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Asus’s P6T Deluxe Core i7 motherboard has plenty of features, so there’s almost something for everyone. Dedicated gamers and professional video editors will appreciate the three PCI Express x16 graphics slots. You could fit up to three ATI or two Nvidia graphics cards in CrossFire or SLI mode. The P6T Deluxe also has some features we would expect to find only on a server motherboard. It has two Gigabit Ethernet ports, so you could connect to two networks simultaneously or configure your PC as a router. We were also surprised to find two Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) ports, which are used to connect internal hard disks in servers. Thankfully, there are six SATA ports for connecting less expensive storage. These are parallel to the motherboard so they’re not obstructed by any expansion cards, but this can also make connecting SATA cables fiddly. There’s no eSATA port or bracket, but there is a FireWire 400 connector and eight USB ports. As expected, the P6T Deluxe stormed through our benchmarks, matching the other Core i7 motherboard in our round-up – Gigabyte’s GA-EX58-UD4P. You can overclock the RAM to 2,000MHz, but the Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) can only be overclocked by 500MHz as opposed to the GA-EX58-UD4P’s 1,200MHz.
Asus’s P6T Deluxe is attractive if you want SAS and dual Ethernet ports. Otherwise Gigabyte’s GA-EX58-UD4P is the better Core i7 motherboard, especially for gamers and overclockers.
