Hardware Asus Sabertooth X79 Review

LGA2011 has finally landed, so we've looked at Asus' most expensive Sabertooth motherboard yet.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2011/11/30/asus-sabertooth-x79-review/1

 

2011?

 

If you remove all the fancy stuff it has the same performance as any other X79 board out there. I mean a 1 to 3 point difference is not noticed by anyone in real world use. If you remove all static benches and compare motherboards with no tools at all but common sense they would have all the same performances but one looks better then the other and that is just personal taste. Once it is in your PC nobody G.A.F. anymore.

Personally, i really do not care anymore what motherboard or memory is in my PC as long as it is cheap. It will last a few years and do a upgrade. You don't have to do it for the games, most of them are console ports anyway. And even MW3 runs perfectly fine with all 'ultra' on a GT460 on HD res on a Phenom quad core.

For 320 pounds you have a Asrock motherboard, 8GB mem, quadcore and a MSI 460 graphics cad that can play the latest games and is a fine and cheap daily use PC. That is just 65 pound more for the price you pay for this fancy motherboard alone. It is ridiculously expensive and for what?

 

Not everyone just plays games on there PC, you know?

 

So for £255, what kind of shelf life will that buy in terms of Intel releasing compatible CPU's, given their lamentable track record for changing sockets?.

I'll be moving over to a SandyBridge setup in the new year, but TBH, i think it makes more sense to buy a mid range £100-£150 Mobo and change it again in 12mths for a similar amount of money, rather than splurge £255 on a CPU socket that might be dumped by Intel in late 2012.

So, 2 mid range boards or 1 top end board now..?

 

Oh look another motherboard with silly gun design elements. Sometimes I'm embarrassed to be a man.

 

Ivy Bridge E - due out around this time next year - will fit in LGA2011, as far as we know.

 

Where are the gun elements??

 

How noisy is the board with those two fans. I'm not keen of whiney 40mm jobbies, but it's been a while since I had one and perhaps the tech has improved.

 

Some of us want to play Crysis on ultra high settings at 2560x1600 - with AA.

 

I was really thinking about what comes after Ivy Bridge, because i assume Ivy Bridge E will follow the same price structure (complete rip off) as the Sandy Bridge E's that have just been released...there is no way I'm paying £500+ for a CPU.

 

Those CPU are oriented toward professionnal, not end-user. I look at them more as XEON substitute rather than Pentium. IMHO, the actual XEON lines doesn't differ to much from the core iX series (except some monitoring features and 2-way support for the higher ones). Real professionnal CPU is what Intel was lacking.

 

definitely a little homer-ism in that review...i get the added value of the fan software...but not that much...defo doesn't deserve a 21 of 25 for that price...bit's reviews in the past focus on general usage, with an addendum of some sort that "IF you are a heavy multi-threaded app user who needs the extra ram and software features, this is a decent deal for you but for the majority of users this just isn't the best value." this review felt more like "it doesn't matter what kind of a user you are, buy this board i wantz to make babies"...

 

The 'magazine' heat-sink

 

errm...i did...you should re-read the post...i wasn't referring to platform recommendations...i was referring to the mobo recommendations...you don't have to be a professional multi-threaded app user to want an x79 system

 

IB-E is definitely compatible with SB-E motherboards.

http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2011/...be_compatible_with_Sandy_Bridge-E_socket.html
http://vr-zone.com/articles/intel-i...012-compatible-with-sandy-bridge-e/14006.html

 

90% of the people speaking in this thread are not the target market.

If you want an x79 system for any other reason than multi threaded apps then you have more money than sence as the 2500k overclocked is still faster in 90% of all games tested.

£500 for a 6 core cpu still beats the £780 than intel want for a 980x or 990x for that matter.

if you need a 6 core cpu then £500 is pretty dam cheap compare it to the xeon systems out there which start from £4k Onwards on just cpus if you go high end. or you could go Amd they have an 8core for £230 ( but its out performed alot )

Thermal radar sounds awesome can we have a review of just that.

 

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