14 DAY TRIAL // Judging by the number of LGA 1366 motherboards that have been launched lately, it would seem that the X58 chipset still has some life ahead of it, and Asus comes to reiterate this claim once more as the Taiwanese company has just announced the introduction of a new Tylersburg-based workstation motherboard, the P6X58-E WS.
Just as other X58 solutions available in the market, the P6X58-E WS comes equipped with the ICH10R southbridge and features tri-channel DDR3 memory support.
However, to differentiate itself from the competition, Asus' creation also adds an Nvidia NF200 controller that enables the motherboard to support 3-way SLI as well as quad CrossFireX, with each PCI-E channel working in a full x16 mode.
Speaking of PCI Express, the board comes equipped with six such slots, five PCI-E x16 and one PCI-E x1 slot.
Storage wise, the P6X58-E WS features six SATA 3Gbps connectors, driven by the Intel southbridge chip which supports the RAID 0,1,5,10 modes, and two SATA 6Gbps ports, that are powered by a Marvell 9128 PCIe controller.
An additional Intel 82574L Gigabit NIC is used for driving a pair of Ethernet ports available in the back of the motherboard.
Together with these two network ports, the P6X58-E WS also packs six USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, a FireWire port, a shared mouse and keyboard PS/2 connector, as well as various audio I/O jacks including optical S/PDIF out.
All the Asus specific features, such as Xtreme Phase power delivery and EPU energy consumption optimization, are also present.
In addition, the board features what Asus likes to call the “24X24” pledge, meaning 24-hour non-stop operation and 24-month guaranteed market availability to reduce costs due to involuntary product replacement.
No details regarding pricing and availability were disclosed by the company, but the P6X58-E WS is expected to be priced somewhere around $399.