I think the layout of the board has been pretty hurried together.
There are many things that could be either omitted or moved to have kept it at ATX spec. Floppy control, oversized feel-nice buttonage - far more important. Being prepared to go with the expanded ATX goes against the grain in terms of tech getting smaller, or requiring less space. Server mobos are of this size with ofc 2 sockets on them and an array of 8 dimm.
The slots are a little concerning, however the soundcard takes 1 factor out of it and it is mainly looking for people, gamers, wanting to stick gfxcards into. Creative ? didn`t figure on that myself. I knew there would be a leaning as Creative are kind of a monopoly, but XFi & 7.1, be nice if that works well with Vista. I can`t get the 2xSATA pciex1 cards in them due to the proximity of the cooler. However they work fine in the gfxcard slots (not alot of people know u can do that)
It`s quite mysterious that the pciex1 slot & card are planned for, with the ommision of conventional i/o plate placements, giving the option to exclude it in favor for.. an Auzen-Creative based sound card ? On maybe a pci slot u can get at with the xfire/sli bridges.
No doubt this is going to perform darn well, along with the other board on preview. Only another 4 or 5 variations of the same thing to come up with and the fleet will be out.
If I were hell bent on looking out for this edition, I`d perhaps hang out for the regular ATX size variant that will follow.