ASUS has been a longtime partner to Intel, and both companies have been made better because of their relationship. But when it comes to new technology, sometimes Intel takes a little too long to implement change while ASUS prefers to offer their faithful consumers the options right away. Intel's tick-tock plan doesn't coincide with the technical improvements made to areas outside of processor development, such as SuperSpeed USB-3.0 or Revision 3.x SATA 6.0-Gbps (aka SATA-III) controllers. Most hardware enthusiasts agree that it's awkward to see Intel's "Enthusiast" branded X58-Express chipset paired to older standards while "Mainstream" P55 motherboards enjoy the better and faster new ones. ASUS feels the same way, and now offers their P6X58D-Premium motherboard to forward-thinking enthusiasts who might not want to wait for the launch of Intel's X68-Express platform. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests several X58-based motherboard against the ASUS P6X58D-Premium in heat-to-head graphics, processor, memory, and SSD storage performance.