Introduction

Although a lot of attention is paid to ASUS's "Republic of Gamers" brand of motherboards, ASUS still releases some pretty serious products within its "normal" brand offerings. ASUS has sent us one of those products, based on the Intel X79 Express platform, aptly named the P9X79 Deluxe.

The P9X79 Deluxe is the high-end product that forms the real basis for the other P9X79 boards released just a short while ago, all of which boast a pretty hefty lineup of features. Quite a few of these features are found throughout the entire lineup of ASUS motherboard products, like VRM control and BIOS design, something that ASUS has spent considerable effort optimizing over the past 18 months or so, but there is also a few new ones, too. Will the P9X79 Deluxe live up to the standard and hype ASUS themselves created?

Specifications

Intel X79 Express Chipset

Launched November 14th, 2011, the Intel X79 Express chipset is very similar to the Intel P67 Express and Intel Z68 Express chipsets launched earlier this year. The Intel X79 Express platform supports 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes via the CPU for graphics, while the Intel Z68/P67 Express chipsets support only 16 lanes. Of course, the Intel X79 Express PCH itself supports eight lanes of PCIe 2.0 connectivity for external devices, as well as housing all of the I/O functionality via dual SATA 6 Gb/s ports and quad SATA 3 Gb/s ports, which are managed via Intel Rapid Storage Technology 3.0 for RAID support. USB 2.0/3.0 and HD Audio are also supported as is eSATA and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity.


The SKT2011 CPUs that the platform supports are also very similar to the previously released SKT1155 CPUs, but nearly everything offered in the SKT1155 platform has been doubled up, including cache and core count. Going by the marketing material given out by Intel, the SB-E CPUs (as they are referred to in enthusiast circles) feature eight total processing cores, but two have been disabled to keep power in check, so rather than a total of eight cores active, we find just six, but as these cores feature Hyper-Threading, they appear as 12 separate cores to the OS.

The PCIe on the CPU can be split many ways, including dual x16 links and a single x8 link at the same time, a single x16 link with triple x8 links, or a single x16 link with dual x8 and dual x4 links. Together these options offer the most flexibility for multi-card GPU configurations, with support for up to five total devices connected directly to the CPU. While only four discrete GPUs maximum are supported in current multi-GPU rendering options, the 5th link can be used for an external RAID controller or other PCIe devices that are commonly found in high-end builds.

The ASUS P9X79 Deluxe has a rather unique configuration, offering dual x16 PCIe 3.0, as well as an x8 PCIe 3.0 link, all at the same time. Combined with all the other ASUS-exclusive features, the ASUS P9X79 Deluxe seems like the perfect advanced option for both SLI and Crossfire users.

Packaging

For a high-end product, the ASUS P9X79 Deluxe comes in a rather small, but very black box, like the rest of the regular ASUS brand boards. The front has very little going on; the board's name stands out in green and white lettering on one side, with just a few technology logos across the bottom. There is also a very large "Digi-Power Control" logo in the upper right corner just under a "PCIe 3.0 Ready" banner that hints at future upgrade options. The back of the box has far more going on, but really, there's just a picture of the board with some specification listings, and then several breakdowns of what ASUS-specific features the P9X79 Deluxe contains.


Lifting the flap on the front of the box reveals a few more feature descriptions, as well as the board itself, via a fairly large window.


Upon opening the box itself, we find ourselves looking at the board right on top, nestled in its own protective cardboard tray. Lifting the board's tray out, we find the included accessories below, contained within separate compartments made from a cardboard divider that helps ensure the huge amount of goodies makes it to your door intact.