System Specs & Memory

Intel LGA2011 Test System Specs
- Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition (3.30GHz)
- x4 2GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-14900 (CAS 8-9-8-24)
- Gigabyte G1.Assassin2 (Intel X79)
- Asus P9X79 Deluxe
- Asrock X79 Extreme9
- ECS X79R-AX
- Intel DX79SI
- MSI X79A-GD65(8D)
- OCZ ZX Series 1250w
- Crucial m4 256GB (SATA 6Gb/s)
- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 SOC (1536MB)
Software
- Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit
- Nvidia Forceware 285.62

AMD AM3+ Test System Specs
- AMD FX-8150 (3.60GHz)
- x2 4GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-14900 (CAS 8-9-8-24)
- Asrock Fatal1ty 990FX Professional (AMD 990FX)
- OCZ ZX Series 1250w
- Crucial m4 256GB (SATA 6Gb/s)
- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 SOC (1536MB)
Software
- Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit
- Nvidia Forceware 285.62

Intel LGA1155 Test System Specs
- Intel Core i7-2600K
- x2 4GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-14900 (CAS 8-9-8-24)
- Gigabyte G1.Sniper2 (Intel Z68)
- OCZ ZX Series 1250w
- Crucial m4 256GB (SATA 6Gb/s)
- Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 SOC (1536MB)
Software
- Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit
- Nvidia Forceware 285.62

When equipped with four DDR3-1866 memory modules we found that all X79 motherboards delivered similar performance. Interestingly, the Gigabyte G1.Assassin 2 provided the weakest read performance coupled with the strongest write performance. But overall the results were extremely similar when comparing all X79 boards.

The AIDA64 L2 cache performance test looks at the CPU exclusively and as a result the motherboard used has little impact here.