Why the hell none of the reviewers in the world checked the quality of Front Panel Audio jacks on this baby (as well as on Maximus VI Formula)? Rear panel audio jacks are served by alc1150, which is ok, but nowhere near serious DACs. BUT the FPA is served by Cirrus' flagship CS4398 DAC and TI's flagship 6120A2 one-chip hp amplifier. These are TOP chips for audio equipment, and no one even tried them on these Asus MBs while reviewing.
Huh?
Yes, I did not put test figures, but that is because case wiring can affect audio output. So whatever numbers I give might be meaningless. Also, in testing audio, most often a loop-back cable is used, so you don't get result data that is just the output...it is highly dependent on the input capabilities as well.
Hardware wise, the board looks interesting. But I must say it has a few big problems and I'm not sure it's related only to the BIOS/Software. I did see that the reviewer took note of at least one of the RAM problems.
The biggest problem it has right now is its stability. Populated with 64GB of RAM the board just restarts randomly. It does not BSOD, it just restarts, out of nowhere. I hope it's just a BIOS problem, because if it's not then they really messed this up. There are only two BIOS versions available, so it's in the early stages of its development. I do have to add that everything worked in a P9X79 without problems and that it's clearly related to RAM settings, I have to revert to 1333MHz to keep things stable. I'm using a Crucial Ballistix Tactical DDR3L low voltage 1.35V 8x8GB kit with a 4930k. The kit is also XMP 1.3 compliant.
Another annoying problem is the sound driver. The settings do not work. It does Loudness Equalization even if it's unchecked. The only solution was to disable sound enhancements in the Windows settings. Before finding this fix, speaker output was terrible, any low frequency sounds (eg. drums) would muffle the mid and the high end. After the fix it sounds quite delicious. Also sometimes it just refuses to switch on the FP headphone outputs, it detects headphones, it mutes the speakers, but it does not output any sound. Sometimes it works, most of the times it does not. Without the driver package it doesn't work at all.
Other than that, the performance of the board seems inconsistent. Even in the review here, most of the time it's surpassed by the P9X79 Deluxe. And there are some cases where it destroys that same board.
I did not encounter these issues. I did have some problems, all of which turned out to be a dying PSU and SSD. Replaced those parts, and I haven't had any issues since. I rather upset you are having problems like, that to be honest.
Performance is a bit suspect here, but that is in part due to using SB-E rather than IVB-E, while the other products are using Haswell. This gives a slight twist to the numbers.
awesome review Dave, question why there is around 20 FPS different between motherboards in games?
Turbo profiling. Makes reviewing motherboards hard....do I manually set everything for every board, or do I report out-of-the-box numbers?
Well, I kind of have advanced knowledge of system set-up, so what I get, if setting manually, most users will not get, so the best I can do is report things as they are...out of the box.
That makes my reviews more about my experience with the hardware than the hardware itself. Bench scores are kind of useless in board reviews, except in pointing out problems.
Finally here!
About the PCB - how many layers has - 8 or 10?
I'll get back to you on this when I get back home and get the board in my hands.