Gigabyte X79 Motherboard Bluetooth 4.0 & 802.11n Wi-Fi

One thing that most X79 boards don't have is support for Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11n Wi-Fi, its reported that that Gigabyte figured it would just make an add-in-board to make up for the deficit, which is really more of a PC Express to mini PCI Express adapter.

A half-sized mini PCI Express card based on an Atheros processor was equipped with an USB pin-header, meant to be attached to the USB pin-header on the motherboard.

With this to make sure the Bluetooth 4.0 connection works, the WiFi side of the equation will be left with the PCI Express connection. ECS already tried to solve this 'issue' as well, the solution involving a PCB antenna hardwired to the rear I/O, among other things.

Also, ASUS tried for a proprietary raiser card for the P9X79 Deluxe (with custom designed USB devices, apparently). Compared to those, Gigabyte's method seems somewhat more simple, even though it is limited to 150Mbps Wi-Fi (it has only two antennas). As such, no MIMO support exists (needs 300 Mbps).

The X79-UD5, X79-UD7 and G1.Assassin 2 motherboards are the ones that will ship in a bundle with the PCI Express card. Not certain if the item will sell standalone as well, but there is no reason it shouldn't.