The ASUS P9X79 Deluxe really did impress us every step of the way during our testing period. It clocked exceptionally well, both for the CPU and the memory, offered many options not seen elsewhere, and ultimately, those options are what helped us push things further than on the other products we have tested. There were a few issues that we noticed, but nothing that stood out as critical to the board's overall functionality, except one. The PCIe slot arrangement is such that Crossfire users may end up disappointed with the PCIe x16 slots, since they are too far apart for the shorter bridges that ship with most cards. At the same time, however, for users that have the ASUS Direct CU II cards using have triple-slot coolers, the slot configuration is ideal, and those cards come with a longer bridge that will work well with the slot arrangement. For a high-end product, we consider this oversight a huge failing on ASUS's part, as the cost of a longer Crossfire bridge is small to ASUS, but finding one for purchase, depending on your global location and local availability, can be nigh on impossible, as it is for me, even though I am located in one of the largest major Canadian population centers.
That said, there's nothing else we could really come up with that stands out as a downside to this product, especially considering SLI users will find the needed bridges right inside the motherboard box. We have deducted a half a point for that issue, and another half a point for the lack of an included USB 3.0 front panel bracket, which will also leave some users missing out on the full functionality of the product without purchasing other equipment, considering only the most recently released cases support USB 3.0. However, the ASUS P9X79 Deluxe is good, so good in fact, that we will be re-purposing our test sample to be used in our upcoming memory reviews, as no other product we have encountered at this point offers the extreme flexibility that the ASUS P9X79 Deluxe does.
The $380 US price tag is pretty high, but so is general cost of entry into the Intel X79 Express platform itself, and considering the entire package, the cost really seems worth it, especially considering it beat out the ECS X79R-AX by 200 MHz when overclocking the CPU. ASUS has really outdone itself this time, and this product is very close to perfection.