Gigabyte Shows Off New Upcoming X99 Motherboards

At PAX East Gigabyte was showing off three unreleased X99 motherboards. These new boards are set to launch along side Intel’s Broadwell-E HEDT processors. These new X99 boards include the X99-Designare EX, X99-Phoenix SLI G1 Gaming, and the X99 Ultra Gaming. He have the details on each board below!

X99-Designare EX Details

Gigabyte X99-Designare EX

The first board is the X99-Designare EX, which will introduce Gigabyte’s “Designare” series. You can see that it features a white and blue thermal armor, which looks quite good. The big thing with these new X99 boards is the U.2 ports, which this board has two of (right above the SATA Express slots). As far as expansion slots go you have five PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot, three of which can function at full x16 speeds. The other two run at x4 and x8 speeds. Interesting that there is not a M.2 slot on the board, this might be because the board does have two U.2 ports. Although the M.2 could be under the thermal armor somewhere. Other noticeable features are dual USB 3.0 headers, Gigabyte’s AMP-UP Audio solution, and metal shielding on both the PCI-Express slots and RAM slots.

X99 Phoenix SLI G1 Gaming Details

X99 Phoenix SLI G1 Gaming

If you are not familiar with the “Phoenix” series we saw it first with the B85N Phoenix board. The Phoenix series has a white and orange thermal armor. The board is very much like the X99-Designare EX as it has the AMP-UP audio and other similar features. It does have a single U.2 slot, E-keyed M.2 wireless card, and M.2 M-keyed slot for solid state drives. There are four PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots, the first two operate at x16 speeds while the third and fourth are x8.

X99 Ultra Gaming Details

Gigabyte X99 Ultra Gaming

The final X99 board is the X99 Ultra Gaming, it is quite similar to the X99 Phoenix SLI G1 as it has the AMP-UP audio, same expansion slot layout, and single U.2 connector. The only real difference is the X99 Ultra Gaming does not have a wireless card in it. Gigabyte has gone with the white and red color scheme with this one.

It looks like the U.2 connector is going to be a big deal for Gigabyte when it comes to these new boards, what do you think?

Source: GamersNexus | News Archive

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