EVGA X79 FTW X79 Motherboard Review

The X79 FTW has a very clean spacious layout to it which, with the red highlights both on the PCI-e lanes and the red LEDs that are inbetween, make it great to look at. Like a ROG board, its colour scheme would easily be matched into a system build.

Along with this, the sheer number of included cables, expansion brackets and other accessories that are included, give a whole load of flexibility on installation and just add to the overall package that you get.

Feature wise we see a whole range of options available with the 6 PCI-e lanes, SATA II and III interfaces, dual Gigabit LAN, a large array of front panel headers along the base of the board, degbug LED, and the tri-BIOS selection. The other little touches such as the 24-pin ATX connector that is at a right angle to the board, allowing for easier cable management in your case and the onboard power, reset and CMOS reset buttons just add to the selling factor.

When we look at the performance that is available, the board was solid throughout our tests and even when overclocked the temperatures experienced were well within acceptable limits, although we did have to raise the VCore up to 1.6V to get a stable overclock which we really wouldn’t recommend for a system running 24/7 – 4.7GHz was possible at 1.5V which is more within our scope of recommendation. Continuing along with the overclocking aspect of the X79 FTW, we will point out again that we did have to change down to our i7-3930k instead of the 3960X, as the later is only an evaluation sample and runs with C0 stepping which showed some compatibility issues and refused to give a stable result anywhere over 4.2GHz. Anyone who is looking to buy this board and a 3960X won’t need to worry however as no retail chips will come with C0 stepping which causes the incompatibility.

When it comes to using the UEFI BIOS we did feel that it was like using a more traditional BIOS setup, but it works and is fairly easy to navigate around. As to why the usual key setup has been changed we were a little unsire why, for example the F10 key for save and exit is F4 and F5 for optimised/ default settings is F3.

When overclocking, we did find that the board doesn’t want to gave a great deal and our CPU topped out at 4.8GHz, which isn’t a bad result by any means, but it would have been nicer to see it pass the 5GHz mark.

The X79 FTW comes with a price tag of $438.28, which is not to far under that of a Rampage IV Extreme so we can expect prices to be around that of  a Rampage IV Extreme over here in the UK as well. Whilst some will think that this a steep price, it not always just about the product itself. EVGA is clear on all their RMA and support services being dealt directly with themselves and this in itself, adds to the desirability of this product.

On the whole we have seen a company that dominates the Nvidia based GPU market put their focus onto producing another great motherboard and this time with the new X79 chipset and socket 2011. Yes there are a couple of tweaks that could be made in order to get it playing the perfect symphony and this does lie around the BIOS. When other manufacturers need to build a new BIOS they will have a team of around half a dozen programmers that work together to get each individual part built, EVGA though has a very different approach – their entire BIOS department is made up of one, yes one, person and we have to take our hats off to him as he has single handedly built a BIOS that with the couple of tweaks in the right place will give the board the leading edge that will push it to the next level.

Last and foremost we want to give this board an award but naturally we can only give it the one. We have seen that there are a couple of areas which could do with some improvement, mainly on the overclocking side  and the USB3.0 write performance we feel could have been better. What the board does give though is a whole host of features and great styling and the ability to chuck a whole heap of volts at the CPU without the worry of it going bang too soon is a great bonus, therefore we are happy to give it our innovation award.