Intel X79 boards spotted in the wild

Finally, a non-crippled Sandy Bridge

May 30, 2011 by

Gigabyte logoIt looks like Intel X79 boards are making the rounds, and here is a tasty one, the Gigabyte GA-X79A-UD3. This is only a mid-range board, others are sure to follow.

The board is based on Intel’s X79 chipset for the upcoming Sandy Bridge-E CPU, aka Socket 2011 chips. This is the true Sandy Bridge part, 4 memory channels, a chipset with USB3 support, and SATA 3 as well. It is not bandwidth crippled like the current versions, so it should be the gamer part of choice in Q4.

Gigabyte GA-79A-UD3

X79 shot by a slow chimp

We had a hard time getting pictures of the board, something about areas that we weren’t supposed to be at and all that, so excuse the lighting. That said, you can see there are no less than 14 SATA ports, not to mention 5 PCIe slots as well. The board sadly only has four memory slots, 1 DIMM per channel, the lone weak spot for Sandy-E.

Other than that, it looks quite solid. One thing to think about, if this is the mid-range/UD3 board, can you imagine what the UD5 and UD7 are like? Q4 is going to be a lot of fun for CPU geeks.S|A

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Charlie Demerjian

Roving engine of chaos and snide remarks at SemiAccurate
Charlie Demerjian is the founder of Stone Arch Networking Services and SemiAccurate.com. SemiAccurate.com is a technology news site; addressing hardware design, software selection, customization, securing and maintenance, with over one million views per month. He is a technologist and analyst specializing in semiconductors, system and network architecture. As head writer of SemiAccurate.com, he regularly advises writers, analysts, and industry executives on technical matters and long lead industry trends. Charlie is also available through Guidepoint and Mosaic. FullyAccurate