Asus P6T6 WS Revolution Core i7 Motherboard

Performance Summary: Looking at the performance profile of the Asus P6T6 WS Revolution in totality, the product lived up to its high-end design target in every way.  In standard desktop and workstation application performance, the board consistently was the fastest of the lot that we tested it against, one of which was a fairly mature offering from MSI.  Though admittedly, the performance delta between most all X58 Express-based boards currently is going to be thin and bordering on insignificant.  That said, the P6T6 WS Revolution offered exceptional overclocking capabilities and unwavering stability, along with top end performance in our high-end gaming tests with a 3-Way SLI graphics subsystem in play.  However, as we showed empirically through our comparison numbers versus the Gigabyte X58-based board that only supports 3-Way SLI in a X16,X8,X8 configuration, the P6T6 WS Revolution's X16,X16,X16 3-Way SLI capability doesn't offer any appreciable upside performance currently.

If we were to look at the Asus P6T6 WS Revolution strictly from a no-compromises, you've got to have it all end user perspective, this motherboard is decidedly the board to have at the time of this article's publication.  Though there are rumblings that other motherboard manufacturers (MSI for one) are coming forth soon with NF200-equipped X58 solutions, from what we can tell today, those boards have yet to hit retail.  This leaves the P6T6 WS Revolution currently in a class by itself, or so it would seem.  The question is, for what end user type is this board targeted to and what type of end user in reality will have interest in it.  After all, this motherboard weighs in at around $369, which is roughly $60 - $100 higher than the average high-end X58-based motherboard these days.  So you'll need to have good reason to justify this product's price premium which then boils things down to features and performance.

To bottom line it quickly for you, if you're the type of power user that must have 3-Way SLI or even perhaps just have three graphics cards in your system, you don't currently need three full X16 Gen2 PCI Express-enabled slots to get top performance from a tri-GPU setup.  As we demonstrated in our high-end gaming benchmarks, you definitely would be short-changing yourself with anything less than a X16 and a pair of X8-capable slots but essentially the added cost of NVIDIA's NF200 chip won't buy you any additional gaming performance, at least currently.  

However, you could argue that perhaps having the capability of three full X16 Gen2 slots will offer a bit of future headroom, should GPU architectures and game engines scale such that you can take advantage of that extra bandwidth - though frankly even this feels like a bit of a reach.  That said, having that much PCI Express bandwidth on board, as well as a dedicated SAS storage controller once again brings us back to the somewhat obvious notion that the Asus P6T6 WS Revolution is built not for the gamer so much as the Workstation Professional or at the very least, the "well-rounded performance enthusiast".  From our perspective, we love the board.  It has a ton of flexibility for PCI Express connectivity, especially if you're the type to plug a PCIe-based hardware RAID card in one of it's full length slots.  The board also exhibited absolute bedrock stability under all testing conditions as well as serious overclocking prowess.  We'd recommend the P6T6 WS Revolution without any reservations, provided you look at its price tag from the proper perspective and intend to take advantage of all the board has to offer, beyond 3-Way SLI.

•  Top-Notch Core i7/X58 performance •  Nice bundle of accoutrements •  Great overclocking, killer BIOS •  Great expansion options for PCIe •  Great storage expansion options (SAS)	•  One of the most expensive X58 boards now •  No performance gain for three-X16 3-Way SLI •  No external clear CMOS switch