Tom's Hardware > All Reviews > Components > Motherboards > X58 To The Max: Three New Flagship LGA 1366 Motherboards

X58 To The Max: Three New Flagship LGA 1366 Motherboards

07:10 - Tuesday 20 July 2010 by Thomas Soderstrom

11. Big Bang-XPower Overclocking Utilities
12. Test Settings
13. Benchmark Results: Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Crysis
14. Benchmark Results: DiRT 2 Demo, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call Of Pripyat
15. Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
16. Benchmark Results: Productivity
17. Benchmark Results: Synthetic
18. Overclocking
19. Power, Heat, And Efficiency
20. Conclusion

Supporting Intel’s highest-performance processors with twice the bandwidth of its mainstream counterpart, the X58 chipset proves the staying power of good ideas. We take a closer look at what makes the latest generation of premium motherboards special.

One word explains how Intel’s oldest Core i7 chipset has been able to dominate the high-end desktop market for an impressive two years: more. More PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 pathways feed more high-bandwidth expansion cards. More memory channels on the socket increase bandwidth to more physical CPU cores, while new models, like the Core i7-980X and Xeon X5600-series chips, are introduced.

Yet because the concept of more always translates to cost, manufacturers are constantly looking to pack more features into these already-more-expensive motherboards.

Our most recent “more” article for X58 motherboards examined boards with USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gb/s controllers, two items that take advantage of the X58’s four left over PCIe 2.0 pathways. Intel solutions aren’t completely comparable, since Intel's LGA 1156 platform only has 16 lanes to begin with. It might surprise you then that the latest trend in more doesn't have anything to do with additional connectivity at all.

Top LGA 1366 motherboards now feature two eight-pin ATX12V/EPS12V power connectors to enable enhanced power delivery under the rigors of extreme overclocking. Builders whose overclocking needs are less intensive will still find that a single connector works, while those running at stock speeds will even find a four-pin connector adequate. Today we consider the totality of features, performance, and stability of the three latest examples of flagship-class X58-based platforms.