One of the most surprising entries in this mid-market X79 Express motherboard comparison is ECS’ X79R-AX, manifesting the company’s efforts to earn some respect among the enthusiast community. No other board comes close to this one by way of features, though a $310 asking price also puts it near the top of this comparison’s budget limit.
The things Asus had to strip from its P9X79 Deluxe to nudge its Pro model into a mid-market price point (Wi-Fi and twin Ethernet controllers) are proudly made available alongside Bluetooth, four USB 3.0, and two eSATA ports on the X79R-AX’s I/O panel.
When it comes to exposing storage connectivity, ECS shoots for the moon with 12 internal ports. It gets there by adding an ASM1061 PCIe x1 controller to the X79's six native connectors. But it also enables the four SAS ports that we know are part of X79 PCH, but were supposedly disabled by Intel.
But wait, if X79's SAS ports are actually functional, why isn't everyone else using them? It turns out that many vendors actually did design their boards to expose SAS support. However, Intel issued an update during week 32 stating that the company "...will issue an errata on those ports as non-functional for the X79 chipset."
In other words, Intel felt that there was something wrong with those ports, and rather than enumerate the issue, it asked motherboard manufacturers to remove them. A few rumors even mention an upcoming chipset revision that fixes the mysterious errata. Nevertheless, ECS is using the original stepping of X79.

While another site took the time to define the complex method a user must follow to activate those non-bootable ports (enable SCU devices and SCU OpROM, then reinstall Intel RST Enterprise drivers), ECS hints at the amount of faith you should have in them by saying, "the compatibility and stability of SATA port (SAS6G1_2/3_4) may differ by different devices." Our warning is to use the chipset's SAS ports at your own risk. Although there's a chance that they might work perfectly with your hardware, it's certainly not being guaranteed.
Intel’s SAS controller monopolizes some of the processor's PCIe-based connectivity, which explains why ECS doesn’t have a permanent x8 slot. Instead, the two white x16 slots are slaves to the grey ones, stealing eight of the parent slot’s lanes when activated by installing a card.
Our necessary caveats aside, we think the X79R-AX is a gutsy design. ECS is the only firm with the audacity to go up against Intel's bulletin. This is, of course, the same company that called VIA’s bluff over KT266A supply warnings by producing the only mass-market SiS 735-based products way back in AMD’s heyday.
The design isn’t perfect, though, as it’s impossible to install a fourth double-slot graphics card and front-panel USB 3.0 cable at the same time. We’ve sharply criticized past products for this incomprehensible negligence, and we’re not going to let ECS off any easier than its competitors. This little mistake is enough to force many users to either accept unusable front-panel ports or to give up four-way CrossFireX. ECS doesn’t include a four-way SLI bridge, so that configuration wouldn't have been possible anyway.

In fact, ECS’ best-featured motherboard doesn’t even include a three-way SLI bridge, though it does have a printed Wi-Fi antenna and internal extension cable for optimizing signal without external wires. Also included are eight internal SATA cables and a USB 3.0-to-3.5” drive bay adapter, though connecting it prevents the bottom slot from accepting a double-slot graphics card.
- LGA 2011 Motherboards, Just A Little Cheaper
- ASRock X79 Extreme6/GB
- X79 Extreme6/GB UEFI
- Asus P9X79 Pro
- P9X79 Pro UEFI
- ECS X79R-AX
- X79R-AX UEFI
- Foxconn Quantumian-1
- Quantumian-1 UEFI
- Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3
- GA-X79-UD3 UEFI
- Intel DX79SI
- DX79SI UEFI
- MSI X79A-GD65 (8D)
- X79A-GD65 (8D) UEFI
- Test Settings And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: DiRT 3
- Benchmark Results: Metro 2033
- Benchmark Results: StarCraft II
- Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- Overclocking
- Which X79-Based Motherboard Is Right For You?


ASRock X79 Extreme6/GB - very nice all black looks better than gigabytes atempt
Asus P9X79 Pro - new baby blue they use on all the boards... not for me
ECS X79R-AX - looks like my old pentium 2 board with the white slots
Foxconn Quantumian-1 - i like i like gives a feeling of the ROG ASUS boards
Gigabyte X79-UD3 - rip of from the ASRock X79 Extreme6/GB (lol) plus the southbridge heatsink looks old fasion and ugly.
Intel DX79SI - now this board for me looks good actualy more than good looks the best
MSI X79A-GD65 8D - also very nice love the blue + Black.
If you have one of the boards and i insulted it, wasnt the intention, just my view of the board>
One thing I'm not sure of is the acceptance and actual usage of eSATA. While practical at some level, is anyone actually using this MB feature or is this one of those things the MB producers can skip out on like parallel and serial ports? I'm not sure enthusiasts are all that into using their eSATA ports?
Personally, I think this is one of those money saving opportunities MB producers should consider.
Here -- where? You guy's may have gotten an early release, but how's that been working far? The official re-release is January 20th to retail. The reason I state this is because the track record has been less than stellar and in some cases often a 'miss-match' the the retail versions; thereby (WE) get ambiguous impressions and folks buying habits are incorrectly forged.
From the results I've seen, read so far, a ±2FPS~±3FPS can all fall within the margins of error; run the tests 3-4 times.
Then the reasons for 'choices' as 'best', IMO best must have 8xDIMM, 3-WAY, decent audio, good OC'ing, and adequate plus fast SATA ports. Asus P9X79 Pro and Intel Intel DX79SI, while I appreciate a budget 4-WAY Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 no one wanting 4-WAY is going to choose it.
- my 2 cents.
When will AMD be coming out with mobos with PCIe 3 support?
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/296572-30-where-mobos-promised
My D975XBX board is still holding strong after like 6+ years of owning it. It's currently sitting in my HTPC.
I'd definitely go for the Intel for that reason alone, but I've been really impressed with Gigabyte and the way my Z68 system turned out.
1. Not much better, I decided not to mothball my 980X and instead to only replace my GPU's with GTX 600 series when available and then with 3GB vRAM.
2. Not much with clock-to-clock comparison; e.g. 4.5GHz to 4.5GHz. Sure the SB/SB-E is slightly faster but in most resolutions none of them really impede or bottleneck.
3. (link) well it seems I was right PCIe 2.x versus PCIe 3.x -> http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/49646-amd-radeon-hd-7970-3gb-review-21.html the GPU's cannot saturate x8 PCIe 2.x so it will be quite a while if not years before PCIe 3.x gains ground to make it useful.
Nice review though and I understand how both of these things were outside the scope of what was being done.
I see what you're saying, but during BF3 my good trusty ole i7-960 and my two GTX580s are all hitting 100% at times (until BF4) running on ultra with AA and AA transparency cranked. I'm getting over 100fps at 1080p. I'd say that's a good equipment pairing considering I'm going on year three. If that's what an anal pounding is all about... Thank you sir may I have another!?