Review Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD9 + Initial Air Numbers
Introduction :-
Earlier last month a beast was born. That beast was called the Gigabyte X58A UD9. This is the latest and greatest to come from Gigabyte's stable in Taiwan and is the newest addition to the X58A family of motherboards. Gigabyte was founded in 1986 and have been making motherboards for over 2 decades now with revenues crossing the 2.5 Billion US $ mark. From the looks of it, all that experience and manufacturing might has been brought to bear on the Gigabyte X58A UD9. Designed with a single purpose in mind, which is to DOMINATE the world of overclocking and to provide the best performance and quality the world has to offer, the Gigabyte UD9 is truly a king of all trades.
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This is Gigabytes Flagship motherboard for socket 1366 and being the flagship means that it has been adorned with just about everything you could ask for from a motherboard including a newly designed 24 Phase Power supply with Unlocked CPU Power, support for the new 6-core Gulftown processors as well as 4-core Nehalem's , 4 way SLI and Crossfire X across 7 PCI-E 2.0 slots using 2x NF200 chips (for x16, x8, x16, x8, x16, x8, x16 lanes) , support for tri-channel DDR3-2200+ memory , On-board buttons for power, reset and clear CMOS , 2x 8-pin ATX 12V connectors, 2x Realtek Gigabit Ethernet ports , 2x SATA 6Gb/s connectors with the new Marvell controller , and 2x USB3 connectors via the NEC controller, making it the only motherboard in the world to have all that functionality built into one package.
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All this performance and quality doesn't come easy or cheap! This board is Big, Heavy and Expensive. It currently holds the distinction of being the most expensive single socket motherboard in the world with it costing approximately 700 $ in the US and also is probably the heaviest too , tipping the scale at a solid 1.5 KG ! Does this motherboard justify its price with its Features and Performance ? The answer to that question is what i hope to uncover through the course of this review
Specifications and Features :-
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CPU Support :-
1. Support for an Intel® Core™ i7 series processor in the LGA1366 package (Kindly Go to GIGABYTE's website for the latest CPU support list.)
2. L3 cache varies with CPU
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QPI Support :-
1. 4.8GT/s, 6.4GT/s
Chipset Specifications :-
1. North Bridge: Intel® X58 Express Chipset
2. South Bridge: Intel® ICH10R
Memory Support :-
1. 6 x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 24 GB of system memory(Note 1)
2. Dual/3 channel memory architecture
3. Support for DDR3 2200+/1333/1066/800 MHz memory modules
4. Support for non-ECC memory modules
5. Support for Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) memory modules
Audio :-
1. Realtek ALC889 codec
2. High Definition Audio
3. 2/4/5.1/7.1-channel
4. Support for Dolby® Home Theater
5. Support for S/PDIF In/Out
6. Support for CD In
LAN :-
1. 2 x Realtek RTL8111E chip (10/100/1000 Mbit)
2. Support for Teaming
3. Support Smart Dual LAN
Expansion Slots :-
1. 4 x PCI Express x16 slots, running at x16 (PCIEX16_1/PCIEX16_2/PCIEX16_3/PCIEX16_4)
2. 3 x PCI Express x16 slots, running at x8 (PCIEX8_1/PCIEX8_2/PCIEX8_3) (All PCI Express slots conform to the PCI Express 2.0)
Multi-Graphics Technology :-
1. Support for 2-Way/3-Way/4-Way ATI CrossFireX™/NVIDIA SLI technology
Storage Interface :-
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South Bridge :-
1. 6 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (SATA2_0, SATA2_1, SATA2_2, SATA2_3, SATA2_4, SATA2_5) supporting up to 6 SATA 3Gb/s devices
2. Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10
Marvell 9128 chip :-
1. 2 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (GSATA3_6, GSATA3_7) supporting up to 2 SATA 6Gb/s devices
2. Support for SATA RAID 0, and RAID 1
GIGABYTE SATA2 chip :-
1. 1 x IDE connector supporting ATA-133/100/66/33 and up to 2 IDE devices
2. 2 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (GSATA2_8, GSATA2_9) supporting up to 2 SATA 3Gb/s devices
3. Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, and JBOD
JMicron JMB362 chip :-
1. 2 x eSATA 3Gb/s connectors (eSATA/USB Combo) on the back panel sup- porting up to 2 SATA 3Gb/s devices
2. Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, and JBOD
iTE IT8720 chip:-
1. 1 x floppy disk drive connector supporting up to 1 floppy disk drive
USB Specifications :-
USB Integrated in the South Bridge :-
1. Up to 12 USB 2.0/1.1 ports (6 on the back panel, including 2 eSATA/USB Combo, 4 via the USB brackets connected to the internal USB headers)
NEC USB 3.0 chip :-
1. Up to 2 USB 3.0/2.0 ports on the back panel
