I have had three different Gene boards and as some you know I love them. Never let me down once. Oozes with speed and let's be honest how many games now need more than two gfx cards, in my opinion none. Fit in almost any case and easy to fit because of the size. If I had a choice I would have one now.
Heh try a tj11! Got to make a feature of the small/large contrast or buy a completely unnecessary (for me) atx version when it arrives. Here's hoping the 670 waterblock is diddy like the pcb!
Bindi, I blame you for the Z77 Sabertooth on my desk waiting to be installed. I do. If you guys hadn't made the Sabertooth more awesome I could have kept my setup as is. Now you've made me go IB as well as get 16GB of Samsung Green just to make it complete. Why do you keep doing this to me? Let me finish my PC! Though, I am a +1 on the ATX vs mATX argument. Need those slots for SLi or whatever-looking at a new monitor myself...
Surely its fair to say that at the time of going to press, from the boards they tested, this one came out of top. I have an older Gene IV and it does everything i want (mostly due to the fact that i have a mATX case) so i have less weight to lug around to LAN's, but i also only run 1 discrete card, the GPU. If you are considering SLI surely you are running a bigger case with better cooling and will be looking at an ATX board, so CPC would appear to suggest the Gigabyte board in the review (losing the top spot by 1 point to the Asus) 1 question, if the onboard sound is so poor that you have to install a sound card, why would you be prepared to trust your network connection to WiFi when you have a perfectly good gigabit LAN connection onboard ?? This seems to be like upgrading one component and downgrading the other.
Sorry, but most if not all sound card manufacturers try to offer their cards in both PCI and PCI-e x1 flavors, so that's not true, unless you're going above consumer grade.
Wait.. all PCIe sound cards are 1x. A 4x slot is backward compatible to 1x. Why would they not fit? Also most if not all component manuf. these days (should) only make PCIe sound cards. What chipsets are there out there? The latest from CMedia are PCIe and I expect Creative's 'quad core' one is PCIe native too.
... Don't Asus still produce the Xonar DG? Ahem. I do see both sides of the ATX/m-ATX debate. I love the idea of building a smaller machine, but the other idea of squeezing three GPUs and a sound-card into my machine is also rather nice. I may have to go Asus for my next board, this Gigabyte has just given me lots of issues, despite the nice shiny features on it. On a side note; Why do the Asus 990FX boards at the high end (Sabertooth & Crosshair), not have the tiny PCI-E 1x socket at the top of the board, tucked up against the heatsink? Surely it'd make things easier for those of us with sound-cards. Otherwise you'd have to try and get single-slot GPUs, which is impossible with the current generation of NVidia kit, at least.
This board is fantastic. The added features and gamer styling blows away my P8Z68.. should have got a rog mobo ages ago frankly, onboard sound is decent too
Heh. I wanted a Crosshair II way back when I was planning my first machine. Wound up with a close relative, the M3N72-D, simply because my budget wouldn't stretch that far.
I had hoped the atx version would be released earlier but I really don't need the added features aside from the built in waterblock (if it hasn't been scraped) and that it would fill my case better.. Res mounted on the mobo tray might be the way forward
Still haven't got the CPUTIN right on this one.. My standard clock speed is going up with these numbers at this ambient
Yes they are still made and still relevant, but they aren't 'this year's products' (or last year's for that matter ha!) The PCIe 'X' ones have also been upgraded to drop the floppy power supply too. Because the heatsink stops any longer cards being installed. And trust me - people will TRY! Unless it's lower than the PCIe slot and the card sits on top, which makes its thermal capacity v.poor and the 990FX was not a cool chip. The Sabertooth 990FX has FOUR PCIe slots - use any of them for your x1! PCIe is backward compatible!
I'm aware of that, Bindi. But in most scenarios; If you cram three GPUs into a case; you loose out. I like most of the other boards because they manage to fit in the tiny little 1x needed for me to have a good Sound-card along with my Ludicrous amount of GPU horsepower, while I know the Crosshair V is actually better than most of them; It lacks that tiny thing that I'm going to be using most often, plus I'd rather not downgrade from my DX to onboard sound, no matter how good it claims to be.
I would rather keep my dx in there too but honestly, this is the best onboard sound I've heard by a street.
Fair dos. Mobos have a fixed size though. It's not just about adding a PCIe slot at the top because then your first gfx is 1 lower and also you've got to think where your memory slots are going in relation to your CPU socket.
People you just need to shop around.... Asus P6T7 WS Revo. = 3 dual slot GPU's + U3S6 + audio card. Sorted ! dunx P.S. mITX is my preferred solution.
