Although XFX may be best known for producing Nvidia-based graphics cards, the company is by no means new to the motherboard scene. The newest addition to XFX's motherboard line-up is the X58i, designed for Intel Core i7 processors. The main highlight of the new motherboard is its support for 3-way SLI or ATI CrossFireX.
It is not clear if the new motherboard uses the Nvidia nForce 200 SLI processor, which would provide the motherboard with three x16 PCI-E slots, but in the likely case that it does not, one or more of the three PCI-E slots used for SLI would be limited to x8. The XFX X58i would not be the first motherboard to provide 3-way SLI in the PCI-E configuration of x16 + x8 + x8, however.
The XFX X58i motherboard also features silent heat pipes, dual gigabit Ethernet ports, a dual BIOS, a rear panel Clear CMOS button and premium 8-channel HD audio. The motherboard has support for up to 12 GB of DDR3-1333 MHz memory and includes six SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports, twelve USB 2.0 ports and two e-SATA ports. While we wait for USB 3.0 to hopefully come out next year, some flash drive manufactures, unhappy with USB 2.0 speeds it would seem, have begun shifting to e-SATA, so it is nice to see two e-SATA ports included.
Pricing for the new XFX X58i motherboard is not yet known, but since it is targeting the enthusiast market, it likely will be just as expensive as all the other X58 motherboards. XFX did inform us though that X58i motherboard will be available sometime next week, with further product specifications soon to appear on the XFX website.
