Why no one talks about X79 mobos here?

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sblantipodi

2[H]4U
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As tittle,
this is really strange, why no one talks about X79 mobos here?

Is there some problem with this mobos?
 
Not too many people have them, probably. Kind of a niche product really, considering the high cost and small performance delta between 2011 and 1155 CPUs.
 
too expensive~~ >_<
especially if you factor in one of the decent 2011 cpu's.
like Forceman said, 1155 alternatives are way more attractive if you don't have special needs.

i see X79 stuff in the for sale/trade forum, but not that often overall.
 
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sblantipodi said:
As tittle,
this is really strange, why no one talks about X79 mobos here?

Is there some problem with this mobos?
Click to expand...

there isnt much x79 talk because there arent many people who have or want or need x79.

the only reasons for x79 are 4 video cards, 64gb of RAM, and 12 CPU threads. how many people need that!
 
One of the significant reasons, in addition to what's been stated above in the replies, is that the only affordable LGA 2011 CPU is not sufficiently faster than a mid-level LGA 1155 CPU to justify the purchase of a motherboard that costs $300 or more for the least expensive worthwhile model. Thus, if an i7-3820 with a $300+ X79 motherboard performs about equal to an i7-2700K with a $150 Z77 motherboard, why bother with LGA 2011 or X79 unless you go straight to a more expensive hexa-core CPU right off the bat?
 
The question should actually be, "Why would we be talking about those?"

http://hardocp.com/article/2011/11/14/intel_core_i73960x_sandy_bridge_e_processor_review/

The Bottom Line
I am not sure who is supposed to buy a 3960X. I really do not see it benefiting gamers. I do not see it being a boon too overclocking enthusiasts due to price, power usage, and subsequently heat output. I guess if I sat around all day ripping Blu-ray disks and encoding those for torrent sites, it would be awesome. Maybe that could be Intel's new 3960X motto, "Sandy Bridge E, maximizing BitTorrent ratios, one desktop at a time." Meh. Let's see what the K series brings before we totally turn our noses up at this beast of a processor...that none of us really need, or I think even want. I think we have enough cores for now. Get your noses back on the grindstone and give us stellar IPC gains or even better, 5GHz stock clocks.
Click to expand...

Even though Intel went a bit spastic on us and threatened to cut us off from sampling, I think I was spot on with what I wrote back then.
 
I have to be honest.....

my son and I put together an X-79 board just after the release of the 39xx-k SB-E processors.

Now I still use an X58 board with a 930 Ci7 and 6 GB of RAM.

Our X79 has 16 GB of RAM, honestly that's about the only real significant difference.
My 930 is running 4.1 and the 3930-K runs 4.6 but is pretty hot even with adequate watercooling. The X79 does have PCI-e 3.0 but thats not really that big a deal.

Our goal was to have a board that will accomidate the Ivy-extreme cpu, but that may not be, who knows.

Both my XX58 and X79 are ASUS Rampage Formula boards, pretty feature rich, but not over the top.
I have had some second thoughts, primarily because the SB-E is hot and power hungry.
I should have just waited and done Z77 and IB, cooler, less power needs and clocks just as well.

Don't get me wrong, I love the X79 board, it's rock solid. But I could have done as well for less money.
 
There are also no forums for bugatti veyron.

SBE and X79 is hardcore platform and unless you have own movie studio and compile tens of movies a day. You wont need that performance and therefore you wont pay the extra price for it. Although these computers are used in distributed computing to perform intensive analysis and calculations and server solutions. But such a setups people don't have at home. So this reduced X79 user base big time.
 
If Intel released the high end platform first like they did with 1366 there would probably be a lot more of us with 3930Ks.

The fact of the matter is most of us already bought an 1155 platform while we waited and there was no real reason to upgrade.
 
Forceman said:
Not too many people have them, probably. Kind of a niche product really, considering the high cost and small performance delta between 2011 and 1155 CPUs.
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This. Few have any incentive to go with an LGA2011 setup. Too high a price for so little benefit.
 
