The ASRock Extreme3 motherboard is based upon the Intel X58 chipset announced in 2008 by Intel next to with their Core i7 CPUs. This motherboard was the first carry both ATI’s Crossfire and NVIDIA’s SLI multiple GPU solutions. This was also the first chipset on the customer surface to carry triple channel DDR3 memory.

ASRock calls their groundbreaking features True 333. SATA 6 Gb/second is a standard between lots of motherboards being released nowadays with motherboard contain at least two of these ports. The issue with the X58 chipset is the chipset was released far earlier than the SATA 6 Gb/second ports appeared on a motherboard and drives appeared on the market.

The reason they state it True 333 is due to the fact that on the P55 Express, H55, and H57 platforms the PCI Express lanes accessible is inadequate to 24 PCIE lanes with 16 lanes for the graphics section of the chipset and 8 for PCI Express slots and other uses. As the introduction of SATA 6 Gb/second and USB 3.0 essential 5 Gb/second of bandwidth that means that every set of two ports require an x2 link each way or x4 link total and would function in normal mode when CrossfireX or SLI was activated. The X58 chipset has plenty of PCI Express lanes (36) sense that this is not an issue.

Features

• V8 Power Phase Design

• Compatible ATI CrossfireX and Quad CrossfireX

• Smart Switch Design

• ErP/EUP Ready, Dr Debug

• ICH10R Southbridge

• Support Gulftown CPU (980X)

• ASRock DuraCaps

• X58 Northbridge

• Support Triple Channel DDR3-2000

• True 333

• Support NVIDIA Quad SLI and SLI

• 1 Powered ESATAIII/USB connector