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With the launch of ‘future Intel Core i7 49xx/48xx product family' processors just around the corner, Asus has taken the opportunity to refresh members of its X79 line of motherboards. Get ready to feast your eyes on some exclusive pictures of Asus' refreshed X79-Deluxe motherboard before the upcoming launch.
Not content with simply providing a basic BIOS update, Asus has put extra effort into making sure that its X79 motherboards are compatible with, and optimised for, ‘future Intel Core i7 49xx/48xx product family' processors.
As you'll see by browsing through our exclusive pictures of Asus' soon-to-be-released X79-Deluxe, it's not just under-the-hood tweaks that have been applied, either.
Without further ado, let's gorge upon some teaser pictures shortly before our full, in-depth review of the motherboard, as well as that of ‘future Intel Core i7 49xx/48xx product family' processors, goes live.
Matching it up with the company's 8 series motherboards, Asus has given the X79-Deluxe a makeover. Out with the blue – in with the gold. While feedback across the internet has shown that the Z87 boards' gold colour schemes have been greeted with mixed emotions, Asus seems to have toned the brightness down a little for the X79-Deluxe. The appearance also seems slightly more balanced with increased black tints to offset the bright gold heatsinks.
The power delivery system's control functions have received tweaks to offer enhanced support for ‘future Intel Core i7 49xx/48xx product family' processors.
The X79-Deluxe is largely identical to its highly-regarded predecessor – the P9X79 Deluxe – which isn't a bad thing. Another of the main improvements comes from the updated Wi-Fi Go! which now features support for Bluetooth 4.0 and wireless 802.11ac.
Eagle-eyed readers will notice that an additional four SATA ports have been added to the refreshed X79-Deluxe. Asus' SSD Caching II is supported by the additional ports, allowing up to three SSDs to cache a single HDD, for example.
Asus also tells us that some of the under-the-hood tweaks include CPU and DRAM overclocking performance optimised for use with ‘future Intel Core i7 49xx/48xx product family' processors.
We can't speak for the performance of ‘future Intel Core i7 49xx/48xx product family' processors yet, but the X79-Deluxe showed off its overclocking potential by taking our retail 3930K chip to 5.0GHz with satisfying settings. We won't claim 100% stability with this brief test, but our full review will outline the overclocking potential of Asus' X79-Deluxe.
If you would like a closer look at the Asus X79-Deluxe motherboard, be sure to check out the high-resolution pictures (above).
KitGuru says: If our brief preview of Asus' refreshed X79-Deluxe motherboard has whet your appetite, be sure to check out our full, in-depth review of the motherboard when being used with a ‘future Intel Core i7 49xx/48xx product family' processor, which is soon to go live.
Okay, scratch that!
I am starting to have regrets in getting Haswell.
I mean it runs noticeably smoother and faster than Ivy but I can’t help drool at those sata ports and think of what a refresh of the ORG board will be like.
Darn it all!
@ Gekikara
I’ve bought into Haswell and I’m not regretting it at all. As far as I’m concerned, X79 is a very outdated chipset that requires hugely expensive boards with all sorts of dedicated controllers that we already have on far cheaper Haswell mobos. Not to mention that, but Ivy-E is really not much of an advancement at all over Sandy Bridge E and there’s virtually no point in upgrading from it if you’re already on that platform, the next gen of extreme parts where we may be seeing 8 core enthusiast processors is what you need to wait for.
Even then, you could buy a Haswell board with an external controller that will have a similar number of SATA ports (if not the same) as that anyway.
I really expected a bit more pizzazz with the IBE chip series. I’ll likely be getting one anyway as it looks like this will be the end of the line for the 2011 socket and Haswell (aside from a slight tweak in energy efficiency) has not really proven itself much better than the 3770K either. I’m in the market for a new motherboard and I will be among the first to admit that the 3770K chp is a hard act to follow. Sadly, 1155 socket mobos can only hold up to 4 DIMMS of RAM and this is bad news for RAM DRIVE enthusiasts. Evidently there are still some things that a 4820K can do that a 3770K (or even a 3790) CAN’T and one of these happens to include the ability to function with 32 or 64 GB of RAM on board. To the best of my knowledge no LGA 1155 socket mobo is capable of this and no HASWELL mobo is able to handle that much RAM either. I am guessing Intel doesn’t think massive amounts of memory is important and in many cases this is the case. In the meantime, I still have an empty case sitting in my store room, waiting for a worthy motherboard, and it looks as though such a creature is about to be released from its cage very soon. In the end, Ivy Bridge E with all its glamour and promise appears to barely squeak over the finish line with what can only be called a hollow victory. So much for rumors of glory.
The board blows Haswell crap outta the water. I was about to pull the trigger on a 4770k till I came across this. 2 more cores than Haswell, 64 Gigs of ram, double the PCIe bus of the Haswell so you can run more than 1 card at 16x,. and an unlocked processor with support for virtualization. Not to mention that the usual Tick Tock wont apply to the Haswell set since the Tock will need a new board because of electrical differences. The only downside is the raid controller on the board only has 2 6gb sata and 4 3gb sata where z87 has 6 6gb sata and Thunderbolt vs Thunderbolt 2. But I’ll just end up getting an addon card if I need either down the road.