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Firewire Specifications :-
IEEE 1394 :-
1. T.I. TSB43AB23 chip ( Texas Instruments )
2. Up to 3 IEEE 1394a ports (2 on the back panel, 1 via the IEEE 1394a bracket connected to the internal IEEE 1394a header)
Internal I/O Connectors :-
1. 1 x 24-pin ATX main power connector
2. 2 x 8-pin ATX 12V power connector
3. 2 x 4-pin Molex PCIe 12V power connectors
4. 1 x floppy disk drive connector
5. 1 x IDE connector
6. 8 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors
7. 2 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors
8. 1 x CPU fan header
9. 3 x system fan headers
10. 1 x power fan header
11. 1 x North Bridge fan header
12. 1 x front panel header
13. 1 x front panel audio header
14. 1 x CD In connector
15. 1 x S/PDIF In header
16. 1 x S/PDIF Out header
17. 3 x USB 2.0/1.1 headers
18. 1 x IEEE 1394a header
19. 1 x power button
20. 1 x reset button
Back Panel Connectors :-
1. 1 x PS/2 keyboard port
2. 1 x PS/2 mouse port
3. 1 x coaxial S/PDIF Out connector
4. 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector
5. 1 x clearing CMOS button
6. 2 x IEEE 1394a ports
7. 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
8. 2 x USB 3.0 ports
9. 2 x eSATA/USB Combo connectors
10. 2 x RJ-45 port
Size :-
1. Length - 13.58 Inches (345mm)
2. Width - 10.375 Inches (263.5mm)
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Supported Cases :-
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Unique Features :-
* Supports new generation Intel 32nm 6-core processors
* The best CPU VRM Power design for extreme 6 core CPU overclocking
* 4 Way SLI with 2 nF200 SLI bridges & 4 Way CrossfireX support for ultimate graphics performance
* 7 PCIe 2.0 x16 slots for maximum expansion capability
* Unique On/Off Charge delivers the best recharging capability to iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch
* Ultra Durable 3 Technology with copper cooled quality for lower working temperature
* Supports newest NEC SuperSpeed USB 3.0 with superfast transfer rates of up to 5 Gbps
* 3X USB power delivery for greater compatibility and extra power for USB devices
* Provides newest Marvell SE9128 high speed SATA3 storage interface with superfast 6Gbps link speed
* Smart 24 power phase design with mutual back-up to each 12 phase
* Revolution energy saving design with DES 2 featuring hardware based Dynamic 6-Gear switching
* Supports 3 channel DDR3 2200+ memory
* New Hybrid Silent-Pipe 2 design provides unequalled heat conductivity
* Unique hardware control IC to provide more precision voltage control
* Onboard Debug LED display simplifies motherboard troubleshooting
* Patented DualBIOS with dual hardware BIOS protection
* Smart Dual LAN for non-stop network connection & 2GbE speed
* Supports Dolby Home Theater audio to create a stunning surround sound listening experience
* Stylish Power/reset/Clr CMOS onboard button for easily operation on the workbench
* Blu-ray playback outputs supported by high quality 108dB SNR ALC889 HD audio
* Compatible with Window 7 to deliver the best operation experience
* Meet European Union ErP(Energy-related Products) requirements
Packaging and Contents :-
The Motherboard comes in the biggest box i have seen yet ! Gigabyte has done a very nice job with the packaging of this product. All over the box one can see the highlighted features of this board in a very easy to read manner.
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This is some of the most attractive packaging i have ever seen from gigabyte and i must say the colour scheme with the big red 9 looks very nice indeed. The box itself flips open to reveal the motherboard through the transparent plastic. Gigabyte has used the other side of the flip open lid to put even more information about the motherboard and its amazing feature set.
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The inner box is made of a silver colored thick cardboard and does a very good job of holding and protecting the motherboard.
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You can also see the Hybrid Silent Pipe 2 North Bridge Heat-sink that provides for additional cooling of the north bridge and VRM's. Gigabyte also supplies some thermal paste and the required screws to mount the Silent Pipe 2 heat-sink on the motherboard which is a nice touch. The reason for it being called Hybrid Silent Pipe is that one can use water cooling along with air cooling for some serious heat dissipation action.
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After i lifted the motherboard out of the box i was very happy to see that gigabyte had stuck a nice thick foam pad under the motherboard as well as behind the I/O ports for that added bit of protection . Kudos to gigabyte for the attention to detail , after all no one likes a board that's DOA thanks to shipping damage .
