nd generation Intel Core processors like the Intel Core i5-2500K, Intel Core i7-2600K and the just released today Intel Core i7-2700K and get a better investment out of your money.

Christian Wood
Intel Enthusiast Team

First of all: They will probably be relativly the same in performance.
You will be able to overclock a bit higher here or there, but in real world scenarios, it wont affect you much (if anything).

My advice :

Get the motherboard that fits best your needs. For example: Will you want to get SLI/Crossfire? If so then you should see how big your gpus are going to be to know where they will go i guess.
Will you want to install a tv tuner perhaps? a sound card? Is that and everything else going to fit in there? And if so, will the cooling be sufficient?

Its mostly that what you should be thinking about.

I think all 3 are way 2 expensive and offer little options, unless you want a performance only orientated PC.

In that case, a watercooling system might give you a better edge in overclocking than one motherboard or another.

Also dont forget that the OC depends on the chip as well, so you cant even trust the reviews on internet 100%.

It depends, if you're going to run an ultra fast SSD e.g. OCZ Vertex 3 (550MB/s) then you either need a X58 MOBO with Marvell 918X or purchase a x4/x8 SATA3 'RAID' Card which costs more than the MOBO.

If that's the case then the Gigabyte G1.Assassin.

Interesting if true, the X58 is still part of the Xeon (ICH10R) and i7-9XX lines, and the Intel i7-950~i7-990X both are listed as 'Active' and to my knowledge still in production through end of April 2012.

Is there something I don't know??

Intel X58 - http://ark.intel.com/products/chipsets/36776
Core™ i7-990X - http://ark.intel.com/products/52585/Intel-Core-i7-990X-...(12M-Cache-3_46-GHz-6_40-GTs-Intel-QPI)

Sorry my mistake, the official discontinuance of the X58 chipset will be April of 2012. We announced that the X58 chipset would be discontinued at that time. With these processors and boards are still out there and you will see them being offered into H1/2012. Also in a gaming environment the 2nd generation Intel® Core™ processors like the Intel Core i5-2500K are outperforming the 1st generation Intel Core processors in most games.

Christian Wood
Intel Enthusiast Team

Performance in gaming of 0%~7% (e.g. 75 vs 71 FPS) from the '16%' SB CPU gains is hardly an asset to Gaming - IF Frame Rates are 45FPS+. Example i7-920 vs i7-2600K -> http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/p67-gaming-3-way-sl...

I still get a kick out of Tom's comments - "slams the lid on the coffin for X58 gaming" I'd love any to tell me they can see or in any sense 4~5FPS over 70FPS+. OC's the BCLK and use High Frequency RAM - within margin of error.

That said, most Gamer's sure the i5-2500K / LGA 1155 (P67 or Z68). In contrast Extreme Gamer's 'today' Flip a coin or wait a few weeks for the i7-3930K or i7-3960X / LGA 2011. Heck, even the old LGA 775 / Intel Core 2 Quad only see differences in 'some' games.

Bottom-Line, New Builds - Sandy Bridge LGA 1155 or LGA 2011.