X58 Battle for Supremacy Three way Motherboard Shootout.

[sacha35]

The three boards we will be looking at today are high end - that is with the exception of EVGA's FTW3. The motherboards in question all feature six DDR3 DIMM slots, easily enabling 12GB of memory on a desktop platform or more if you wish. The boards all offer USB3 and SATA 6 support together with a multitude of ports and devices. Combine all this with Intel's latest Core i7 980x Gulftown CPU that is capable of working on 12 threads at a time and you have the makings of an extremely powerful desktop/gaming system.

In our shootout, we will be taking a good look at the motherboards ranging from £200 to over £400, so if you are building a Core i7 system before the end of the year, this roundup may just help with your final decision.
We will be looking at price, performance, features, and build quality of each motherboard, measuring performance in three stages; stock (using Intel's stock heatsink), and overclocked by using liquid nitrogen for the more extreme reader.


Now, let's meet the contenders and see what they have to offer.



Motherboard Chipsets SATA 6G USB 3 Price
EVGA X58 FTW3 X58 Yes Yes £224.62
ASUS Rampage III Extreme- X58 Yes Yes £297.47
Gigabyte X58A-UD9 X58, 2 x NF200 Yes Yes £434.26




EVGA FTW3

EVGA are a little late to market with their X58 FTW motherboard, but it does bring all the performance from the award-winning EVGA x58 line-up we saw earlier on in the year and last year but it now includes USB 3.0 and SATA III 6Gb/s. The layout makes sure 2-way and 3-way SLI® configurations are compatible with all chassis. The colour scheme used is still black and grey unlike the Classified versions, which are of course black and red.

Running off Intel's X58/ICH10R chipset, there really is not that much of a difference between a typical X58 and the FTW3. However, further into this review, you will find that there is much more to this board than meets the eye.






When comparing this board to most X58 motherboards you will notice that the NB cooler is a lot bigger. Although it is large, it is still passive; this is never a good idea and usually leads to overheating. If you are not overclocking, you will likely see temperatures peak around 60C on the IOH, this will be fine for everyday use, but start overclocking, and adding voltage, and the need for an additional fan will definitely arise.






The CPU area has again been kept nice and clean, which makes life easier for the extreme LN2 user when insulating the motherboard.





The FTW3 share's some cool features found on its big brother the Classified. One being voltage read points, and the other EVBot compatibility. The voltage read points cover VCORE, VTT, IOH, DIMM, and ground. All of this will help give you that extra edge when pushing for that insane overclock.

You will notice that the voltage reads are just above the RAM slots for easy access.





The three PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots will operate in x16/x16 mode for 2x SLI or Crossfire X if the third x16 slot is left empty. However, if you decide to place a PCIe RAID, network card or other device in the third x16 slot, then the 2x SLI/CF configuration will operate in x16/x8 mode






Some other additional features are the 8+2 Phase PWM system, which is two more than the typical X58 SLI. It also includes all other standard features such as VDROOP control, compatibility with the EVGA E-LEET Tuning Utility which is used to overclock and monitor your CPU, motherboard and RAM in windows.


Onboard clear CMOS, power, and reset buttons and an onboard hex POST code reader that doubles up as a temperature display. As expected, the capacitors are 100% solid-state, which is typical among all X58 series motherboards these days.





There are six fan headers, 1 x 4Pin CPU, 3Pin 2 x system, 1 x Chassis, 1 x Power, the fan speeds can be detected and viewed in the COMS setup.
There are eight SATA ports, placed at the bottom-right hand side of the board, two of which are red and offer SATA 3 and 6 compliant devices to be connected. There is also an IDE connector for use of older hard drives, though this space could be put to better use. Also at the bottom of the board are the dual BIOS chips. These allow you to keep one BIOS chip for normal use whilst the second can be kept for performance.







The FTW3 does not have an eSATA port or Optical S/PDIF out ports on the rear IO panel. Therefore If you are going to run ESATA or Optical S/PDIF, you will need to get an expansion card. At this price, one would expect EVGA to have catered for this on the rear IO panel.







The installation of this motherboard is just like any other. It is a standard ATX form factor and should fit flawlessly in almost any case. The CPU clearance seems to be decent and should accompany most aftermarket heatsinks.