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The inner box actually has 2 boxes one containing the motherboard and the other below it for its manuals and accessories. Everything is neatly held in place and the whole packing exudes that feel of high end quality that one would expect from a product of this stature!
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As accessories Gigabyte has included just about everything one would need to set up just about any configuration. Whats included is all the Manuals and Driver discs , 4x Blue Sata 6Gb/s wires , 1x IDE 80 pin cable , 1x Floppy cable , 1x Single Flexible Sli Bridge , 2x Flexible Crossfire Bridges , 1x 3-way Solid Sli Bridge , 1x 4-way Solid Sli Bridge , the I/O Sheild , some motherboard standoff's for additional support if needed , an E-Sata+ power expansion bracket with the required external power cables and the VIP card which gives you special access to tech support and Gigabyte's Bios Engineers amongst other things !
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The only accessory that they have not included is an additional Firewire and USB Header expansion slot which is not that much of an issue, but given the price of the motherboard one would have liked to see its inclusion.
The Board & Layout :-
Where can I begin with this Behemoth of a Motherboard. The sure monstrosity of this board dwarfs literally every other Motherboard I have seen.The UD9 has an insane layout, packed with more tech than any other motherboard i've ever seen. It's an Xl-ATX form factor, and still looks like its running out of space for things, which is always a good sign ! It means that gigabyte have truly gone overboard with the design of this motherboard and have have left nothing out. As this is their flagship X58A motherboard it is loaded to the gills with everything you could possibly imagine.
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The rear I/O Pannel has everything that is expected on a high-end board. Personally, I appreciated the eSATA/USB ports as they allowed greater flexibility. The I/O panel covers two PS/2, Optical/Coaxial, Clear CMOS, 6- and 4-pin FireWire, four USB2, two hybrid USB2/eSATA, two Gigabit Ethernet, two USB3 and 7.1 channel audio.
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Also having a pair of PS2 ports will really help for those Extreme Overclocks under Liquid Nitrogen where in some rare cases the USB ports can do funny things and that's the last thing you would want running at -180 Degrees Celsius and trying to break world records. The ability to turn off the USB controllers to ease the load on the motherboard will be appreciated for those extreme Overclocking sessions.The USB3 ports are powered by the usual NEC chip, with the front panel audio connector adjacent to it.
What seems to be a trend on high-end X58 boards, these two 8-pin ATX power plugs combine to give astounding amounts of electrical headroom. How astounding you ask ? well the Gigabyte says the power delivery system on this board is rated for a mind-shattering 1500 watts. While only one of these 12v connectors is needed for most cases, LN2 users will definitely appreciate the extra headroom.
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The UD9 uses a high end LGA1366 socket from Lotes. This is the more premium version, it's nickel-plated for that additional bling and it does look good with a CPU water-block attached to it.
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The CPU socket area is fairly crowded, we see Gigabyte's Unlocked Power 24 phase power delivery system and Nipon Chemi Con E033 Super Ultra Low ESR capacitors all around the CPU socket. These are some of the best capacitors money can buy today and this is another reason this board costs as much as it does....No shortcuts and skimping on quality here !! Everything else is fairly typical of X58 boards. Gigabyte has gone to great lengths to re-design their power delivery on this motherboard and have done some truly amazing stuff with regards to their Phase's and power delivery to the CPU.
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Similar to other high-end boards the UD9 includes both power and reset buttons on-board to make using the board on an open test bench a whole lot easier.
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This motherboard doesn't have the conventional 24 phase design like their previous boards. This 24 phase design is actually made up of 2 banks of 12 phases and each bank can operate independently from each other. Additional redundancy is also achieved thanks to the ability of this board to run even with one of its banks of 12 phases burnt out , so your system will never go down even if you damage/burn 1 phase which is the case with every single motherboard out there. Dual Power Switching ensures that if one of the power phases for whatever reason is damaged or fails, the motherboard will automatically disable its group of 12 phases, allowing the motherboard to operate using the other set of twelve . Unlike the case with traditional motherboards where if one power phase fails, the board is simply unable to operate.This is truly amazing innovation from Gigabyte !!
This is one meaty power supply section.
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The mosfet cooling around the socket is at a nice height as it did not interfere with the Prolimatech Megahalems. The one thing I feel is worth mentioning from an Extreme overclocking point of view, is that the area around the socket is somewhat crowded which makes insulating the board for subzero runs a bit of a challenge but its no real trouble actually once you figure out how to do it.
