ASRock X79 Extreme9 Motherboard Review

Allan 'Zardon' Campbell January 4, 2012 Featured Announcement, Motherboard

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

SMP – Multi-Processor
MC – Multi-Core
SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

The Intel Core i7 3960X EE is an incredibly powerful processor and as expected leads all the performance charts, by a clear margin. Memory bandwidth is much in line with what we have experienced before with 2133mhz memory. 2400mhz rated memory can peak at just over 50 GB/s in a quad channel configuration.

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Valve overhauls Season Passes / DLC on Steam, for the better

Over the course of 2024, Valve has introduced a ton of new and appreciated pro-consumer features to its Steam platform. From the revamped family sharing to increased integration with the Steam Deck and more, Valve has been putting in the work to continue improving the platform. The latest update sees a new, more transparent / user-friendly approach to DLC and Season Passes.

11 comments

Ron
January 4, 2012 at 12:40 pm

very nice indeed. costs a fortune, as expected however !
Raymond Oliver
January 4, 2012 at 12:53 pm

Beautiful looking mobo, they are getting good reviews lately. The whole X79 platform however is just so expensive. my 2500k is working a treat, so im waiting on the mainstream boards to come out soon for the next generation intel chips. should be really interesting.

is it just me, or do we NEED amd to start competiting. Intel’s prices are just too high and they have sadly no reason to lower them.
Glynn McDermott
January 4, 2012 at 1:39 pm

A very impressive board, ive never opted for ASROCK in the past, but going on the strength of media reviews ive read recently they seem to be really improving their reputation.

I always thought they were a budget brand from ASUS, but im not sure where I got that from.
SolarFox
January 5, 2012 at 3:16 am

I have GA mobo-s for last 10 years, but last one was Asrock Z68 + 2600K and i`m very happy. GA was too high priced for what they offer 🙁 LACK of hdd ports on P67 distracted me immediately from buying GA.
And Intel can hold high price i will not buy until price drop down a LOT. I`m not in hurry and probably 80% or more peoples also. They will reduce price when sell drop. They will not until there are a peoples who want 5% faster pc`s for 1000$ more.
Joe
January 5, 2012 at 5:55 am

But who will pay 300+ for a MB they only stand behind for two years. Asus will sell you one that is good for 5.
Joe
Cyras
January 28, 2012 at 3:18 pm

Can you upload the L1.92 Bios please?
GeekOrbit
May 16, 2012 at 11:37 pm

Lovely motherboard but the majority will never see it in person..