Final Words & Conclusion
Final Words & Conclusion
The X99 TUF SaberTooth is an absolutely lovely product, but ASUS .. we want Snow White edition please :) This X99 SKU is downright handsome when it comes to feature-set, style and overclock-ability. This motherboard can be the infrastructure for your SLI or Crossfire build (you need a 40-Lanes PCI-Express compatible processor for 3-way though). Next to that there are eight 6 Gbps SATA 3 ports and a SATA Express port as well as an M.2 interface. Included are USB 3.0 ports but also two USB 3.1 ports that offer 10Gbit/s data transfer speeds, a little niche as there are no client products available for that on the market though. Nice to see are the two LAN Gigabit jacks, one Intel NICs the other Realtek. Lacking however is Wireless Ethernet WiFi functionality, this is my one gripe. Not a big gripe, but it is starting to nag me a little in this price-range. The new TUF Detective feature then, we love it. Very handy.
The Platform Experience
The motherboard manufacturers simply went berserk with their motherboard designs, and I believe that 2014 has to be the best year of them all if you look at what the motherboard manufacturers did and are now offering. The overall per-core performance remains seriously nice but is at the level of pretty much any previous Nehalem architecture based processor core, Turbo 2.0 kicks in nicely up-to 3.5 GHz per core for the Core i7 5960X. For the professional user who uses heavily threaded software like content creation, that's where Haswell-E will make a nice difference. Add to that quad-channel DDR4 memory that will offer insane bandwidth and plenty of PCIe lanes and you'll have a platform that will be hard to beat. The Intel X99 chipset is by all means a huge plus and with this release you'll receive huge amounts of SATA3 and USB 3.0 ports among others. The motherboard manufacturers have gone to great length and offer the most luxurious products. It is a feast to the eyes to see and experience really.
Storage
Combined with eight SATA 6Gbps ports we can hardly argue about anything. SATA Express is supported, but I foresee a grim and dark future for that connector as I do not see or expect SATA Express taking off anytime soon (or ever). More interesting I find to be the all new M.2 interface, pop in an M.2 compatible PCI-E SSD and you'll see your SSD quickly perform in the 700/800 Mb/sec range. Overall your SATA and M.2 connectivity is plentiful and top notch when it comes to performance.
Aesthetics
Looks are subjective, always. You need to like the SaberTooth series design with its Thermal Armor. Happily ASUS stepped way from the somewhat soft green ceramic look, yet now follows a more grey/dark ceramic look. This SKU in a snow white version would however be the shiznit. But hey again, taste matters and will differ per person of course. And that makes this a tidbit personal, I find the X99 TUF SaberTooth a nice and good looking motherboard with a proper layout and and looks. Remember that you can cover all slots with rubber inserts that some supplied with the motherboard.
Tweaking
The tweaking performance of this motherboard was on par with what our sample can handle, and we do have a poor CPU sample in terms of tweaking. Realistically at 1.30 Volts you should be able to get the Core i7 5960X to roughly 4400~4500 MHz on all cores. However we need 1.40 Volts for that. And even though that seems a little shy as a tweak, it remains to be almost 4400 MHz on 8 physical CPU cores. We learned from others that they have been able to reach 4.5 GHz on all 8-cores with just a 1.25v Vcore. Some clock great on low voltages, others behave like a pig, in our case we needed 1.4 Volts to reach 4.4 GHz and have gotten a pig. Regardless, overclocking wise, you will have plenty of headroom to fool around with. It really is a fun processor to tweak with and the motherboard certainly isn't preventing a bad overclock, to the contrary, this board was designed to offer all features needed to quickly get you up-to snuff tweaking wise.
Final Words
As lovely as the product is, the pricing is pretty sore. Webshops show price ranges starting at 310 USD but in the EU start at 350 EURO at the moment of writing, the bad USD/EUR conversion plays a big part in that though. But we've even seen shops asking 375~425 EURO for this motherboard. For an X99 motherboard that remains fairly reference in terms of features and does not have AC WIFI and on-board buttons or even a physical diagnostic LED, it is just a steep price. Now all X99 motherboards are a little over-inflated pricing wise, that goes for any brand. You do get the nice thermal armor and fan control suite as extra as well as an extra Gigabit jack. The addition of the USB 3.1 connectors are great as well of course.
The per-core performance among all the motherboards we have tested remains nice but very similar, and since our CPU sample won't go beyond 4.4 GHz all our tweaking results are fairly similar as well. However, if you have a better CPU than we have, then this motherboard will have no problems tweaking the very maximum out of it. The motherboard offers all that is needed to last you a long time, features like the eight SATA 6 Gbps ports, the two Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and the 7.1 channel HD audio as delivered by the high-end Realtek ALC1150 codec are nice. This motherboard is multi-GPU ready up-to 2/3 way SLI/Crossfire but 2-way maximum is recommended. Lacking are on-board buttons, diagnostic LEDs and WIFI/WIDI. Other then that everything you need from an enthusiast class Haswell-E processor platform is there.
Overall we think the X99 TUF SaberTooth is a truly terrific product series, but for some reason the pricing for a lot of X99 brands seem to be somewhat off. This should be a 300 EURO costing motherboard series at best (in our humble opinion). But pricing aside, it remains a highly recommended product as you will enjoy using it anytime, any-day with downright terrific looks. Nice, really nice.
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