As 2011 comes to a close the big name in desktop CPUs is Intel. AMD’s Bulldozer failed to impress the market and while it is not a terrible product it does not have what it takes to grab the CPU performance crown from Intel. The top product for Intel is its new Sandy Bridge E CPUs and the X79 chipset. We have taken a look at Intel’s X79 Desktop board and Gigabyte’s G1.Assassin2. Both of these products let the Sandy Bridge E stretch its legs and run. Now we have our third X79 board in the lab. This one is from Asus and is the upper end of their consumer line. The board in question is the Asus P9X79 Deluxe. This board features the standard Intel LAN (you get dual LAN but only one is Intel in this case) as well as Asus’ BTGO (Bluetooth Go) 3.0. This is a continuation of the Bluetooth that Asus has been putting on their boards since the beginning of the year (we saw this at CES 2011). Now they are also dropping in Wireless (just like most other X79 boards), but wireless and Bluetooth are not all that Asus has packed into this board. So let’s take a look at exactly what you get with the Asus P9X79 Deluxe.
Features -In the current market motherboard (and indeed almost all component) performance is very close. The days of a large performance advantage between boards using the same chipset are long gone. That is unless someone makes a HUGE mistake (like runs traces completely wrong). Now, the thing that differentiates different products is the features. These are things like power management, extra slots, better audio CODECs etc. It is these items that R&D teams work so hard to drop into what are really identical pieces of hardware at their most basic level. Excellent -Digi+PowerIntel LANQuad Channel RAMUSB BIOS FlashbackTPU/EPUUSB 3.0 Boost SSD CachingBT GO 3.0!Three-Way SLI and Crossfire XLooking at this list you can see why the P9X79 Deluxe is at the top of Asus’ consumer products. It carries quite a nice list of features and we have really only scratched the surface here. The Digi+Power has multiple benefits in addition to being able to help out if you chose to overclock the P9X79 Deluxe. The same can be said for the TPU chip while the EPU chip will help you get the longest life (and better power efficiency) from your board. Although we have not checked out SSD caching yet, this seems like a great feature especially considering the issues with the HDD market going on at the time of this writing. In the middle (sort of good) -Fan Xpert+DTS Ultra PCIIDTS ConnectHere the features list gets a little slimmer, but no less interesting. The Fan Xpert+ is a continuation of Asus’ Q-Fan profiles and allows you to setup auto or custom cooling profiles to keep your P9X79 running smoothly. The two DTS (Digital Theatre Sound) features from Dolby mean that you should be able to get high quality audio from this board for both multi-media and gaming.Floor Mats -Q-ConnectorMultiple fan headersOn-board power and reset controlsNow while these are listed as floor mats here it is only because they are items that you would expect from Asus. It is not because they are boring or not of any use it is just that they are going to be on almost any board from Asus. There are more features that we have not covered here, but they tend to be more of your stock items when you get a motherboard these days or are basic items that you would expect to be on an Asus product. We did not cover these here as it would only be noteworthy if they were absent from the P9X79 Deluxe. Asus products are almost always loaded up with useful items and features, but not all of these will impact performance or a purchasing decision (unless it is to choose Asus over another brand).
