Gigabyte Shows Off Four Intel X79 Motherboards

Gigabyte has just updated its Facebook page with images of four of the company's upcoming X79 motherboards for Intel LGA 2011 Sandy Bridge-E processors, which will all feature support for a new 3-way digital PWM.

This new PWM design is based on three so called "digital engines," one of these being destined to supply power to the CPU while the other two are linked to the pair of memory banks installed on either side of the processor socket.

The controllers themselves are made by International Rectifier, and VR-Zone states that Gigabyte has decided to use this approach as this approach allows for an overall simpler board design in terms of power delivery.

In addition, the new PWM is also compatible with Intel's VR12 and VR12.5 specs, which most probably means that the motherboards will also be able to support Intel's 2013 Ivy Bridge-E processors.

Moving to the actual boards pictured by Gigabyte, these include the G1.Assassin 2, the X79-UD7, X79-UD5 and X79-UD3.

We covered all of these in detail over the last few weeks, and their design hasn't changed that much until now, except for the fact that Gigabyte was forced to get rid of some of the SATA ports installed on its LGA 2011 creations since Intel's X79 chipset now supports only two SATA 6Gbps and four SATA 3Gbps connectors.

By taking a close look at the four boards, you can actually see where the extra SATA ports were destined to go.

Of the four motherboards spotted only one, the GA-X79-UD5, comes with eight DIMM banks, while the rest support “just” four memory modules.

Sadly, Gigabyte refrained itself from providing any information regarding pricing and availability. Intel's first Sandy Bridge-E processors using the LGA 2011 socket get launched on November 14, so there is a strong change that the boards will make their appearance on the same day.

Posted in: Hardware, News, Preview