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https://www.techspot.com/review/484-intel-x79-motherboard-roundup/
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https://www.techspot.com/review/484-intel-x79-motherboard-roundup/
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What's more confusing, ECS claims the X79R-AX 14 SATA ports with 10 connected to the X79 chipset, which is only supposed to support six. The board supposedly has six SATA 6Gb/s ports and four SATA 3Gb/s ports wired to the X79, but Intel's block diagrams clearly says the chipset supports two 6Gb/s ports and a total of six SATA ports -- two 6Gb/s and four 3Gb/s ports, in other words. Intel's tech manager assures me that the X79R-AX's extra SATA ports must be connected to a third party controller
You'll probably find that once the C2 revision i7's hit retail, that the second wave of X79 boards wont be far behind - much like the X58 situation where the early boards got supplanted by X58A (USB3, SATA 6GB), so the next raft of entry-level boards should have a SATA/SAS fitout similar to the ECS, while the WS and enthusiast boards should have 14 ports ( 4 x 3Gb, 10 x 6Gb)Despite being unable to find the ASRock Extreme 9 on these shores it would appear to offer what I'm looking for in terms of SATA ports. Will definitely be keen to see what price it appears on my shores for.
Still waiting on Steve/Julio to clarify the Intel rep's statement, which seems at odds with the X79 timeline. The decision to pull SAS support was relatively late (note the two empty port spaces next to the existing SATA ports) while the X79 chipset IC's would have already been produced by this stage.