I like the board for several reasons. I like the board layout -- it looks like ASUS is listening to end-users. Compared to the P5K Deluxe, you're not giving up a minimum of 2 SATA ports, due to blockage from GPU size. Plus, a lot of thought has gone into the placement of those ports -- they face out from the edge of the board, like they started doing with IDE connections. They've done the same with USB, though not facing out, but sitting on the edge of the board. You have the choice of DDR3 or DDR2 memory, so when it drops in price you can upgrade. If you run dual GPU's, each channel gets X8. One of the Formulas does not have water block cooling. I think there's Formula Special Edition (SE), with W/B, so choose carefully if that's an important feature for you. These are due to be released to reatailers around Aug. 3; a British vendor is taking pre-orders; about $350 US, depending on model.I've done some further research after first posting this thread. For those insterested, I found an Aussie reviewer that got an early peek at the boards. Pix posted here.
initial reviews suggest that the Crosslinx chip actually isn't that clever.Originally posted by: mcloud777
In Crossfire with dual x8 lanes to overcome the x16 x4 issue do you think this will provide significant performance improvement for our ATI cards in Crossfire with this board?
Mine eyes deceived me, don't know what I was looking at. I stand corrected. Here's the features chart with a breakdown between the three Blitz boards.Originally posted by: jkresh
MadMurph unless I am mistaken you don't have a choice on memory, the blitz extreme is ddr3 only and the blitz fuzion is ddr2 only.
Originally posted by: jkresh
It looks cool and the built in waterblock system for the northbrige/southbridge is interesting
Originally posted by: jkresh
jedisoulfly, you are correct that the water stays in the northbridge, but the whole idea of a heatpipe is that it transfers heat realy well, so if the southbridge is warmer then the cooled north bridge its heat will go to the nb which will be cooled by the water so it will drop the south bridge temperature as well (as the the reviews that are out have shown). It wont be as good as independent blocks but it appears to be a lot better then not having the waterblock.