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Sneak Peek: Four Core i7 X58 Motherboards

Sneak Peek: Four Core i7 X58 Motherboards
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Boxed Up And Ready To Party

And so it begins. The first motherboard to land in our lab (besides Intel’s own X58 platform, which remains under embargo, but is hardly a secret given its presence at IDF) is ASUS’ P6T Deluxe. This ASUS plaform seems to be targeted at both overclockers and workstation customers. After all, it includes a USB-powered OC Palm device, used for handheld overclocking and an onboard SAS controller, which enables high-availability storage at a considerable premium for those who need more enterprise-like functionality.

As you can see from the box, SLI and CrossFire support are both part of this package, as is a considerable amount of voltage regulation—the P6T Deluxe levels 16-phase vCore circuitry and an additional two phases for the QPI/integrated memory controller inside the Core i7 CPU. Express Gate, ASUS’ insta-boot operating environment, and EPU, the company’s energy-saving technology, are also included.

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  • 0
    BallistaMan , October 27, 2008 11:36 AM
    Personally I've got my eye on the P6T. I don't need tri-sli, but I do need an open PCI express slot for my Xonar D2X, preferably not one of the x16 slots where I'll need to cut bandwidth to graphics card(s) to make it work. That 4x slot looks like it just might have the clearance.

    Plus it doesn't look as horrendous as some of the other boards.
  • 2
    ghmage , October 27, 2008 11:37 AM
    Very nice eye candy, guys. Some of the boards look exotic due to coloring schemes, while others look exotic due to components and layout. I'll definitely be looking forward to the benchmarks.
  • 7
    cangelini , October 27, 2008 11:45 AM
    Interestingly enough, the only one we've seen so far with the PCI Express x16 slots spaced properly AND not requiring a larger case is the EVGA X58 board, which we don't have in the lab yet (Thomas actually saw this first). How's that for some irony?
  • 3
    ghmage , October 27, 2008 11:47 AM
    So Newegg will be shipping free hacksaws with these boards for Christmas?
  • 3
    cangelini , October 27, 2008 11:52 AM
    "You're an enthusiast? Prove it!"
  • 0
    JDocs , October 27, 2008 12:19 PM
    @BallistaMan

    I think that all 3 PCI-E x16 ports are capable of running at X16 but not when doing SLI. If I'm not mistaken Nvidia limits X16 tri-SLI to boards with a NForce 200 chips to create a market for them.

    However I guess we'll know for sure closer to the time.
  • 0
    cangelini , October 27, 2008 12:24 PM
    More specifically, X58 doesn't have enough available PCI Express connectivity, so you end up with two x16 connections, the second one divided into 2 x x8
  • 0
    ghmage , October 27, 2008 12:28 PM
    Not that anything on the market could actually utilize the rip-snortin' bandwidth of three 16x slots.
  • 0
    kyeana , October 27, 2008 12:47 PM
    that hand held overclocking tool, while not entirely necessary, could prove to be handy.
  • 0
    ghmage , October 27, 2008 12:52 PM
    kyeanathat hand held overclocking tool, while not entirely necessary, could prove to be handy.


    When I first saw that I thought I had misclicked somewhere and was looking at some PDA. It's definitely cool.
  • 1
    kyeana , October 27, 2008 1:12 PM
    "picture 36 of 34".... hmmm
  • 0
    cangelini , October 27, 2008 1:17 PM
    Added a couple of extras at the end and for one reason or another it didn't register. Looking into it ;-)
  • 0
    enyceckk101 , October 27, 2008 1:21 PM
    Thats hot ! price ? 350$ ?
  • 0
    cangelini , October 27, 2008 1:24 PM
    Vendors are still working on final pricing, but that information should be available in time for the release.
  • 0
    cobra420 , October 27, 2008 2:29 PM
    ok time to try out intell for my self . that p6t deluxe is sweet . that pda oc tool is cool . and i dont have to restart just to get into the bios for oc . veary veary nice . i just hope the i7 dont flop like the am2+ did at launch .
  • 3
    cangelini , October 27, 2008 3:24 PM
    Just a little tidbit for the folks who read the comments: the latest GeForce 180 driver pack for Vista does in fact enable two- and three-way SLI on X58. It's quite something.
  • 0
    jaragon13 , October 27, 2008 4:08 PM
    I like the MSI X58 Eclipse...It gets the job done.
  • 0
    Shadow703793 , October 27, 2008 5:01 PM
    ^ :lol: 

    Nice work.
  • 0
    jkflipflop98 , October 27, 2008 5:12 PM
    Too many pages. You could have cut the page count down by 75% easily

  • 0
    cobra420 , October 27, 2008 6:14 PM
    2 and 3 way sli on x58 ? i cant wait to read the review on that
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