Computex has opened its doors with many big news, but the perhaps biggest is that the first X79 motherboards for the coming enthusiast processor Sandy Bridge-E with quad-channel memory, up to six cores and 15 MB cache. We also see the return of Foxconn and the Quantum Force series with X79.
Sandy Bridge-E and X79 will become Intel’s new enthusiast platform that will bring many functions longed for by overclockers. It didn’t take long before partners decided to show their boards at Computex. The motherboards that have been sighted so far are from Gigabyte, ASUS, ECS, ASRock and Foxconn that intends to return to retail after making a retreat back to OEM.
The new LGA2011 socket with 2011 pins
The new LGA2011 socket comes with 2011 pins, a number that was rumored to be 2012 from the start but was changed for superstisious reasons. The new platform supports four memories in Quad-Channel for unmatched bandwidths, but we are wondering about the placement near the socket.
You can mount 2 memories on each side of the socket, which makes us confused, it woudl have been better with four on either side, but all in all it will only support four memories in total.
With quad-channel memory the compexity of the motherboard design increases with more lanes between the memories and the socket, which is of course a bad thing for the engineers and the cost. Although there is little stopping one from making a board with more than 4 memory slots, but it will be expensive.
Below are pictures of the boards we’ve seen so far, and we welcome Foxconn back to retail with the Quantum Force series!
ASRock X79 Extreme4
ASUS C1X79 EVO
ECS X79R-A
Foxconn Quantum Force X79
Gigabyte GA-X79A-UD3
Source: VR-Zone
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