<p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;">We have a long wait until Ivy Bridge-E hits the shelves, and until that point the dichotomy between the features and price of both Sandy Bridge-E and Ivy Bridge will continue to weigh on the minds of performance. But does it weigh on the minds of gamers so much? Continuing debates rage on regarding how many cores are needed for game X, the low uptake of multi-GPU configurations, and the percentage of users with multi-monitor setups &ndash; are most gamers equipped with single screen a single GPU ? There will always be niche categories for the &uuml;ber enthusiast, and the ASRock Fatal1ty X79 range is aiming in that direction. Today&rsquo;s review focuses on the Champion and Professional boards, both of which have had presence in the market for several months, but will continue to be ASRock&rsquo;s high-end gaming offering until Ivy Bridge-E is released.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/6697/asrock-fatal1ty-x79-champion-and-x79-professional-review-from-a-gamer-to-gamers" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></p>

<p><span style="font-size: small;">Like many other manufacturers, MSI is building brands to aid the development of their product lines. Over the past few Intel chipsets MSI have developed their Big Bang family, such as the P55 Trinergy, P55 Fuzion, X58 XPower, P67 Marshal, X79 XPower-II and now the latest, whilst devoid of the Big Bang part from the official title, is the Z77 MPower. MSI have coined this as &lsquo;XPower-II&rsquo;s little brother&rsquo;, designed as an overclocking board to be paired with the MSI Lightning range of GPUs. As a result, the Z77 MPower is designed with the MSI Lightning Twin Frozr IV scheme in mind. We&rsquo;ve tackled one Z77 overclocking board already, so how does the MSI fare?</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/6694/msi-z77-mpower-review-the-xpowers-little-brother" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></p>

The major peculiarity of this mainboard is that unlike most other boards out there, it doesn’t have any unnecessary features. No “excess” additional controllers, no buttons, no decorative plates, but everything necessary for efficient work is present. We could point out two or three things, but otherwise this mainboard has numerous great advantages, just like other ASRock products do.

This mainboard is a flagship product from ECS. It boasts extended functionality and a number of unique peculiarities. Our today’s review will discuss all the advantages or this product alongside with the challenges that the users may face if they decide on this “golden” board.

This mainboard boasts a lot of advantages. Some are typical of all Micro-Star’s mainboards, some are unique for this particular model. However, it is also kind of tricky to work with and may require a good deal of patience on your part.

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Enthusiasts and speed freaks are always looking for an edge – a little something that will help push their gear that little bit faster. There is already a market for pre-overclocked GPUs, and now SSDs are coming with internal RAID to push the boat over the SATA connections. These require little-to-no knowledge of overclocking and are essentially plug and play. When it comes to pushing GPUs higher, and motherboards, we get a dichotomous nature of ‘easy to OC’ against ‘advanced options to push the limits’. In order to meet these two markets, the top four motherboard manufacturers have all come out with their respective weapons for Z77 and Ivy Bridge, aiming for either ~$220 or ~$380, and all of them have broken overclocking records at one stage or another since their release. First up on our battle bridge is the ASRock Z77 OC Formula, designed by ASRock’s in-house overclocker Nick Shih, and commands a paltry $240 for all the goodies.

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<p><span style="font-size: small;">All the major motherboard manufacturers run different nomenclature when grouping their channel and high end products. ROG, Fatal1ty and Big Bang are to name a few, and each have an associated meaning with the name. Thus when products come along with a suffix such as &lsquo;Golden&rsquo;, we expect the best of the best, something that is number one. Gold is for winners, and we will not accept anything less, otherwise it would be Silver, Bronze, or a wooden spoon. The ECS Golden range covers graphics cards and motherboards, the latest of which is the motherboard we are testing today in the FM2/A85X Trinity line up &ndash; the ECS A85F2-A Golden.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/6626/ecs-a85f2a-golden-review-all-that-glitters" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></p>

<p><span style="font-size: small;">Browsing through a manufacturer&rsquo;s website can offer a startling view of the product line up. Such was the case when I sprawled through Gigabyte&rsquo;s range, only to find that they offer server line products, including dual processor motherboards. These are typically sold in a B2B environment (to system builders and integrators) rather than to the public, but after a couple of emails they were happy to send over their GA-7PESH1 model and a couple of Xeon CPUs for testing. Coming from a background where we used dual processor systems for some PhD CPU workstation throughput, it was interesting to see how the Sandy Bridge-E Xeons compared to consumer grade hardware for getting the job done.</span></p> <div><span style="font-size: small;"><br type="_moz" /> </span></div> <div><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/6533/gigabyte-ga7pesh1-review-a-dual-processor-motherboard-through-a-scientists-eyes" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></div>

<p><span style="font-size: small;">The mini-ITX motherboard market seems like a fast growing segment. It has many applications in terms of small home servers, work machines, HTPC devices, mobile gaming desktop machines, and much more. With most home users / non-enthusiasts using only one PCIe device and perhaps 1-2 SATA ports, a mini-ITX board makes perfect sense for a smaller system and perhaps a lower power footprint. &nbsp;In this review, we take five of the Z77 mITX boards on the market today for a grand sweep using the HD 4000 enabled i3-3225. Enter into the test bed the MSI Z77IA-E53, the Zotac Z77-ITX WiFi, the ASRock Z77E-ITX, the EVGA Z77 Stinger and the ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe. Game on!</span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/6516/z77-mitx-roundup-five-of-the-best-msi-zotac-asrock-evga-and-asus" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></p>

<p><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(68, 68, 68); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 19px;">Since Computex back in June, Gigabyte has been pushing a new power delivery system across parts of its motherboard range. This involves an integrated circuit to combine power delivery MOSFETs into a small form factor with great heat dissipation, high efficiency and a smaller PCB space &ndash; the PowIRStage IC3550 they have been using is rated up to 60A of current each.&nbsp; This makes sense in the high end spectrum (Z77X-UP7) where power might be needed, or in low airflow situations (mITX) to ensure longevity.&nbsp; But is it required on a desktop Trinity board? These things are expensive, which made me wonder if it is a worthwhile investment in a desktop Trinity system.&nbsp;</span><br type="_moz" /> </span></p> <p><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/6511/gigabyte-f2a85xup4-review-are-powirstages-needed-with-trinity" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></p>