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Six DDR3 slots are supported as normal for three channels of ultra-fast DDR3 memory. There is support for up to 2200+mhz DDR3 out of the box which is very nice to have. Next to the Ram slots we find the 24-pin power connector.
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One of the highlights of Gigabyte's high-end boards are their chip-set coolers, and the UD9's is no slouch in this regard at all. The cooling solution for this board is the heaviest i have ever seen. Water-cooling is an option, or a large heat-sink can bolt into that grooved area along with water cooling to provide some serious heat dissipation. The North-bridge cooler has 3/8th inch Internal Diameter barbs already built into it so there is no need to get a separate cooler for the X58 north-bridge chip-set.
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Special mention goes out to the South-Bridge heat-sink. Truly chunky in its design , feel and appearance , the South-Bridge heat-sink looks like something out of a Transformers movie ! Not to mention is made out of Copper !!
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Additionally, the board includes 2x Nvidia NF200 chips required to enable Quad SLI which are housed under the massive south bridge and north bridge heat-sinks. In order to make installation of up to 4 Graphics cards as easy as possible the board includes a full 7 PCI-Express slots (for x16, x8, x16, x8, x16, x8, x16 lanes). Gigabyte has also provided 2x Molex power connectors on the motherboard as well. One Molex power connector is placed right below the I/O ports and the other Molex connector is placed below the last PCI-Express slot right at the bottom of the motherboard. These have been provided for serious graphic card overclocking action where huge amounts of current would be required and hence would violate the Intel spec for 300 watts per pci express slot. To make sure that the cards have enough power going to them under such high overclocks , Gigabyte has provided these Molex power connectors.
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This board has one heck of a beefy cooling solution ! and works extremely well at keeping all the boards vital temperatures well under control. The north-bridge and south-bridge stayed much cooler than the Asus Rampage II extreme. It was consistently 3 - 4 Degrees C cooler at all times staying lower than 42 Degrees C while the Asus was idling at 46 - 47 Degrees C. The ICH10 South-bridge and one NF200 chip are cooled by a large copper block, topped off with the textured silver aluminum heat-sink with the number 9 attractively painted in white.The other NF200 chip is next to the X58 chip and is cooled by the North-bridge cooler. There are 6x Sata2 3Gb/s ports connected to the south bridge along with 2x Sata2 3Gb/s ports based on the JM-Micron controller below the IDE connector and above the IDE connector we find the 2x Sata3 6Gb/s connectors for you hard drives. All the ports are right angled and do not get in the way even when you have really long cards such as the 5970 installed. Also included on the board is a two digit POST code display to make diagnosing boot issues easier which is critical when overclocking.
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The form factor is XL-ATX. To put things into perspective I've attached a picture of this board installed in an Antec 1200 Case, with the Corsair HX1000 Watt Power Supply. This board will fit but will render the last 2 slots useless. Simply put , you will need a massive Cabinet to fit this Motherboard , perhaps something the likes of the Lian Li - PC80 or the new Coolermaster HAF-X. Something with 9 or 10 Expansion slots.
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Apart from the size of the motherboard , installation was a breeze with everything placed exactly where you would want it to be. However I'd just like to bring to your notice that when using a Prolimatech Meghalem heat-sink with 2x 120x25MM fans in push pull, I was unable to use memory with tall Heat spreaders, the likes of which come on the Corsair Dominator GT's, G-Skill Pi-Black & the Patriot Viper 2 series. Heat spreaders that are lower in profile than the ones mentioned above, shouldn't have a problem at all.
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There is enough place to install the optional Hybrid Silent Pipe 2 cooler even with a Meghalem installed. Just make sure that you install the Silent Heat-pipe 2 Heat-sink before the installation of the CPU heat-sink.
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Bios Screen-shots :-
When you first boot up you will be greeted with the UD9 boot screen.
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Gigabyte has chosen to go with the same Award bios chip that you find on every motherboard they make and it provides all the options that we are now used to from Gigabyte. The main BIOS screen is standard, except for the M.I.T. page which is dedicated to advanced system information and overclocking settings.
The M.I.T Page and its various options for overclocking are as follows.
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M.I.T Current Status
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Advanced Frequency Settings
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Advanced Memory Settings
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Advanced Voltage Settings
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Miscellaneous Settings
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Once out of the M.I.T page the rest of the bios is virtually the same as every high end gigabyte motherboard and is very easy to navigate
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I suspect anyone who buys this board is going to be spending a lot of time tweaking the plethora of settings that are available under the M.I.T. page , and trust me there are enough settings here to satisfy even the most hardcore over-clockers on the planet and that has been proven recently with the UD9 dominating with world records in just about every benchmark. The efficiency of this motherboard is nothing short of Astounding! and shall be discussed later in a little more detail.
