Motherboard Features:
Solid-state Capacitors
After looking thoroughly through multitude of features that this motherboard offers, it would not hurt to further investigate some of them. Firstly, the words “solid-state capacitors” have been plastered all over the box so I figured that it was important.
The difference between the solid-state capacitors and the non-solid-state ones is simple. The non-solid-state capacitors have a fluid called Electrolyte that acts as an insulator between the conducting cores. The solid-state capacitors have a solid material called polymer that also acts as an insulator between the two conducting cores.
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So what is the [performance] difference?
Well the difference is that the solid-state capacitors are less prone to damage from overvolting and overheating which results in a longer life span of the capacitor. The longer the life span of the capacitors on the motherboard, the longer that motherboard would be useful. Motherboards with blown capacitors will most likely not be able to function properly and would have to be sent back to the manufacturer in hopes that they could replace the broken board.
TurboV
For overclockers out there, TurboV is great news. This nifty on the ASUS P6T application is similar to that of nTune for nVidia motherboards. TurboV gives the user the ability to adjust the Voltage and RAM speed among other settings from the Windows environment. The graphical interface was quite easy to understand and provided an excellent overview of the current status of the computer. For extreme edition processors, TurboV will also allow the user to set the multiplier.
3Way SLI and CrossFireX
Just like the title says, the new x58 chipset supports both nVidia and ATI configurations. Now people that are considering upgrading to a Core i7 do not have to worry about buying an ATI setup versus and nVidia setup. After having tested both options, the nVidia in SLI tended to perform slightly better that its ATI counterparts but the difference was almost insignificant.
