14 DAY TRIAL // News about another motherboard maker preparing an X58 board has surfaced the Web. This time, the information is about ASUS, and the board is named P6T6 WS Revolution. Pictures of the product were published by Xfastest once again. This new motherboard has some surprising characteristics, as it comes with an NF200 chip and no less than six PCIe x16 slots.
The catch with this motherboard is that it won't have the same bandwidth for all six PCIe x16 slots. Besides, although it comes with an NF200 chip, it won't have extra PCIe lanes either. The NF200 is reported to also add some latency, yet it shouldn't be noticeable. Also, the NF200 chip will need 16 PCIe to connect to the chipset, and it would be the same as splitting 16 lanes into two by eight lanes. Since the 32 lanes coming out of the NF200 can't be split again, it is not able to do four x8 PCIe slots.
There is no specific information on how ASUS managed to split the bandwidth between the slots, but the pictures available suggest that only the three blue slots could be used for SLI. Considering this, the top or bottom slots should be fed by the NF200 chip, while the third one goes with the X58 chipset. NVIDIA recommended exactly this kind on setup.
The pictures of the ASUS P6T6 WS Revolution also suggest that the white slot is coming off the ICH10R, which would also mean that it has limited bandwidth at four PCIe lanes. Also, the two black slots may be shared with the blue slots above them, which suggests that, when all four slots are used, there is a four x8 PCIe slot limitation. The exact specifications for the motherboard haven't been unveiled yet, but they should clear all up when the company officially releases the product.
In the meantime, you could take a look at the P6T6 WS Revolution motherboard here.