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Asus M4A79T Deluxe review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £126
inc VAT

A great AM3 motherboard for those who want to build a high-end AMD PC. It's also a great performer, but the price puts it out of reach for some.

Specifications

AM3, ATX, AMD 790FX chipset, supports: Athlon II, Phenom II

http://www.ilgs.co.uk

Asus’s M4A79T Deluxe is by far the most expensive AMD motherboard here, but it does plenty to justify the price.

It has an AM3 processor socket, so it will work only with the latest Phenom II and Athlon II processors. It can accept up to 16GB of DDR3 RAM in four dual-channel memory slots.

The most unusual thing about this board is its four PCI-E x16 slots. It supports quad-CrossFire, so you can fit up to four graphics cards. This may interest flight sim fans and other users who require massive multi-monitor setups, but it’s overkill for most users. Fortunately, the PCI-E x16 slots can also be used for other PCI-E expansion cards. There are also two PCI slots.

The motherboard has AMD’s 790FX Northbridge and SB750 Southbridge. It has one IDE and one floppy connector, plus five SATA ports and an eSATA port. A Realtek ALC1200 processor provides 7.1 audio, which it can output via optical or coaxial S/PDIF outputs or six multi-purpose mini-jack ports. There are two PS/2 ports on the back, six USB ports and a FireWire port, and there’s a bracket in the box for an extra FireWire and two more USB ports.

The M4A79T Deluxe has a brilliant specification and is very overclockable, but what really stands out is its performance. It’s the fastest AM3 board we’ve seen, with an overall score of 106 in our tests. If you’re serious about building a high-performance Phenom II PC, this is the board to buy, if you can afford it.

Basic Specifications

Rating *****
Processor socket AM3
Form factor ATX
Size 305x244mm
Processor support Athlon II, Phenom II
Processor external bus 200MHz (2GHz HyperTransport)
Chipset north bridge AMD 790FX
Chipset south bridge AMD SB750
Passively-cooled north bridge yes
Integrated graphics No
Supported memory type DDR3 1066/1333/1666 (overclocked)
Maximum memory speed PC3-10600
Memory slots 4
Maximum memory 16GB
Dual-channel support yes

Buying Information

Price £126
Supplier http://www.ilgs.co.uk
Details www.digital-fusion.co.uk

Internal Ports

Power connectors 1x 24-pin ATX, 1x 4-pin ATX
PCI-E x16 slots 4
Dual graphics architecture CrossFireX
PCI-E x4 slots 0
PCI-E x1 slots 0
PCI slots 2
Fan headers 4
Floppy ports 1
IDE ports 1
Serial ATA ports 5
RAID chipset (max disks) AMD SB750 (5x SATA II, RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, JBOD)

Features

Wired network ports 1x 10/100/1000
Sound (ports) Realtek ALC1200 (6x analogue out, optical S/PDIF, coaxial S/PDIF)
USB2 ports / headers 6/3
Firewire ports / headers 1/1
Legacy ports 2x PS/2, serial header
Other ports eSATA
Cables included 1x SATA, 1x IDE
Brackets included 1x combined bracket with 8-pin FireWire and 2 USB ports
Software included None

Setup and Overclocking

Voltage adjustment CPU/RAM/Chipset
CPU clock max adjustment 600MHz

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