The board shipped with bios F1 and this bios was ready for the mighty Core i7 980x processor out of the box. No bios flash was required as should be expected from a board this new.
The bios also has the ability to save and restore up to 8 Overclocking profiles to make switching between different overclocks a breeze.
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Flashing the bios is also the same as before with the Q-flash utility and is super easy to do via a USB pen drive. As on date Gigabyte has released bios revision F2 which enhances memory compatibility and improves overclockability. Nonetheless the board was rock stable with bios F1 and performed flawlessly.
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Test System :-
SYSTEM 1
Motherboard: Gigabyte X58A-UD9 (Bios F1)
Processor: Intel Core i7 980X Retail (Batch : 3005F584)
Cooling: Prolimatech Meghalem with 2x Silverstone FM121 110CFM in push pull
Memory: 6 GB Corsair XMS3 1600 Mhz CL 9-9-9-24
Video Card: MSI 4870 x2 (O.C. Edition)
Power Supply: Corsair HX1000
Hard Drive: Intel 80GB-G2 SSD
Case: Antec 1200
OS: Win7 Ultimate x64
SYSTEM 2
Motherboard: Asus Rampage II Extreme (Bios 1802)
Processor: Intel Core i7 980X Retail (Batch : 3005F584)
Cooling: Prolimatech Meghalem with 2x Silverstone FM121 110CFM in push pull
Memory: 6 GB Corsair XMS3 1600 Mhz CL 9-9-9-24
Video Card: MSI 4870 x2 (O.C. Edition)
Power Supply: Corsair HX1000
Hard Drive: Intel 80GB-G2 SSD
Case: Antec 1200
OS: Win7 Ultimate x64
Benchmarks & Overclocking :-
The benchmarks i shall use for testing are as follows :-
1) 3D Mark Vantage
2) 3D Mark 06
3) Cinebench 11.5
4) Super Pi 1m & 32M
5) Wprime 32M and 1024M
7) 7-Zip (32MB Dictionary size)
8) x264 HD Benchmark
1) 3D Mark Vantage
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2) 3D Mark 06
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3) Cinebench 11.5
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4) Super Pi 1m & 32M
http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/2...perpi1m.th.jpg http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/30/superpi32m.th.jpg
5) Wprime 32M and 1024M
http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/4...ime32mh.th.jpg http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/3...ime1024.th.jpg
7) 7-Zip (32MB Dictionary size)
http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/8435/7zipd.th.jpg
8) x264 HD Benchmark
http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/8048/x264hd.th.jpg
This board in incredibly easy to overclock. i had absolutely no trouble in overclocking my Intel Core i7 980x to 4160mhz. It only took me less than 5 minutes to do this overclock which goes to show how well this board handles even the most powerful chip that intel has to offer. To get stable at 4160Mhz all i did was increase my BCLK to 160 with my CPU multiplier set to its default of 25x with 26x being the turbo multiplier , and set the VCore to 1.281v and Qpi to 1. 275V along with setting the correct ram timings. That is all it took for me to overclock to 4160 mhz and the motherboard was incredibly stable. In comparison my Asus Rampage II Extreme took a Vcore of 1.29v and 1.28V Qpi/Vtt to achieve the same stable overclock. Again we see the High-end , military grade components delivering that little bit better power delivery and efficiency. The UD9 showed incredible efficiency in all benchmarks , especially 2D benchmarks like Super-Pi and Wprime and comprehensively beat my Asus Rampage II Extreme. The only con i can think off is the lack of Voltage measuring points and the ability to selectively turn off un-used PCI-Express lanes but apart from these minor things this board is truly faultless.
http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/184...416032m.th.jpg http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/446...x219649.th.jpg http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/3...tock896.th.jpg
Gaming :-
The games i shall use for testing are as follows :-
1) Dirt 2
2) Far Cry 2
3) Crysis Warhead
4) World In Conflict
FPS at Stock
http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/7...ngstock.th.png
FPS at 4160 Mhz.
http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/1033/gamingoc.th.png
Can you spot a trend here ? Total Domination in just about every Benchmark .. this motherboard shows its higher efficiency in just about every department compared to my Asus Rampage II Extreme
I would like to thank Gigabyte India for giving me the honor and and making it possible for me to test the latest and greatest from Gigabyte.
Thanks for Reading !
Over and out...Toolius
Will post some LN2 numbers once my retail board arrives :)
