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 |
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