AsRock x79 Extreme11 Review & BenchMarks
So what so special about this ASRock X79 Extreme 11? Some might still remember about Intel have mentioned that they will implementing full 6 SATA3 for X79? and when the actual X79 came out citing costs and complexity, it's a crippled with 2x SATA3 and 4x SATA2 ports With the emerging acceptations of SSDs it's not surprising that there are a lot of users are using multiple SSDs in their course of work or play
Regarding default settings, a couple of important points should be noted. The BIOS by default gives the PCI Express lanes as Gen 2.0, rather than a method of auto detection. Users of PCIe 3.0 graphics cards or PCIe devices should navigate to the North Bridge menu in order to set these lanes as Gen 3.0. The BIOS should come with audio cues to allow the user notifications as well. The final point is the memory – in our reviews of the X79 ROG range, those motherboards ran DDR3-2400 9-11-11 on our memory kit with a little bump in VTT and DRAM voltage. Unfortunately the ASRock X79 Extreme11 could not do this – we ended up running the system at DDR3-2133 9-11-11, which had little negative affect on our benchmark suite. It should also be noted that the current MultiCore Enhancement trend sweeping Z77 (and ASUS on X79) is not present here.
So ASRock went back to the drawing board and fast and furious meetings/ R&D discussions followed, partnering with one of hardware RAID/SAS industry leader LSI but ASRock isn't happy with just providing ample SAS/SATA3 ports they took the whole thing even further, with 2x PLX 8747 chips for full 4 way SLI/CrossFireX 16x!!!, 24+2 power phase for OC, dual MOSFET for more efficient CPU power delivery and Creative Sound Core 3D for sound.
"Full to the brim" is a bit of an understatement. ASRock X79 Extreme11 is a slot-happy motherboard, equipping with 7 PCIe 3.0 x16 slots, supporting up to 4-Way SLI/CrossFireX multi-GPU settings. To control them well, ASRock also employs the service of two PLX PEX 8747 chips to supply enough extra PCIe lanes to support everything. With the extra PLX silicon, users can run a four-card SLI/CrossFireX setup at full x16 PCIe 3.0 speed simultaneously.
The main screen is slowly evolving into something we want as system builders and debuggers – we get the motherboard name, BIOS version, the CPU, the memory size and the current memory speeds. All we need now are temperature readings as well as voltage information to make the screen more complete. With the graphical BIOS scope at play, this information has the potential to be well presented. On the main screen is also an option to change the active page on entry – this will be handy for overclockers wanting to change options in the BIOS over successive reboots.
Regarding default settings, a couple of important points should be noted. The BIOS by default gives the PCI Express lanes as Gen 2.0, rather than a method of auto detection. Users of PCIe 3.0 graphics cards or PCIe devices should navigate to the North Bridge menu in order to set these lanes as Gen 3.0. The BIOS should come with audio cues to allow the user notifications as well. The final point is the memory – in our reviews of the X79 ROG range, those motherboards ran DDR3-2400 9-11-11 on our memory kit with a little bump in VTT and DRAM voltage. Unfortunately the ASRock X79 Extreme11 could not do this – we ended up running the system at DDR3-2133 9-11-11, which had little negative affect on our benchmark suite. It should also be noted that the current MultiCore Enhancement trend sweeping Z77 (and ASUS on X79) is not present here.
So ASRock went back to the drawing board and fast and furious meetings/ R&D discussions followed, partnering with one of hardware RAID/SAS industry leader LSI but ASRock isn't happy with just providing ample SAS/SATA3 ports they took the whole thing even further, with 2x PLX 8747 chips for full 4 way SLI/CrossFireX 16x!!!, 24+2 power phase for OC, dual MOSFET for more efficient CPU power delivery and Creative Sound Core 3D for sound.
"Full to the brim" is a bit of an understatement. ASRock X79 Extreme11 is a slot-happy motherboard, equipping with 7 PCIe 3.0 x16 slots, supporting up to 4-Way SLI/CrossFireX multi-GPU settings. To control them well, ASRock also employs the service of two PLX PEX 8747 chips to supply enough extra PCIe lanes to support everything. With the extra PLX silicon, users can run a four-card SLI/CrossFireX setup at full x16 PCIe 3.0 speed simultaneously.
The main screen is slowly evolving into something we want as system builders and debuggers – we get the motherboard name, BIOS version, the CPU, the memory size and the current memory speeds. All we need now are temperature readings as well as voltage information to make the screen more complete. With the graphical BIOS scope at play, this information has the potential to be well presented. On the main screen is also an option to change the active page on entry – this will be handy for overclockers wanting to change options in the BIOS over successive reboots.
- Great connectivity features.
- Brilliant performance.
- Best Overclock performace both GPU and CPU.
- Best PCI bandwidth support.
- Excellent overclocking performance.
- 4-way graphics support.
- 10 SATA3 6Gb/s ports.
- Great Design.
- Great value for money, its expensive but warthy.