One important part of the setup process is updating the BIOS, and this is necessary with most motherboards. The latest BIOS patch fixes an early issue with VREG temperature being read incorrectly and SATA 6 performance. Speedstep and Turbo are set to enable on BIOS reset by default. Bios Version: 75


One cannot help think though why EVGA still has not opted for an easier solution for BIOS updating; why not provide us with a built in flashing routine like Gigabyte or ASUS use on their boards?


Overall, the BIOS is easy to navigate around and contains options for every user.

Taking a look inside the BIOS, you will find that it is almost identical to that of the earlier EVGA X58 motherboards - aside from the USB3 and SATA3 controls. All your overclocking options are present, including VDROOP control, etc. Another feature EVGA has is Dummy Overclock. This allows users who are unfamiliar with overclocking to push their system beyond stock parameters easily.








Features:
• NVIDIA SLI Technology Dramatically scales performance by allowing two graphics cards to be run in parallel.
• USB 2.0 Support
• PCI Express® 2.0 / 1.1 Support
• Serial ATA II
• Solid Capacitors
• Passive Heatsink
• 8 - Phase Power Design
• On-Board Clear CMOS Button
• On-Board Power Button with Integrated Power Light
• On-Board Reset Button with Integrated HDD Activity Light
• On-Board Diagnostics LED Readout
• 2-Way SLI® Support
• 3-Way SLI® Support
• Windows XP™ Support
• Windows Vista / Windows 7™ Support
• DDR3 Support
• Triple-Channel Support
• Dual-Channel Support
• Intel® X58/ICH10R Chipset
• SATA 6G Support
• USB 3.0


Specifications:
Performance
• Based on Intel X58/ICH10R chipset
• Supports Intel Core i7 Processors
Memory
• 6 x 240-pin DIMM sockets
• Triple Channel DDR3
• Maximum of 24GB of DDR3 1600MHz+
Expansion Slot
• 1 x PCIe x16, 1 x PCIe x8/x16, 1 x PCIe x8, 1 x PCIe x1, 2 x PCI
• 2 x 32-bit PCI, support for PCI 2.1
Storage I/O
• 1 x UltraDMA133
• 2 SATA III 6.0Gb/s Ports, 6 SATA II 3.0Gb/s Ports with Support for RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, RAID 5 JBO
Integrated Peripherals
• 8 Channel High Definition
• 2 x 10/100/1000
Multi I/O
• 1 x PS2 Keyboard
• 2 USB 3.0/2.0 Ports, 12 USB 2.0 Ports (8 I/0, 4 Internal
• Audio connector (Line-in, Line-out, MIC)
• FireWire 0
Form Factor
• ATX Form Factor
• Length: 12.0in - 304.8mm
• Width: 9.6in - 243.6mm

What you get in the box.
EVGA FTW3 Motherboard
EVGA Driver installation CD with EVGA E-Leet
Rear Case I/O Panel
6 x SATA Data Cables
3 x Power cables
2 - Way and 3- way SLI Bridge
2 port USB/1394 firewire port bracket
Visual installation guide
Manual

[sacha35]

ASUS Rampage III Extreme

The colour scheme used is black and red, which we have become accustomed to with the ASUS ROG range of boards. The Rampage III Extreme is a full-sized motherboard. In fact, at 269mm deep, it is actually slightly larger than a standard ATX board. You will find all the usual X58 features on the Rampage III Extreme, such as six DDR3 memory slots, a multitude of expansion slots, together with SATA6 and USB 3.






Around the CPU is nice and clean with everything kept low and out of the way; there should be no issues fitting any kind of CPU heatsinks, that is unless you decide to use the extended chipset cooler. Only then could this prove to be a problem when fitting some aftermarket coolers.







There are no fewer than four PCI Express slots included for quad SLI or Crossfire X support, you also get a single legacy PCI slot, as well a PCIe 4x slot . There are no 1x slots, but remember PCIe X1 cards can easily be fitted into 16x or 4x slots without a problem.







Eight SATA ports sit at the bottom-right hand side of the motherboard and are installed at right angles to the PCB. This helps to prevent interference with video card placement, but it also means you will have to allow even more space to install this motherboard in your case. Two of these SATA connectors are of the latest 6Gbps variety and are driven by the Marvell controller.






There are two eight-pin 12V aux connectors. This allows for more stable voltage and current to be supplied to the CPU.







