ASUS has just sent over a quick teaser of its latest high end motherboard - the ROG Rampage III Black Edition.
Despite the launch of Intel's Sandy Bridge platform, the ultra-high end is still served by the venerable X58/LGA1366 platform, and it's that audience that the Black is targeted at. The spec-sheet for the board itself reads pretty much the same as last year's Rampage III Extreme, although there have been a few tweaks along the way, including redesigned heatsinks.
Basically, this means that the board sports a quartet of PCIe x16 slots capable of supporting three-way SLI or four-way CrossFireX, support for 24GB DDR3 at speeds of up to 2,200MHz and all the other high-end features you'd expect on a ROG board.
However, the big addition is the new ThunderBolt card that we've seen teased a few times before. More than being just a Xonar sound card, this add-in board also features one of BigFoot Networks' Killer NPUs. ASUS has proven itself when it comes to delivering quality audio and the dedicated NPU claims to help improve frame rates and latency by taking the networking burden away from Windows and the CPU.
Although some people question the value of the dedicated Killer NICs - especially given the relatively high retail price - it's hard to argue with it as a free add-in on a high-end board, especially if it could deliver a small performance boost.
Unfortunately, there are no details on pricing or availability yet, but we're told to expect ASUS' latest enthusiast board sometime soon.
