Eldonko
Well-known member
In mid November we saw the launch of the enthusiast-based Sandy Bridge Extreme platform along with the X79 (code name Patsburg) chipsets and since then we have brought you reviews of the i7-3960X CPU and the Rampage IV Extreme motherboard. Today we continue our walk down the LGA2011 road and bring you another highly anticipated board from ASUS: the Sabertooth X79.
We know the Sabertooth name well as the P67 Sabertooth was one of the leading boards for the LGA1155 socket, its brother the Sabertooth X58 was a player in the LGA1366 world, and the not so distant cousin- the Sabertooth 990FX- crossed over to AMD's side of the playground. With a number a boards now on the market, ASUS’ Sabertooth line known as a brand which stands for durability and reliability while boasting the ultimate user friendly experience.
Looking at the design concepts of the Sabertooth X79 there are a few distinguishing features that stand out with the first feature being TUF Thermal Armor. TUF Thermal Armor utilizes the concept of a wind tunnel by providing direct airflow through the heat-critical components of the board. With improved cooling comes improved monitoring though TUF Thermal Radar's 12 onboard temperature sensors and 8 controllable fan headers that are used to bring the Sabertooth's thermal management to a whole new level. The last and probably our favourite feature of the Sabertooth X79 is Ultimate Durability. ASUS contracted an independent ISO and IEC/IECO certified lab to test the board’s VRM components to United States Military Standard and to show confidence in this quality, ASUS also added 2 years to the warranty for a total of 5 years.
The above are features specific to the Sabertooth board but we haven’t even touched upon the 3D capabilities yet. One of the strengths of the 40 PCI-E lane Patsburg chipset is its ability to run SLI with both GPUs at a full 16x PCI-E 3.0 bandwidth with some bandwidth left for other devices. Add some other ASUS perks like an industry leading UEFI BIOS and ASUS SSD Caching and the Sabertooth looks like a winner.
In terms of price, this particular board comes in at around $355 at the time of this review, putting it in a category with Gigabyte’s UD7 but significantly less expensive than the Rampage IV Extreme or even the P9X79 Deluxe. Whether or not the board is worth the money, we will let you decide as we go over it part by part and feature by feature.
We know the Sabertooth name well as the P67 Sabertooth was one of the leading boards for the LGA1155 socket, its brother the Sabertooth X58 was a player in the LGA1366 world, and the not so distant cousin- the Sabertooth 990FX- crossed over to AMD's side of the playground. With a number a boards now on the market, ASUS’ Sabertooth line known as a brand which stands for durability and reliability while boasting the ultimate user friendly experience.
Looking at the design concepts of the Sabertooth X79 there are a few distinguishing features that stand out with the first feature being TUF Thermal Armor. TUF Thermal Armor utilizes the concept of a wind tunnel by providing direct airflow through the heat-critical components of the board. With improved cooling comes improved monitoring though TUF Thermal Radar's 12 onboard temperature sensors and 8 controllable fan headers that are used to bring the Sabertooth's thermal management to a whole new level. The last and probably our favourite feature of the Sabertooth X79 is Ultimate Durability. ASUS contracted an independent ISO and IEC/IECO certified lab to test the board’s VRM components to United States Military Standard and to show confidence in this quality, ASUS also added 2 years to the warranty for a total of 5 years.
The above are features specific to the Sabertooth board but we haven’t even touched upon the 3D capabilities yet. One of the strengths of the 40 PCI-E lane Patsburg chipset is its ability to run SLI with both GPUs at a full 16x PCI-E 3.0 bandwidth with some bandwidth left for other devices. Add some other ASUS perks like an industry leading UEFI BIOS and ASUS SSD Caching and the Sabertooth looks like a winner.
In terms of price, this particular board comes in at around $355 at the time of this review, putting it in a category with Gigabyte’s UD7 but significantly less expensive than the Rampage IV Extreme or even the P9X79 Deluxe. Whether or not the board is worth the money, we will let you decide as we go over it part by part and feature by feature.
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