There are four DIP switches adjacent to the memory slots, which are used to disable the expansion cards in each of the four 16x PCIe slots. We cannot see this being useful on a day-to-day basis, but for the extreme benchmarking fanatic, it certainly beats having to physically remove the cards.

To the right of these are reading points for various system voltages using your voltmeter. This will allow you to measure droop and rise without the need to load up a monitoring application, which is never truly accurate. Next to this is the ubiquitous power and reset buttons which are joined by a "Q reset" button on the opposite side of the board. This allows you to clear the CMOS then power up in a flash. Lastly, in this area of the board you will find an 'LN2 mode' jumper, which is specifically designed to avoid cold-boot bugs when playing with liquid nitrogen. In case you were wondering, there are no fewer than eight PWM-controlled fan headers on the Rampage III Extreme.







Two BIOS chips. These allow you to keep one BIOS chip for normal or low-noise use whilst the second can be kept for performance-critical applications. Switching from one to the other is done by pressing a small red button on the bottom-right hand corner, or via the ROG Connect feature.







The Rear I/O has 8 USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire 800 port, two USB 3.0 ports, a PS/2 keyboard port, 6 audio jacks, a Gigabit Ethernet port, and a jack for a Bluetooth module. There’s also a ROG Connect port, which is the USB 2.0 port next to the audio jacks. When the link button is pressed, the port is used by ROG Connect to synchronize up the board to another computer.







BIOS flashing can be taken care of in a variety of ways; flashing is possible via OS software, via a built in routine accessed through BIOS or ROG connect while the board is in standby state - covering just about every usage scenario.


Plug-in peripheral compatibility is good, we did not encounter any problems and overclocking stability is also good for the most part, the only exception to that will be of interest to the extreme benchmarking crowd
On-board cooling has had a little revamp from the older brother REII, but cannot think why ASUS’s have chosen this kind of thermal interface material used on their newer board as temperatures were above 65c on our IOH. Why ASUS did not use AS5 or better can only be put down to extra costs.
Later on this month there will be the addition of the Xpander board for the Rampage III Extreme; this will offer 4 x PCI-E lanes via its 2 x NF200 chips. The realase date has not been finalised as of yet but rumours has it will be available next month with a price tag around the $100 mark. So sadly for us guys in the UK, that means £100 as well.


The expander PCB will of course only be used in the extreme liquid nitrogen environment as it will not fit into any PC case due to the risers used, so apart from 3DMark vantage which takes full benefit from four way SLI or CrossfireX we cannot see much point in this card as it will only be used by the extreme crowd.







ASUS are well known for providing a good and simple to use BIOS. The Rampage III extreme is easy to navigate and contains every option for the user.







Specifications:
- 2x USB 3.0
- 2x SATA 6Gb/s
- CPU: Intel Core i7 Processors (Socket LGA1366)
- Chipset: Intel X58 Express / ICH10R
- Memory: 6x DDR3 DIMM 2200(OC) / 2133(OC) / 2000(OC) / 1800(OC) / 1600 / 1333 / 1066 MHz (Max. 24GB) / Tri-Channel / Intel Extreme Memory Profile (XMP)
- Expasion slots: 4x PCIe 2.0 x16 Slots, 1x PCIe x4 Slot & 1x PCI Slot (Supports ATI CrossFireX & NVIDIA 3-Way SLI Technology)
- Storage: 7x SATA 3Gb/s (RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10) & 1x eSATA 3Gb/s
- LAN: Intel Gigabit LAN
- Audio: 8-channel High Definition Audio CODEC
- Bluetooth V2.0/V2.1+EDR Card
- 9x USB 2.0
- 2x IEEE 1394a
- 1x PS/2 Keyboard
- 1x S/PDIF Out (Optical)
- Extreme Engine Digi+
- USB BIOS Flashback
- ROG Connect
- ROG Extreme OC Kit
- Extreme Tweaker
- iROG
- ProbeIt
- ASUS Q-LED
- Loadline Calibration
- Q-Fan Plus
- ATX (305.0mm x 269.0mm)



What you get in the box.
Rampage III Extreme Motherboard
1 x I/O Shield
1 x 3-Way SLI Bridge
1 x SLI Cable
1 x CrossFire cable
1 x ROG Connect Cable
1 x ProbeIt Cable Set
6 x SATA Cables
2 x SATA 6G Cables
1 x two Port USB 2.0 and eSATA bracket
1 x Thermal Sensor Pack (for fan header thermal monitoring/speed control)
1 x Cable ties pack
1 x ROG sticker and 1 x Cable label pack
1 x Optional Heatsink and fan (for IOH cooling)
1 x RC Bluetooth module
1 x Support DVD
1 x User Manual



