Nimish Sawant

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Posted on 27-10-2011

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ASUS announced the launch of its new line of motherboards for the upcoming Intel platform. The ASUS X79 motherboards sporting the LGA 2011 sockets will replace the older generation of X58 chipset based boards sporting the LGA 1366 sockets. The LGA 2011 socket will house the second generation Intel Core i7 processor family for high end desktop which is expected to come out in November.

As is the case with most of its motherboard series, ASUS has broadly divided the X79 boards into the value oriented P9X79 boards, the mainstream TUF series of boards and the high end enthusiast Republic Of Gamers series’ boards.

Before we talk about each series separately, let us have a look at some of the features that you can expect in this new lineup of ASUS X79 motherbaords across all the three series.

ASUS SSD Caching: The Intel Smart Reponse Technology (SRT) technology will not be present on the E-Series of processors. To give users this feature found in the Z68 chipset based boards, ASUS SSD Caching has been enabled on all boards. It has a set of advantages over the Intel SRT such as quick setup, no limit on the SSD capacity (there was an upper limit of 64 GB in Intel SRT caching) and you do not need to reinstall Windows for setting up SSD caching. The onboard Marvell 9128 SATA controller is a dedicated controller for ASUS SSD caching. Advantages of the SSD caching feature includes quicker access of most used files, faster data transfer and faster booting up time.

Digi+ Power Control: As the new boards come with as many as eight DRAM slots (four dual-channel DDR3 slots) the new Digi+ Power controller has incorporated digital power control design for both the CPU and the DRAM. As a result, the overclocking possibility gets a boost on both the processor as well as the memory modules. You can control the current capability, voltage-frequency mode and power phase control for all the four modules of your memory. Under processor power controller, the ability to control system agent voltage (VCCSA) has been included.

ASUS BT GO 3.0: The 3.0 in the naming suggests that ASUS boards now support Bluetooth v3.0. It also allows wireless transfers over the 802.11 b/g/n networks. You can use Bluetooth and WiFi in tandem for purposes such as data transfer and data sharing. The Bluetooth module is on-board and can be controlled via the Bluetooth Control Centre utility on your system and a Bluetooth lifestyle app on your cellphone.

USB BIOS Flashback: You will notice a unique button on the back IO panel named BIOS. By connecting a clean USB drive and pressing the button, you can flash your BIOS without even needing to install the CPU and other hardware components.

UEFI BIOS additions: ASUS’s UEFI BIOS is one of the most good looking BIOSes among all that we have tested so far. With the X79 boards, ASUS plans to add a two new features – F3 Shortcut and DRAM SPD Information.

The F3 Shortcut will quickly bring up a list of settings that you most frequently use so that you don’t need to go searching each and every tab for your favourite settings. This really helps in speeding the BIOS setup as you can use F3 anywhere within the BIOS screen. With so many memory modules, it can be quite a task to find out which module is faulty and ASUS having recognized that need has incorporated the DRAM SPD information option in the BIOS which simply gives a status – OK for normal memory modules and Abnormal for faulty ones. The BIOS Print facility allows you to save BIOS settings page as a JPEG file for reference.

USB 3.0 Boost: The ASUS X79 boards support the USB attached SCSI Protocol (UASP) with an onboard UASP USB 3 controller and drivers, but you will need a UASP USB 3 device to use this feature. The USB 3.0 Boost tends to improve your traditional USB 3.0 speed when used in the UASP mode.

Take a look at the exclusive features of the Sabertooth The Ultimate Force (TUF) X79 motherboards, on Page 2...