Asus Sabertooth Z77 Motherboard Review (with OC GTX680)

Rating: 9.0.

Intel have a busy month in April, launching their 3rd generation processors within a couple of weeks time. Today however they release their much awaited Z77 platform, with a raft of motherboards hitting the market from all their partners. Under NDA we have to wait until a later date to publish next generation Core i5/i7 results, so today we will take a look at one of the many boards we have in our labs when paired up with a Core i7 2600k.

The Asus Sabretooth Z77 looks to be another quality product from ASUS and we will overclock it to the limit and pair it up with an overclocked Asus GTX680.

This hasn't been the smoothest product launch for Intel as their Z77 NDA has been breached by some publications clamoring for hits and even some retailers. This means that performance results, detailed photographs and descriptions are already in the wild and have been for many weeks. On Friday for instance many of the UK retail stores such as Scan, Aria and Overclockers decided to launch Z77 sales.

The Asus Sabertooth Z77 motherboard supports Quad SLI and Quad Crossfire and uses an interesting ‘Thermal Armor' cover to enhance cooling and improve reliability under stressful conditions. The Sabertooth Z77 also features ASUS exclusive pioneering Dual Intelligent Processors 3 with SMART DIGI+ Power Control where 2 dedicated chips, the TPU and EPU provide an auto overclock and save energy through optimized power management, significantly boosting performance.

Overview:

Asus Exclusive Innovations:

• SMART DIGI+ Power Control
• Fan Xpert+
• Network iControl
• USB BIOS Flashback
• USB 3.0 Boost
• AI Suite II

Innovations:

• Quad GPU AMD CrossfireX – a flawless architecture accommodating the power of up to four graphics cards
• LudicLogix Virtu MVP – boots responsiveness, improves gaming frame rates by 30-70% and sharpens visual quality

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