Asus P9X79 Motherboard Review

It is sometimes difficult to sum up the experience of using an Asus motherboard since most of the time it is exactly what you were expecting.  That alone can tell you a lot about the system and its construction though the real thing that drives all of this is the UEFI implementation.  In the past when you had a solid BIOS you typically had a solid system.  Everything would configure as it should and you rarely had to tweak anything, unless you wanted to.  Fast forward to the modern UEFI days and we are faced with a similar dilemma, when the programming is bad so is the system and in a time when other mfgs are still trying to work out their interfaces and programming we have Asus releasing a fully cooked second generation UEFI that is simple and easy to use.

Motherboard layout is typical for a mainstream system supporting the right amount of features and bypassing the ones that most enthusiasts would be looking for.  The most notable of these is the expansion slot configuration and the decision to fully support dual GPUs with an option for a third.  This particular configuration does lend itself well to supporting the latest Asus graphics cards with the triple slot coolers but does limit your future expansion. 

Overall performance was almost identical to our reference system in almost every benchmark we tried.  Synthetic benchmarks typically tell us when there are low level optimizations such as BCLK cheating or lower memory timings.  Most often these numbers are the same which then sets the stage for the real world tests.  Our real world benchmarks are designed to mimic what you might do with the system on a daily basis and the differences in synthetic performance are usually multiplied here.  A funny thing happened this round where almost every number was exactly the same in each benchmark.  We attribute that to the mainstream nature of these systems where compatibly is often more important than squeezing 20fps by bumping the BLCK.  

Consistent X79 Performance
Two-way SLI/CrossFire Support
Intel Ethernet Controller
Digi+ Power Controls
Solid UEFI Bios
Q-Led Debug System
Onboard TPU and EPU

Only two SATA 6 ports
USB3 ports doesn't accept keyboard and mouse