EVGA Takes the Wraps Off Its X58 SLI Motherboard

Coming to confirm what was only expected, NVIDIA's long-time board partner, EVGA, has officially unveiled its new X58-based desktop platform, the much anticipated EVGA X58 SLI. The new desktop platform is a considerable change for the motherboard and desktop graphics card maker, which, up until now, has only released NVIDIA-based motherboards, integrating NVIDIA's own graphics technologies, such as SLI or Hybrid SLI. With the new board, on the other hand, EVGA will indirectly provide support not only for 2-way and 3-way SLI, but also for AMD's ATI CrossFireX technology.

"EVGA has now launched the latest flagship Intel X58 based SLI platform on the market today, the EVGA X58 SLI motherboard," said Bob Klase, VP of Sales at EVGA. "EVGA strives very hard to deliver the best of the best to meet the high performance that the community demands."

Some of the key features enabled on the new motherboard include support for Core i7 processors, over 6.4 Giga-transfers per second, Intel Turbo Boost technology, RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 for the 10 SATA II 3.0GB/s ports, 6 memory DIMMs with support for up to 12GB of Triple-Channel DDR3 memory, adjustable PWM frequency, 100% solid state capacitors and EVGA's VDroop Control and EZ Voltage.

Additional features include an active heatsink cooling solution for the board's northbridge and southbridge chips, on-board Clear CMOS button, Power Button with integrated power light, Reset Button with integrated HDD Activity light and on-board diagnostics LED Readout. The back panel will provide users with no less than eight USB 2.0 ports, FireWire and eSata connectivity, dual-Gigabit ports Coaxial and Optical SPDIF Output, PS2 keyboard port and even a Clear CMOS button. The new EVGA X58 SLI motherboard is currently available for pre-order, directly on the company's website, for an MSRP of $329.99.

In addition to launching the new motherboard, EVGA has also unveiled its new E-LEET tuning utility, which will allow overclocking enthusiasts to easily set the motherboard's QPI and Voltages from within the Windows environment. Also, coming to support the EVGA overclocking community, the company has set into motion a new EVGA "MAD QPI Contest," where users have a chance to win an Extreme Core i7 965 CPU, one of the three EVGA GTX 260 Graphics cards, or one of the three 1GB 1375MHz DDR3 Triple Channel Kingston memory modules.