Intel has published details about its DX79SI Extreme Series Sandy Bridge-E motherboard on its website a bit earlier than anyone expected.
According to the product brief, the board will be supporting both AMD Crossfire and Nvidia SLI configurations via three PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, include eight DIMM slots, two Firewire and 14 USB 2.0 ports, as well as two SATA 6.0 Gb/s and four SATA 3.0 Gb/s connectors. There is no native USB 3.0 support, however, as Intel takes that route via a separate NEC controller to support this feature in two available ports. Also, there are two PCI Express 2.0 x1 slots and still one remaining PCI interface.
Intel will be marketing this board toward "champion gamers" and enthusiasts "who live to push their systems way beyond the limits." The DX79SI will come Intel's Extreme Tuning Utility, an Express Installer as well as ESET Smart Security 5 Antivirus.
they use the word enthusiasts
i would personally load up 32gb of ram in that, and set probably 24gb of that to ram disk
keyboard (mine is ps2, i believe thats the name)
mouse
stick (mine can be a usb, but not its basic connection, its old as hell)
pad
external hdd (better with usb3) 2
mic
tablet
really i only have 6 things, and 2 of which would benefit from usb 3 how can usb 3 still not be a standard port in new motherboards?
they use the word enthusiasts
i would personally load up 32gb of ram in that, and set probably 24gb of that to ram disk
Seriously though, what can this possibly offer a gamer that 1155 SB cannot? Games are still only designed for 4 cores and 4GB of ram. I suppose this has more PCIe lanes, but considering we have not tapped out the 16x slots (unless you count the 590 which might), you do not need that many PCIe lanes to be effective, you just need them well distributed. Sure, some day future games could take advantage of this kind of hardware, but so long as the console crowd must be appeased on current gen hardware, then this will not happen.
What I really see this for is content creation. Imagine complex cad or video work on something like this. It would be a dream come true, and would push the system to it's max. throw a few revo drives, and some high end workstation graphics, and this would really let content creators push their work through much faster.
It sounds awesome.
Well, 8 dim slots @ 8gb dims per slot is 64gb of ram, 14 usb ports would let me get rid of 2 USB hubs..... all you need is Windows 7/64 or linux and you are gold.
My Q6600 is suppose to support more than 64gb of ram and that never happened, it is great to finally see some movement.
You don't own a printer? I don't know about 14 ports, but using more than 6 is a piece of cake.
2 printers - b&w laser, color inkjet
mouse
keyboard
1 external HD
gamepad
mp3 player
cell phone - easier than bluetooth, and BT doesn't charge
UPS
garmin gps watch
Nothing particularly exotic there, and that's 10 peripherals. A more relevant complaint than too many USB ports, is why an enthusiast targeted board only has 6 SATA ports?
SB-E is and always has ben marketed towards enthusiasts, workstations and entry level servers. For enthusiasts, its all about more and more. For workstations/servers, more RAM = better.
As for USB, I have had people ask for tons of them. Never know why but some people need them somehow. Tons of USB external HDDs?
Thats a limitation of the mobo and memory though. DDR2 topped out at 2GB DIMMs for the most part. DDR3 is already at 4GB DIMMs standard, 8GB DIMMs are moving up and 16GB DIMMs are in servers.
SB-E can actually support up to 192GB total per mobo as the quad channel supports up to 3 DIMMs per channel meaning 12 slots at 16GB each or 192GB. This mobo will push 128GB physically. I wonder what the limitation will be on it though.
As for Windows 7, it does depend on the version Home Premium is limited to 16GB, Pro and up is 192GB.
And when the competition has something that competes with it, it will cost just as much.
That northbridge heatsink is a little too close to the #1 PCI-E slot. Why an NEC usb 3.0 chip, this is minor of course as 3.0 has yet to really take off. And, why firewire?
Everyone can use more RAM...