14 DAY TRIAL // EVGA may have been quite focused on making the GeForce GTX 470 cooler than it already was, but it appears that the hardware maker has not lost sight of its motherboard business. In fact, even though there haven't been many, if any, official announcements, a new, high-end EVGA motherboard has appeared on online stores. Quaintly dubbed X58 FTW3, but codenamed 132-GT-E768-KR, the platform seeks to establish itself as one of the leaders in its class, not just through its support for high-tier LGA 1366 CPUs, but also through its wide feature set.
Based on the Intel X58/ICH10R chipset, the mainboard employs a 10-phase power design, a somewhat massive cooling mechanism and comes with the full package of memory slots, expansion capabilities and connectivity options. To be more specific, the X58 FTW3 boasts no less than six different DDR3 1600+ memory slots (for up to 24GB memory), as well as a trio of PCI Express x16 slots. NVIDIA 2-way SLI and 3-way SLI configurations are supported, plus CrossFireX setups.
What makes the product truly noteworthy is that, unlike most existing platforms, it has not just support for the SATA 6.0Gbps interface (two ports), but also for the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 standard (two ports as well). Other specifications include eight USB 2.0 ports, six SATA 3.0Gbps connectors, 7.1 channel audio, FireWire and dual Gigabit Ethernet.
Basically, this board should make an excellent pair with Intel's high-end Core i7 LGA 1366 CPUs and perhaps some of the speedy dual-channel kits that have been launched over the past couple of months. There is no clear indication of when actual shipments are set to begin, but EVGA's offering has already been listed as available for pre-order, for the price of $342.39. Interested consumers can find the listing for North America here.