GIGABYTE X99 series motherboards use an all digital CPU power design from International Rectifier which includes both 4th Generation digital PWM Controllers and industry-leading 3rd Generation PowIRstage controllers. These 100% digital controllers offer incredible precision in delivering power to the motherboard's most power-hungry and energy-sensitive components, allowing enthusiasts to get the absolute maximum performance from their new Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition CPUs.
This new generation of IR digital power controllers and PowIRstage ICs feature Isense technology, which provide more precise current sensing accuracy. This helps evenly distribute the thermal loading between the PowerIRstage ICs, preventing the overheating of each individual PowerIRstage, resulting in longer lifespan and better reliability.
IR has leveraged it's world class packaging technology developed for the DirectFET, improving the thermal capability and layout of the PowIRstage significantly over that of other MCM packages.
GIGABYTE X99 motherboards feature a unique PCI Express design that utilizes 100% of all 40 lanes from the CPU when in a 4-Way or 3-Way graphics configuration. Standard designs limit all 4 main PCIe lanes to x8 (64Gb/s) bandwidth, but thanks to the onboard external clock generator combined with the direct connection of one of the x16 lanes to the CPU (switchless design), GIGABYTE X99 motherboards can unlock the full bandwidth available and provide the best graphics bandwidth possible to the user.
GIGABYTE X99 motherboards featuring Dual M.2 technology provides users PCI-Express connectivity for SSD devices and for 11AC WIFI + Bluetooth 4.0 card. Delivering up to 10 Gb/s data transfer speeds, M.2 offers considerably faster storage performance than current mSATA and even SATA Revision 3 (6Gb/s) storage devices. GIGABYTE's stacked design optimizes the PCB real-estate usage, allowing more components to be efficiently added without compromising any space.
GIGABYTE X99 series motherboards feature an onboard SATA Express connector which provides performance far superior to that of current SATA technologies. SATA Express features data transfer rates of up to 10Gb/s, considerably higher than SATA Revision 3 (6Gb/s), which won't bottleneck faster NAND flash technologies in cutting edge SSDs. SATA Express combines the benefits of PCI-Express and SATA to provide much higher bandwidth, allowing SATA Express based drives to perform at similar speeds as PCI-Express based drives.
Locating the right and left audio channels on separate PCB layers, GIGABYTE X99 series motherboards are able to eliminate channel crosstalk and maintain the best audio quality.
Intel Gigabit LAN networking, a popular choice with gamers that features several performance-enhancing features such as advanced interrupt handling to help reduce CPU overhead and Jumbo Frame support for extra large data packets.