I love mine. Excellent value per dollar? Nope. But I love running lots of VM's and having a large RAM disk, etc, etc. 2011 is really only useful if you want 6 cores or big RAM.
 
I just got an X79 but it was on the cheap.....6 core at $200 or 4 core at $200.....I figured I'd go 6.

3930k for 200 (intel retail edge).
Asus Rampage for 200 Open box newegg....I was lucky it just had no box and wasn't used had all parts still in the band new bags.


I had a TON of questions before I bought my MB and they all mostly went un answered across the internets.....So I just bought Asus Rampage because it was pretty. Turned out pretty good for me.
 
Dan_D said:
This. Few have any incentive to go with an LGA2011 setup. Too high a price for so little benefit.
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When you consider the cost of the $300-$400 Z77 motherboards people are looking at buying here like the Maximus V Formula and Extreme the X79 boards which have come down in price and the 3930k which can be found for $550 or less isn't that much more expensive to go from 4 cores to 6, especially if you have a use for the additional RAM.
 
burningrave101 said:
When you consider the cost of the $300-$400 Z77 motherboards people are looking at buying here like the Maximus V Formula and Extreme the X79 boards which have come down in price and the 3930k which can be found for $550 or less isn't that much more expensive to go from 4 cores to 6, especially if your have a use for the additional RAM.
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May not be much of a difference in motherboard prices but there is a big difference between a $550 3930K and a $240 3570K. You could put that $300 into a much better GPU or some SSD's or whatever. As a gamer, I'd much rather have a 3570K and a 7970 vs a 3930K and 6870 for the same money.
 
MacLeod said:
May not be much of a difference in motherboard prices but there is a big difference between a $550 3930K and a $240 3570K. You could put that $300 into a much better GPU or some SSD's or whatever. As a gamer, I'd much rather have a 3570K and a 7970 vs a 3930K and 6870 for the same money.
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Yes but for someone that builds a computer for work as well instead of just playing games there's a noticeable difference between a 4/4 core 3570k and a 6/12 core 3930k in applications that require a lot of CPU processing. If you're going to compare prices it would have to at least be between the 3770k and they're retailing for $350 and above. And so an extra $200 isn't that much to go from a quad core to a hexa-core when you think about the price difference that used to be with Intel. Heck Apple charges $250 just to upgrade from a 2.6Ghz 6MB L3 to a 2.7Ghz 8MB L3 in their new MacBook Pro and people are paying it left and right.
 
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I just got a 3930k and a rampage 4 gene with 16gb 1600mhz ddr3. wooo! Total cost? $500. Yay retail edge and used parts!
Putting it all in an Origen AG S16V to make a baller HTPC.

Can't get over how hard it was to find a great HTPC case, and then that it cost $400. As soon as I get it... I'm taking a holesaw to it and adding a 2x120mm rad!
 
Zoson said:
I just got a 3930k and a rampage 4 gene with 16gb 1600mhz ddr3. wooo! Total cost? $500. Yay retail edge and used parts!
Putting it all in an Origen AG S16V to make a baller HTPC.

Can't get over how hard it was to find a great HTPC case, and then that it cost $400. As soon as I get it... I'm taking a holesaw to it and adding a 2x120mm rad!
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3930k and rampage 4 gene for a htpc... uhuh
 
Zoson said:
I just got a 3930k and a rampage 4 gene with 16gb 1600mhz ddr3. wooo! Total cost? $500. Yay retail edge and used parts!
Putting it all in an Origen AG S16V to make a baller HTPC.

