Not being the troll, but speaker of the truth...
This board is awesome for CPU overclocking. Though others have pushed the Asus RIVE just a hair higher than this EVGA X79 FTW. As Joe mentions the 12 phases is well beyond what the 99% can even come close to using.
But this review missed out on a serious design flaw in EVGA's X79 motherboards - all of them. It is that they only support 32 lanes of PCI-E bandwidth, not the 40 lanes that
all other X79 boards support (even the cheap $210 ones!). As a matter of fact, it seems this review completely skipped over any type of GPU performance with this board.
Here's the thread we have going over at EVGA:
http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=1369428&high=
In short, this board supports only the following configuration:
x16
x16 - x16
x16 - x8 - x8 (*design flaw)
x8 - x8 - x8 - x8 (*design flaw)
All other X79 platforms support:
x16
x16 - x16
x16 - x16 - x8
x16 - x8 - x8 - x8
Why is this a problem? For the 99% out there that have 2 or even 3 GPUs, this won't phase them what so ever. Even with the latency of the X58 chipsets of the PCI-E buses removed in the Sandy Bridge P67/Z68 chipsets, and now the X79, it's faster than we've seen before!
Yeah, they are fine with 3 or even 4 GPUs with their single montior and this board. Absolutely great game play!
Well, it's those 0.05% of people out there with 3 displays that are all pissed off here with EVGA. It is proven at Toms Hardware (and now with the X79) that "Only super-high resolutions are affected by x8 lanes". Well, guess what those of us with 3 monitors with 2D Vision and 3D Vision Surround have? A resolution of nearly twice that of the 30" large displays: 5760x1080 resolutions.
I'm still in the middle of building my X79 Asus RIVE system, of which I will test once and for all the difference of x16-x16-x8 and x16-x8-x8 by installing a dummy card in the 4th slot to downgrade the 2nd x16 slot to x8. I suspect this is where my 'stuttering' came from during high frame rates in the system I had (3-way 580s on X58 platform, x16-x8-x8). I'll also test x16-x16 and x16-x8 modes as well.
Also, it seems this review skipped over some of the other issues with this board, such as the placement of those dip switches in regards to a large dual-slot GPU that would block those dip switches, making it hard to get to. And the fact that this board is overly priced compared to what little you get.
And lastly, EVGA had QA issues with these boards being shipped with no CPU cover, which voids the warranty. After removing the shrinkwrap to inspect my X79 for the missing CPU cover, and returning it unopened (only the shrinkwrap removed), I was promptly charged a $60 "restocking fee" as well - for removing the shrink wrapping of the outside of the box, to make sure the motherboard did not have THEIR QA flaw!
Yeah, EVGA left a bad taste in my mouth for the first, and last, motherboard I bought of theirs. I am posting to make sure others are aware as well. EVGA is a great American company and I'll continue to buy into their GPUs.