Introduction

Military rugged motherboards - just the way you like' em

Every now and then when you walk around at an exhibition like CeBIT, CES or Computex you stumble into something really good looking. This happened with an ASUS motherboard, you all heard about the TUF series motherboards that have been on display for ages, a weird marine kind of themed piece of hardware that never made it to retail, until now that is. ASUS decided to move forward and do a tryout with a motherboard based on what we have seen at CeBIT last year.

They call it the TUF series, and the first motherboard deriving from that series is the Sabertooth X58.

Much to our surprise the motherboard is actually LESS high-end than say a Rampage III Extreme, it does however come with the latest features like USB 3.0, SATA6G and offers nice aesthetics based on a military theme. Yeah, it is simply a stunning pierce of hardware just to look at alright.

So again X58 ...

See, to date one of the most reputable processor series has to be the Core i7 based on socket LGA 1366. When that puppy was released merely two years ago (November 3, 2008) nobody knew that the first ever wave of Nehalem processors would be that strong and powerful. When Lynnfield (Core i7 on the 1156 socket) was released we certainly all loved the new processors, but leading by a significant amount in overall performance was still the high-end Core i7 965 and 975 processors.

Intel however added a new processor to the line-up, the ever so strong Core i7 980 Extreme six-core processor. Seriously breathtaking, and to date the fastest consumer processor on the globe with very decent overclocking potential as well.

That was reason enough for most ODMs to make new updates and revisions of X58 chipset based motherboards, as next to the new processor we have also seen the gradual adoption of features like USB 3.0 and SATA3 6G. That sparked ODM's to bring these new innovations to your doorstep by inventing solutions themselves. More costly yes, but by embedding a NEC USB 3.0 controller and Marvell SATA3 6G SATA/AHCI/RAID controller onto that motherboard you can actually bring some interesting features to the table and literally rehash the X58 motherboard line-up.

So the ODMs went back to the drawing board, added custom controllers to the motherboards and re-released their X58 series motherboards. However, a few of them decided to completely overhaul the design and fit them with the latest features and most high-end components and decided to design a severe über-cool motherboard targeted at the high-end, enthusiast and pro consumers.

So let's go check her out, she's a thing of beauty, next to the Rampage III Extreme it's ASUS's most extravagant looking X58 motherboard to date. Oh and it's only 199 USD ! Let's move onwards into the review please..