Can't get over how hard it was to find a great HTPC case, and then that it cost $400. As soon as I get it... I'm taking a holesaw to it and adding a 2x120mm rad!
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I got the exact same thing pretty much.....couldn't be more excited about it.
 
but what about the 3820 and an x79 setup? with mc pricing it isnt that much more then a 3770 and a high end z77 combo. i was thinking about going with a 3820 setup. the only think that keeps me from doing it is the cpu is locked. if they released a 3820k i would be all over that.
 
tricky0502 said:
but what about the 3820 and an x79 setup? with mc pricing it isnt that much more then a 3770 and a high end z77 combo. i was thinking about going with a 3820 setup. the only think that keeps me from doing it is the cpu is locked. if they released a 3820k i would be all over that.
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Personally I think the 3820 is useless. I know not many agree with me, but I see no point in that CPU at all. The CPU can be overclocked with strap setting changes, but not all boards respond well to that. Without the extra cores the 3930K and 3960X offer, I just can't see any sense in going with the X79 platform. With Z77 Express and Ivy Bridge you get enough PCIe lanes for most desktop usage scenarios and configurations out of LGA1155 boards. The added memory bandwidth doesn't do much for you in most applications either.

Another way of looking at it is that if you buy a Core i7 3820 and an X79 motherboard you'll spend a bit more than you typically would on a Z77 board and an i5 3570k / i7 3770K combo. But at the end of the day your system won't really be any better for it. You'll also lose QuickSync and the potential to leverage Thunderbolt (depending on what board you buy.) You also lose out on the Lucid Virtu technology. Those features in the long run are probably a bit more valuable for the end user than added memory bandwidth and PCIe lanes are. Granted most people may not fully leverage either the extra features provided by Z77 Express or the advantages of X79. Unless you need to toss an assload of expansion cards in your machine X79 doesn't make any sense to me without going to a hex core CPU.
 
tricky0502 said:
but what about the 3820 and an x79 setup? with mc pricing it isnt that much more then a 3770 and a high end z77 combo. i was thinking about going with a 3820 setup. the only think that keeps me from doing it is the cpu is locked. if they released a 3820k i would be all over that.
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But it has no practical advantage over a 3770K/Z77 combo, so why pay more at all for it? Unless you need gobs of RAM, or intend to do Tri/Quad-SLI, there really isn't any reason to go that route. Plus you lose overclocking.
 
No problems here! Just trying to cool down the sucker some more, it idles at 51c :(, using phantek air cooler.
 
A lot of workloads of major multimedia apps are being offloaded onto the GPU also - which further increases the lack of incentive, imo.
 
Forceman said:
But it has no practical advantage over a 3770K/Z77 combo, so why pay more at all for it? Unless you need gobs of RAM, or intend to do Tri/Quad-SLI, there really isn't any reason to go that route. Plus you lose overclocking.
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Sandy Bridge-E and Ivy Bridge clock about the same, but the latter has IPC advantages.
 
burningrave101 said:
Yes but for someone that builds a computer for work as well instead of just playing games there's a noticeable difference between a 4/4 core 3570k and a 6/12 core 3930k in applications that require a lot of CPU processing. If you're going to compare prices it would have to at least be between the 3770k and they're retailing for $350 and above. And so an extra $200 isn't that much to go from a quad core to a hexa-core when you think about the price difference that used to be with Intel. Heck Apple charges $250 just to upgrade from a 2.6Ghz 6MB L3 to a 2.7Ghz 8MB L3 in their new MacBook Pro and people are paying it left and right.
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But if you are building a workstation (for work) why use consumer "enthusiast" grade parts? May as well step into proper workstation gear, 8C/16T Xeons, DP, ECC RAM, DP grade GPUs (Tesla/Quadro/FireGL) etc.

That's the fundamental issue with the consumer side 2011, it's marketed to enthusiasts with overclocking and 3D gaming card configurations in mind, but doesn't provide significant upside to those usage cases. The real problem was the timing, if 2011 came out before 1155 SB/IB it would have sold a lot more to the target market.
 
I think the majority of new 3930K users got it from the Intel deal so tough to say no to a 6 core SB-E for $179 (plus tax/shipping) and go with a 3770K
I'm curious what mobo is being used with it.
 
I do a fair amount of video work and my old computer did the job as long as the footage was in SD (720x576). When people started giving me 1920x1080p stuff I knew I had to build a new computer. X79 is the only mobo with an upgrade path so I bought an Asus P9X79 Pro and a 3820 - problem solved!
 
dinker99 said:
I do a fair amount of video work and my old computer did the job as long as the footage was in SD (720x576). When people started giving me 1920x1080p stuff I knew I had to build a new computer. X79 is the only mobo with an upgrade path so I bought an Asus P9X79 Pro and a 3820 - problem solved!
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What upgrade path? The best it'll do is Ivy Bridge-E, so the same longevity (architecture-wise) as 1155. Haswell is going to need a new socket, same as always.
 
