Asus Sabertooth X79

Asus Sabertooth X79 review

Intel's latest world beating beast, the Core i7-3960X, has arrived and so has its X79 chipset.And that means a raft of fancy new motherboards based on the equally box-fresh X79 chipset. Intel's own DX79SI aside, our first taste of an X79 mobo comes in the form of the Asus Sabertooth X79.Like previous Sabertooth branded boards, the emphasis is on bang for buck. Well, relatively speaking. All boards based on Intel's new X79 chipset are high end by definition. But compared to Asus's silly money RoG boards, the Sabertooth X79 is positively parsimonious.Earlier Sabertooth boards like the P67 model model were distinct thanks to the so-called "Thermal Armour" feature which enclosed the vast majority of the PCB in a fan-cooled jacket, the better to manage airflow across critical components. As we'll see, that's not a feature Asus has carried over for the X79 flavour. But the Sabertooth still has plenty to offer. We pit this first X79 board against one of Asus's Republic of Gamers boards with a hex-core Gulftown chip at its heart. The performance boost of the new chip is tangible at stock speeds but almost mind-blowing at the top overclocked settings of 4.8GHz.