Beats it in what exactly?

I had the x58 extreme and I would say it is a better mobo than the R2E, for me on my old C0 920 Iw as able to run it on air using th X58-extreme @ 3.8 but the R2E could only do 3.7Ghz on the same CPU using a little more voltage !!!

I replaced the gigabyte because it hates the CWT based PSUs that I have, also the gigabyte seems to not follow intel specs when using caps. arround the sockets making some water blocks a little hard to fit.

Also the x58-extreme is much cheaper.