Dan_D said:
Personally I think the 3820 is useless. I know not many agree with me, but I see no point in that CPU at all. The CPU can be overclocked with strap setting changes, but not all boards respond well to that. Without the extra cores the 3930K and 3960X offer, I just can't see any sense in going with the X79 platform. With Z77 Express and Ivy Bridge you get enough PCIe lanes for most desktop usage scenarios and configurations out of LGA1155 boards. The added memory bandwidth doesn't do much for you in most applications either.

Another way of looking at it is that if you buy a Core i7 3820 and an X79 motherboard you'll spend a bit more than you typically would on a Z77 board and an i5 3570k / i7 3770K combo. But at the end of the day your system won't really be any better for it. You'll also lose QuickSync and the potential to leverage Thunderbolt (depending on what board you buy.) You also lose out on the Lucid Virtu technology. Those features in the long run are probably a bit more valuable for the end user than added memory bandwidth and PCIe lanes are. Granted most people may not fully leverage either the extra features provided by Z77 Express or the advantages of X79. Unless you need to toss an assload of expansion cards in your machine X79 doesn't make any sense to me without going to a hex core CPU.
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3820 is marketing move to promote X79 in mainstream area. Even 3770S is faster. It has no practical point at all.
 
Well I can say one big negative of the x79 boards is that they use RST"e" (enterprise) drivers for the disk controller. Compared to the standard RST on z77 boards, it's a good deal slower with SSD's. I have the Asus p9x79 Pro with a 3960x and using SSD's on the Intel ports, it benchmarks drives significantly slower than say even the Z68 board i have with a 2600K.

I use an LSI 9265 for my SSD RAID so the performance hit of the RSTe drivers does not affect me, but there is definately a performance issue with RSTe drivers compared to regular RST.
 
From my point of view, the X79 board would only make sense for its Xeon + cheaper 4 channel ECC RAM capability. But there's no solid consumer-friendly offering in this area. It's either lack of USB3 or not enought PCIe slots or no official ECC support or not enough SATA ports or dubious 3rd party controllers (USB3, SATA) and so on. Nothing truly enthusiastic out there as X79 is being marketed. Also I'm wondering whether a new chipset will be launched when IB-E is out, perhaps even one with the additional SAS ports working?

For "regular" hardware (non-Xeon, non-ECC RAM) the Z77 seems much better: dual SLI seems enough for most users, Ivy Bridge is better (if U're not an overclocking fanatic), cheaper, integrated USB 3, even thunderbolt. Perhaps Lucid Virtu - QuickSync too.


Integrated USB3 and/or thunderbolt might sound like not a big deal for some people but I remember what pain it was to transfer not so large amounts of data through USB1 without opening the case or buying additional controllers. Sure, it can be done but why not buy something you know it won't require additional "tweaking" soon enough?
 
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X79 has it's place, my 4.8 Ghz Sandy Bridge E setup puts out TWICE the PPD (in folding @ home) as my 4.0Ghz 17 920 does. That's food for thought.
 
extide said:
X79 has it's place, my 4.8 Ghz Sandy Bridge E setup puts out TWICE the PPD (in folding @ home) as my 4.0Ghz 17 920 does. That's food for thought.
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Yeah but you are using a 3930K according to your signature. That's fine. The 3820, not so much.
 
Monkey God said:
Yeah there is little point to x79 with 4 cores.
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I'm currently "downgrading" from a Z77/3570k setup to an X79/3820 build because I need more physical space on the board for cards without buying a high end part. I got my ECS full ATX quad-SLI capable board for $125 and I can get a 3820 for the same price I paid for my 3570k. In the end after selling my current setup I have made $100 and I now have the space I need. I had a 3930k before and I did not really utilize it so to me the 3820 makes more sense.
 
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