Table of Contents:
The TX77XE4 has a special focus on audio which became apparent once I noticed the Faraday cage around the audio codec. The Faraday cage is designed to minimize Electromagnetic interference which keeps your audio sounding clean and clear. The Faraday cage covers two Red LED lights which look pretty cool once the board is powered on. The onboard audio codec is the Realtek ALC898 which provides up to 10 audio playback channels (7.1 Surround + 2 Front Speakers). This board offers support for THX TruStudioPro technology which according to the creative.com website promises to "bring the same great audio experience found in live performances, films, and recording studios - to the PC." I think it sounds great, but since everyone hears things differently I suggest trying it for yourself.
There are a total of nine SATA connections on this board. There are Four SATA3, four SATA2 and an e-SATA on the rear I/O. Since all the ports and slots on this board are black it was initially difficult to figure out which SATA connections were SATA3 and which were SATA2. To clarify, the outside ports are SATA3 and the inside are SATA2. The SATA3 ports on the left are provided by an ASMedia controller while the other six ports are provided by the Intel chipset. The SATA ports are also angled at 90 degrees, so your graphics cards won't make any of the ports inaccessible.
The TZ77XE4 is PCI-e 3.0, SLI and Crossfire compatible and the slots are placed with a dual or triple card configuration in mind. The first and second PCI-e slots are three slots apart, so the primary card will have better access to fresh air since it wont be pressed against the other card. The downside to this is that if you have an especially large cooler it can be close to the primary card. The expansion slot configuration allows you to access at least one of every type of slot regardless of the card configuration.
Virtu MVP is the second generation of software from LucidLogix that combines Intel's integrated graphics with your discrete graphics card to enhance the total video output. Virtu attempts to avoid redundant rendering tasks while avoiding tearing and avoiding syncing issues. There can be some significant performance increases when Virtu is enabled, so I recommend giving it a shot to see if you notice a difference. Hopefully as the virtu technology becomes more prevalent they can update the software to help squeeze out some increased performance. Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is going to be the replacement to Basic Input Output System (commonly known as BIOS). UEFI and BIOS are very similar in basic functionality, but here are some notable advantages of UEFI: booting to hard drives larger than 2TB, the ability to use your mouse to change settings instead of just the keyboard and pre OS networking capabilities.
