Sabertooth X58 vs. Rampage III Formula

[kleinkinstein]

I have a coworker who is itching to replace his wonky UD5 X58 mobo with one of these two boards, either the Sabertooth or Rampage III Formula. He's partial to Asus but is looking for advice since it appears he can get either one as a refurbished unit via ebay for $110 shipped. Speeds, feeds and specs are nearly identical between these two and I have no history with either. He plans to stuff it with 24GB (3x8) G.Skill, wants Sata III for his Vertex SSD, and plans to run only one GPU. He OC's an old yet still capable Nehalem i960. All in, it seems the driving force for the swap is to gain Sata III, USB 3, and eSata. All good motives I do declare! His ambitious plan is to ride out Intel to at least Haswell or Ivy-E if not the 14nm "tock" of Skylake. He's much more patient than I could ever be.

Any recommendation between these two X58 mobo's? Or is their another high-end X58 main board he should consider...ASUS or other?

 

[coffeejunkee]

All X58 mobo's use 3rd party controller for SATA III and they're crap, performing worse than the native SATA II ports. If you want real SATA III performance you'll have to go for P67 or newer. There are SATAIII/USB3 add-in cards as well, the sata III performance will also be crap but usb3 performance is fine.

Sure it's the mobo that's 'wonky' and not an unstable overclock? Vertex is usual suspect as well.

 

[WaitingForNehalem]

I love my Sabertooth X58, it is excellent.

 

[Jeffman]

I hate my Sabertooth x58. Audio died within 6 months of ownership, and my SATA III speeds suck, as stated above. I'd go with something different.

 

[billyb0b]

All X58 mobo's use 3rd party controller for SATA III and they're crap, performing worse than the native SATA II ports. If you want real SATA III performance you'll have to go for P67 or newer. There are SATAIII/USB3 add-in cards as well, the sata III performance will also be crap but usb3 performance is fine.

Sure it's the mobo that's 'wonky' and not an unstable overclock? Vertex is usual suspect as well.

I have a Sabertooth X58, and yes the SATA III controller on it is done by Marvell, but the speeds you mention is just bunk.

I'm hitting SATAIII speeds easy with a Corsair Force GT 120gb SSD with the controller.

Both are great mobos and he'll be happy with either one.

I too and waiting until Skylake for the next big upgrade.

 

[coffeejunkee]

Ok, I won't dispute that if an owner says so. But last time I checked the Marvell controller did worse than intel's ICH, especially small random reads/writes.

 

[kleinkinstein]

I have a Sabertooth X58, and yes the SATA III controller on it is done by Marvell, but the speeds you mention is just bunk.

I'm hitting SATAIII speeds easy with a Corsair Force GT 120gb SSD with the controller.

What Marvell driver are you using? And how are the USB 3 speeds?

 

[mrpiggy]

Between the two, then definately the Rampage (and this coming from a guy still using a Sabertooth x58 with a Xeon W3680 which is a i7-980x in everything but name). Why, simply the Rampage has better secondary components. Example, Creative x-fi audio chipset on Rampage, compared to Realtech 8110 on Sabertooth. Intel LAN chipset versus Realtek again. All else being equal (which they pretty much are), the better sound and LAN should win the day if the pricing is similar.

As for running a SSD on SATA2 Intel vs SATA3 on a Marvel 9128 chipset, I'd take the intel setup any day of the week. SSD's show their speed more with random small i/o. You might get bigger sequentials with the Marvel 9128, but the Intel is better for how you will "percieve" day-to-day real-world speed.

 

[dawp]

the sabertooth has a 5 year warranty if that is important to you.