ASUS P6T DELUXE X58 Motherboard Preview

Introduction
 
ASUS P6T Press ShotWith the release of Intel’s Bloomfield CPUs right around the corner and the X58 chipset bringing plenty of new features, many motherboard manufacturers have been hard at work putting together their arsenal of boards ready for the release date. Anyone following the news of these boards will have undoubtedly seen early leaked images in the news from many manufacturers, and here at Overclock3D we even managed to get a real life look at ASUS’s P6T back in August at the Advanced Overclocking Championship event.
 
However, today we’ve been sent what will be the actual retail version of the P6T DELUXE for some early analysis. Unfortunately we cant post any performance figures of the board yet (unless we wanted to get decapitated by both Intel and ASUS), but never less we’re still going to take an up-close look at some of the boards finer points including its insane 16+2 phase power circuitry and the shiny new X58 chipset (sin IHS….boooo!). Here are some words from ASUS’ recent press release:
 
Fulfilling demand for users that require a motherboard able to achieve extraordinary overclocking capability, ASUS, world-leader in motherboard production, has unveiled the new ASUS P6T DELUXE amid high user expectation. This innovative motherboard utilizes Intel’s latest platform, and features the exclusive ASUS Super Hybrid Engine concept that encompasses the TurboV and EPU technologies to deliver the twofold benefits of overclocking and power efficiency. TurboV is an advanced overclocking application that enables easy overclocking without the need to exit or reboot the operating system; while the EPU automatically provides users exceptional power efficiency. Equipped with Super Hybrid Engine, users will enjoy the best overclocking environment and address environmental concerns at the same time.
In the grand scheme of things the P6T DELUXE is essentially going to be to the Nehalem, what the P5B DELUXE was to the Conroe. Ok maybe that’s a bit of a generalisation, but it’s still interesting to look back at the P5B and see how much (or little in some cases) things have changed over the past two years in the world of motherboard design.
 
Probably one of the most interesting features of the P6T DELUXE (and the upcoming RoG board) aside from the entirely new architecture, is the TurboV overclocking application. Once again, we cant show any pictures of this in action YET, but essentially TurboV is a hardware version of tools such as ClockGen and SetFSB which allow “Live” overclocking from within Windows. Many of us will also recognise the LCD display used for the interface. Yes it’s the Asus “ScreenDUO” as originally seen on the P5B Premium Vista Edition. Let’s hope it gets more use this time around…
 
One final feature that most definitely deserves a mention for all X58 boards is is the ability to run either Crossfire or SLI. This is something that many enthusiasts have long been dreaming about, and based on the strength of Intel’s P45 and X48 chipsets, may well bring about the decline of Nvidia based motherboards. More on this another time though.
 
Now that we’ve got the formalities out of the way let’s unleash the beast…