ASUS Rampage II Extreme vs. MSI Eclipse

by Marco Chiappetta — Thursday, February 05, 2009, 11:38 AM EDT

If the recent release of Intel's X58 chipset has taught us anything, it's that change can be good. In our first two forays with these new boards and Intel's Core i7 processor, we've been firmly impressed by the performance gains seen over legacy Core 2 architectures, much less AMD's recent advancements and new offerings. Now, with some time under our belts, we're going to take a look at two new Intel X58 Express chipset based boards from ASUS and MSI that we've put through the test ringer. Focusing on the upper-tier of the PC market, both come fully stocked with additional components, fancy board designs, and all of the other benefits that the X58 provides, with higher-end prices to match...

X58 Showdown: ASUS Rampage II vs. MSI Eclipse

Tags: Intel, core i7, Asus, MSI, X58, Motherboard

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com