As always a nice bundle of extras from ASUS. The thermal sensors are nice to have, something we have become used to since the socket 775 Rampage Extreme, but most of all this time they tie in with the fan control options given on the Rampage III Extreme

ROG connect is the most notable addition to ASUS’s software bundle. A dedicated USB to SMBUS port is provided allowing users to plug in a Windows based laptop and control/monitor bus speeds, voltages/current, turn the board on/off and to flash BIOS if required. It’s very slick, although long-term appeal is very limited unless you are a benchmarking fanatic.
ASUS have also developed a plug-in Bluetooth module allowing on-the-fly adjustment of key voltages and BCLK.


Again, it is something that we would see more useful to someone who benchmarks competitively and wants to wring out every last MHz during various portions of a benchmark. You’ve also got ASUS’s Tubo-V to do most of what is needed on a 24/7 system when it comes to making changes to BIOS settings within the OS, so the remote utilities are not essential if you don’t have the hardware to make use of them.

[sacha35]

Gigabyte UD9

The Gigabyte UD9 is the most expensive board in our line up; it’s Gigabyte’s flagship X58 motherboard that supports Quad-SLI and CrossfireX straight out of the box. The UD9 has USB 3.0 and SATA 6 combined with an abundance of other ports, but apart from the addition of the NF200 bridge chips, and a revamped VRM we cannot find much difference to the cheaper UD7. We then have to ask why the UD9 is so much more expensive.

We hope that by the end of this review we may be able to answer the question that has crossed everyone’s mind.

The UD9 is an oversized ATX board measuring in at (34.5cm x 26.2cm), which could be problematic to fit into most PC cases and as such, Gigabyte have listed them here. (http://download.gigabyte.eu/FileList...pport-List.pdf) There is a plethora of peripheral ports right down to legacy stuff like FDD But then no PCI slots.






There is also an abundance of cooling which means that it is one heavy board, there is very little flex in the PCB, which is helped with the very thin sheet of copper for effective heat dissipation.

The setup works fine with a bit of airflow, but the addition of a built-in water block and the plug in heat sink must have been an afterthought as the array of fins connecting the waterblock to the chips heatsink suggests sub-optimal heat transfer. Gigabyte has also bundled an add-on heatsink dubbed the Hybrid SilentPipe 2 Extreme X. This does help a little with the addition of a fan blowing across it, but then we have to ask the question - Heat rises and being so close to the first PCI-E lane surely this is not the best cooling solution and as such would have preferred to see a full coverage water-block bundled in the package.







Everything is accessible on the UD9 as one would expect to find on a board like this, but the lack of voltage measurement pads for the extreme user is unforgivable given the price tag on this extreme board, software reporting is seldom accurate. Most extreme users have a multi-meter and measure voltage as close to the load as possible Gigabyte as we see it are the only vendor in our shootout that don’t provide provision for this and that is a shame for anyone who is going to push the UD9 hard.


Gigabyte’s VRM has undergone a revamp – still using Intersil’s six phase controller (MUXed out to 24 phase), with the major change over previous iterations being a switch out to integrated driver/FET stages. Overall, current handling capabilities are purported to be a crazy 1.5KW, more than any single processor can draw. However, statistically speaking surely using more components means chance of getting a bad component? In addition, what is the use of installing more hardware than you could possibly ever use? As we have seen, Gulftown pulls at most 350W to 500W when overclocked.







Out of the box, the UD9 applies a 2MHz BCLK overclock as standard to ALL processors. While this is within the bounds of stability without needing over-voltage, it is something anyone testing these boards needs to be made aware. Fortunately, we are always on the lookout for stuff like this and make sure we line up all boards as fairly as possible in our base compare tests.

ASUS are a little less obvious, and apply a small positive offset of .7 MHz which gives a tiny overclock (133.7Mhz) – EVGA are a little more honest and apply the same .7 offset but keep you one BCLK below what you’ve set (133BCLK is 132.7MHz) We’d like to see Gigabyte stop the positive offset practice – stock defaults should be absolute specification defaults and as close to 133 BCLK as possible. Little things like this may not sound like a lot, but they are enough to skew benchmark results.

