Final thoughts and rating
The Intel X79 chipset's job is to support a couple of Sandy Bridge-E chips launched just the other day. It's manifestly clear to us that Intel has spent the majority of platform time on the CPU, as the chipset, while perfectly functional, requires motherboard manufacturers to invest in bountiful third-party controllers to bump up the feature list. That's galling when enthusiasts just know that X79 is hardly a value proposition.
ASUS understands that Intel's high chipset pricing means that retail X79 boards aren't likely to cost below £150. So close to the nascent launch there's little point in skimping and saving on features that might shave a few pennies off the cost, because we'd just complain that the fastest consumer PC platform should be chock-full of goodies. Commensurately, the £250 asking price for the Sabertooth X79 TUF, while expensive, is in line with other manufacturers' premium offerings, and ASUS adds plenty of company-specific bells and whistles.
There's a lot to like; the generally good layout, super-slick BIOS, SSD caching technology and excellent fan-control and general monitoring features add real value, if you can call £250 value. However, X79 boards will make a lot more sense as prices begin to drop and the quad-core Core i7 3820 chip is released. Until then, if you want a performance board for that shiny Core i7 3930K or Core i7 3960X processor just begging to be put in the online basket, we recommend taking a good, hard look at the ASUS Sabertooth X79 TUF.
Bottom line: not perfect by any means, the X79 TUF is still a solid board equipped with an excellent BIOS.
The Good
Lots of ASUS goodies
BIOS is the best in the business
Designed for overclocking
The Bad
Expensive, but that is the nature of the X79 beast
Some cheeky auto-overclocking can come into play
HEXUS Rating
ASUS Sabertooth X79 TUF
HEXUS Awards
ASUS Sabertooth X79 TUF
HEXUS Where2Buy
The reviewed board is available to purchase here.
HEXUS Right2Reply
At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.
