Intel X58 Motherboard Roundup - What does $300 Get You?

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• TantrumusMaximus - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link

  THANK YOU THANK YOU ANAND.
  
  I haven't had a chance to read the entire article but did read all of Anand's comments and am floored. Good Job keep it up and we readers appreciate it. It's gone out of control, prices through the roof for mobos and QA is through the floor. The comments of "why would you want 12GB?" coming from the Manuf mouth is just unsettling at best... if I choose to populate 6 DIMM slots that better work, they're there, and I expect em to work not to be asked WHY I want 12GB!!!!

• CarlosMC - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link

  You just saved me over 1000€ on a new system - guess I'll stick to my 939 for the time being and if things won't change, maybe I'll find better things to do with my money and, specially, my time.

• DaveLessnau - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link

  And, while talking about the basic quality of the board and the company behind it, don't forget to talk about the manufacturer's web site. Specifically, does it have a forum where people can talk about the individual boards? How slow is the site, itself? Can you actually download things at reasonable speeds? Also, how's the English on the site and also in the documentation (to internationalize that a bit, for any localized site that the company maintains, is the local language real or does it read like something run through Google Translate?)?

• Emperor88 - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link

  "Hey guys, Anand here. I'm writing this sub-section, not at Gary's request, but because I felt it was necessary."
  
  I was really pleased to read that section. Not because of the problems experienced, which is terrible and motherboard makers really need to pull their heads in, but because of the honesty shown. More of that kind of commentary would be great, thanks :)
  I think you should add the problems you experience in getting things working correctly in every article. Even briefly would be better than nothing as it paints a deceptive picture of the product's abilities if left off as all the amazing performance figures are presented without acknowledging the hours of fiddling required (by professionals no less!) to get the products up to scratch.

• Zak - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link

  I would be happy to get a mobo that has the basics and no on-board sound, NIC and RAID controllers. These devices often fail and can't be replaced. I'd rather opt for a plain but fast and stable $100 mobo with twice the number of PCI-e slots so I can pick my own devices. Oh, and no legacy stuff: serial, parallel, floppy controller. But I wonder how many reviewers would give it low ratings because it's not overloaded with features?
  
  Z.

• strikeback03 - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link

  Would need a new motherboard/case standard, obviously ATX couldn't accommodate twice the PCI-E slots. And this will probably never happen, as they seem to not be able to decide when to phase out support for legacy standards such as PCI and floppy. I can't wait to see IDE go, and Intel was onboard with that plan several chipsets ago, put pretty much everyone still includes IDE connectors.

• Rindis - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link

  How do you figure? Most motherboards just have ~3 PCI-E slots + PCI. Remove PCI and you have plenty of room for the expanded PCI-E handling.
  
  I'll admit I've still got a lot of legacy devices with life in them, so I'm not so keen on abandoning it all. But, as long as it's not a case of abandoning legacy on every motherboard immediately, I think it's past time we see some pure PCI-E + SATA + USB boards.
  
  I'll also agree with two posts above. My preferred motherboard configuration is no video, no sound, no network. Okay, network controllers are at the point where I use the on-board ones now; but I know of good, reliable, well-priced cards that beat whatever will be on the board, and I don't want to pay for the features I won't be using, and I don't want to have to worry about smashing them into submission. (Which is also better today, but I remember all too well the headaches of turning early on-board audio off.)

• michal1980 - Sunday, December 7, 2008 - link

  This whole motherboard hell is one reason, I didn't even consider upgrading my pc in the past 2 years (that and a quad intel @3ghz is plenty for just about anything right now)
  
  
  Ever time I upgraded I went through 2-3 motherboards because ethier they were broken out of the box, or had issues with some other piece of hardware. And its everyone, i've had issues, with evga, gigabyte, asus, abit, etc etc.
  
  What I really couldnt understand, is most times, I spent the extra money to get the mobo that got good reviews from sites like Anand.
  
  So while I'm glad your finally going after Mobo manufactures, I feel that you guys bare some of the responsiblity because you allowed it to happen.
  
  To all readers, just how bad must it be that Anand is finally. FINALLY speaking out? If his speaking out, the boards must be total CRAP. Just plain junk, not only that, 300 dollar junk.
  
  Part of the problem IMHO, is all this built in stuff, its nice, but it causes corners to be cut, built in network cards, heck, lets make it 2, built in sound cards, etc etc. I'm not even sorry, after a new mobo comes out, i'm waiting 6+ months before i'm even going to consider buying one. I'm sick of being the QA for these manufacture

• SixOfSeven - Sunday, December 7, 2008 - link

  In the discussion of the ASUS P6T, you state "The board officially supports 12GB of DDR3 memory, although we expect full support for 24GB in a future BIOS release." Can you share the basis for this claim? In particular, does ASUS guarantee that P6Ts purchased now will eventually be able to support 24GB with some later BIOS upgrade?

• CEO Ballmer - Sunday, December 7, 2008 - link

  Intell is on the ball!
  
  http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com">http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com