14 DAY TRIAL // The Haswell-E central processors from Intel have the highest performance of all consumer-grade CPUs currently on the market, meaning that their motherboards have to be especially competent. The new ASRock X99 Extreme11 is among the best of those.
The reason we can say this so easily is linked to the PCI Express slot configuration. Normally, motherboards can't handle four high-end graphics cards together.
This is why a 4-way SLI rating even exists. However, even on the mainboards that do support it, the performance is usually stifled by the need to divide bandwidth resources between slots.
Thus, PCI Express 3.0 slots that can work in x16 mode become x8 slots when all of them are populated, and only if a third-party controller exists to supplement the CPU.
What makes the ASRock X99 Extreme11 special
The ASRock X99 Extreme11 has two PLX PEX 8747 bridge chips. Combined with the lanes from the CPU, they allow for 4-Way NVIDIA SLI / AMD CrossFireX video card setups at x16/16/16/16.
You'll be very hard-pressed to find other mainboards with this capability. In fact, other than the positively ludicrously overpowered ASUS X99-E WS (which has seven PCI Express slots that can be fully utilized), no other comes to mind.
Not that it will do you much good as the market is right now. Admittedly, AMD's Radeon R9 28x and 29x graphics cards are readily enough available, but NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 980 and 970 can't be found in stock anywhere, save for a few EU stores.
In addition to the PCI Express configuration, the ASRock X99 Extreme11 possesses eighteen SATA III connectors, ten of which are handled by the X99 chipset, and eight SAS-3 12.0 Gbps controllers provided by an LSI SAS 3008 controller chip. Yes, that does mean double performance. Clearly, ASRock wanted to give the term “overkill” a whole new meaning.
SSDs were able to reach 6.1 GB/s according to the company, but that's probably the cumulative rate instead of individual performance.
Speaking of performance, it was of 2.8 GB/s for SSDs connected to the two Ultra M.2 slots located between the PCI Express ones. Everything is provided with energy by a 12 Power Phase VRM Design, while Super Alloy Series PCB components maintain stability and provide enduring lifespan.
CPU support and availability
In addition to Intel Core i7-5000X central processing units, the ASRock X99 Extreme11 with its LGA 2011-3 socket supports the latest Xeon CPUs with up to 18 cores. Sales should start soon, but the price hasn't been revealed yet.
