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ASRock X79 Extreme9 Review

When you pay more for a product, you expect a better level of everything - performance, features, support.  In a motherboard, I'd want all the upgrades - top line audio, overclockability, superior software, better USB 3.0 / SATA 6 Gbps controllers, and so on.  The ASRock X79 Extreme9's party piece is the bundled 'Game Blaster' - a PCIe x1 card with Creative Sound Core3D Audio powered by a quad core audio processor and an additional Broadcom Gigabit LAN port.  All in at $360 MSRP, today we review the Extreme9 to see if it fits into the enthusiast of enthusiast price segments.

Overview

It's hard to place the X79 Extreme9.  I have reviewed the Extreme4 and Extreme4-M, both of which were good X79 budget boards for consumers or enthusiasts who wanted to jump into Sandy Bridge-E as cheaply as possible.  The X79 Extreme9 comes in around +50% more than those boards ($360 vs. ~$240), meaning I would expect 50% more when it came to the Extreme9. 

ASRock X79 Series
	X79 Extreme4	X79 Extreme9
Price	$235	$360
Size	ATX	ATX
Power Phase	6+2	16+2
Memory	4 x DDR3	8 x DDR3
PCIe	x16/x16/x8	x8/x8/x8/x8/x8 x16/-/x16/-/x8
CrossfireX	2x, 3x, 4x (Dual GPUs only)	2x, 3x, 4x (Dual GPUs only)
SLI	2x, 3x, 4x (Dual GPUs only)	2x, 3x, 4x (Dual GPUs only)
Audio	ALC 898	Creative Sound Core3D
LAN	Single	Dual
SATA 6 Gbps	5	8
USB 3.0	4	8
USB 2.0	12	12
XFast Software	Yes	Yes
Digital PWM	Yes	Yes
Dr. Debug	Yes	Yes