1st off thanks for the responses.
As for the 2011 socket/X79 boards I tend to not get the 1st revision boards as they are usually plagued with anomalous issues which I don't have patience to deal with. I suppose if I cant find any high end boards with the IDE / Floppy option it would just mean I would have to retire those components sooner than I wanted to. I am sure you would all agree paying 300 to 500 for a already aging chip set isn't the best idea, but if GIGABYTE would just list what boards they stopped restocking it would go a long way toward me making a decision on what is available instead of me pointlessly waiting for a restock that isn't going to happen.
So again, does anyone know how to find out if Gigabyte retired this board, or better yet where a list of officially retired boards are kept?
BTW I haven't done any reading on this yet but will the X79 only be for socket 2011 CPUs?