Legit Reviews

I hope you guys are sitting down for this one... This is one of the coolest things that I saw at the show!
The ASUS Immensity motherboard uses an Intel X58 Express chipset and supports Intel LGA 1366 processors. The board comes equipped with a beefy cooler, six DDR3 memory slots, an integrated Radeon HD 5770 GPU, a Lucid Hydra chip, two PCI-Express x16 slots for CrossFireX, SLI or mixed (Nvidia and AMD cards) multi-GPU setups, two 8-pin power connectors providing the CPU for extra watts for overclocking, and eight SATA ports, two of which are 6.0 Gbps.
The place card for the ASUS ROG Immensity motherboard stated the following

- Built-in discrete GPU and Lucid Hydra
- Intel Core i7 Processor Support
- Intel X58 / ICH10R chipsets
- Supports up to DDR3 2200MHz Overclocked Memory
The crazy looking heat sink that is between the pair of PCIe x16 slots is to help cool the Lucid Hydra chip. This passive cooler is rather trendy looking don't you think?
The heatsink on the board is passive, which means it makes no noise since no fan is used, but it was rather large.
With the chipset coolers all removed you can really see how much this board has on it. The two Intel X58 / ICH10R chipsets are easy to make out, but notice the Lucid Hydra chip between the PCIe x16 lanes and the ATI Radeon HD 5770 GPU just below the Intel X58 chipset with two Hynix GDDR5 IC's next to it.
For a board with discrete graphics we were expecting to see a DVI or HDMI connetion on the IO panel, but that wasn't the case.
This shot is something that I stared at for a good five minutes when as it is very unique... You are staring at a full-fledged ATI Radeon HD 5770 GPU slapped smack dab into the middle of the motherboard. That isn't is though as there is also a Lucid Hydra chip that has also bee placed on the board, which means that if you ever add in another discrete graphics card or two into one of the PCIe slots that you can run multi-GPU 3-way SLI or CrossFireX.

how does it not have video out? forcing hybrid graphics?

skier wrote:how does it not have video out? forcing hybrid graphics?

I'm not sure how it works... maybe it has an adapter card that comes with it... It doesn't force ATI Hybrid though as it has a Lucid chip on it, so you can add in any NVIDIA or ATI card into the mix for better performance.

Wow! very unique board indeed; really standing out from the rest. Can't wait when the review for this is available.

When it comes to innovation, you really gotta hand it to Asus.

Interesting I guess. Asus certainly wants to jump more into the video on-board biz. Having the Lucid on board will be ok if the whole board is not bumped up in price too terribly much.

As for me, I am not taking the Lucid performance hit. Rather just see all of one or the other of the major GPU players on the board.

Best onboard video I've seen. Seriously, though, they should've at least included some form of video out. Curious, what form factor is this?

hnzw_rui wrote:Curious, what form factor is this?

standard ATX

skier wrote:standard ATX

Good to know. For some reason, to me it looked bigger than standard ATX.

hnzw_rui wrote:

skier wrote:standard ATX

Good to know. For some reason, to me it looked bigger than standard ATX.

looking closely at the mounting holes it's about 3/4" wider than most ATX boards, but again, uses the same mounting points as ATX

From ASUS on the graphics connection:

I will see what details I can get as far as I was aware it offered HDMI out.

Currently as this product/board is just in initial design states there is no guarantee of it coming to market. What are your thoughts on this board. Currently as IGP performance for the market it is focus at is quite solid and efficient I see no need for this implementation. For users looking for midrange gaming focus I think most users as well as media like yourself would make the recommendation of just buying a lost cost graphics add in card ( like a 5670 or 5750 or 5770 ) or Nvidia counterpart.

Thanks for letting onarimcilar us know about other good stuff !