One feature that Gigabyte has is its front-panel USB ports that support its “3x USB Power” and “USB On/Off” circuit design for charging high-current USB devices even from standby power or when the system is off.







I/O panel of the X58A-UD9. has two PS/2 ports, optical out, SPDIF out, clear CMOS switch, IEEE1394, USB 1.1/2.0, combination USB 1.1/2.2/eSATA, mini-IEEE1394, USB 1.1/2.0, combination USB 1.1/2.2/eSATA, RJ-45, two USB 1.1/2.0 ports, another RJ-45 port, two USB 3.0 ports and six mini-stereo jacks








The Gigabyte’s UD9 BIOS is well laid out and comprehensive enough for all types of users. Gigabyte is the only vendor really pushing ASUS on general BIOS quality. There are a couple of areas where we feel ASUS have the edge; slightly better implementation of automated parameters for overclocking and more obviously fan control options as only the CPU header can be fully controlled on the UD9. The System fan header can control both three and four pin fans but this is tied to automatically ramp up and down with system temperature – direct user changes are not possible. The other three headers remain full on at all times.


Recovery from failed overclock on the UD9 work's well and is on par with the ASUS R3E and EVGA FTW3. But we would like to see added an F1 halt alert; we found even on the F4 BIOS that the board would POST in safe-mode after a failed overclock without alerting the us that BIOS settings had been changed to safe.


Plug-in peripheral compatibility is good; we did not encounter any problems, with our test equipment. Overclocking stability in most scenarios is also good.









Specifications:

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




What you get in the box.
Gigabyte UD9 Motherboard
User's Manual
Installation Guidebook
VIP card
driver disk
SATA 3G cables
SATA 6G cables
IDE cable
USB / eSATA accessory bracket
2 Crossfire bridges
SLI bridge
3-Way SLI bridge
4-Way SLI bridge
thermal compound
4 machine screws
plastic standoffs
I/O Shield
Hybrid Silent Pipe 2 module

[sacha35]

Part one of three; the beginning.

We decided to run our Bench-tests in three different stages to show and offer any potential buyers the sort of performance they may expect when using the given parts we tested with. As always, the tests carried out have run at least three times with the average result taken.

Unfortunately, we only had one graphics card at this time, so could not carry out any tests in SLI or test four way performance - although we hope to come back to this at a later stage.



The sections covered will be:

Stock out of box testing.
Overclocked to 4.4GHz using the Intel stock heatsink
Maximum overclock using liquid Nitrogen.
We began our tests with out of the box stock settings leaving the motherboards to set required voltages and timings etc. That is with the exception of the Gigabyte UD9 which we had to set a base clock off 133 MHz because it is offset by two Bclock, thus giving an unfair advantage over the other boards.




Test System

Intel Core i7 980X Gulftown (LGA1366)
Intel Stock Heatsink
12GB Corsair CMGTX1 2400 C9
Asus Rampage III Extreme
EVGA FTW3 E769-ER
Gigabyte UD9
Corsair (950 watt)
Crucial CTFDDAC128MAG SATA 6 SSD
USB 3 compliant device
ASUS GTX 460 TOP
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit)





Part 1, The Stock Bench-Test's:

SATA 6 Performance
USB 3.0 Performance
USB 3.0 Data transfer
Stock Power consumption
3Dmark Vantage
Crysis
WinRar
Super Pi32M
Wprime
OCCT LinPack






SATA 6 and USB 3.0 testing

This was done using AS SSD software; this shows us the read, right, and access time recorded on each of the motherboard using a single Crucial CTFDDAC128MAG drive.


Testing SATA 6 performance with Cruial's CTFDDAC128MAG latest SSD Drive. We can see from the Screen shoot that the ASUS RE3 has the best implementation for SATA 6 at the moment.








For USB 3.0 testing, we used a USB 3.0 SSD storage caddy coupled with Intel’s SSDSA2SH064G1GC drive.

When it comes to USB 3.0 the RE3 seems to offer that bit extra than the two other boards in the line-up.








USB 3.0 Data transfer

We compiled files to the value of 2.52GBs to see the time taken using a stop watch to transfer from the SATA 6 SSD drive to our USB 3.0 device on each of the motherboards









Power Consumption

Our power consumption testing was carried out using the same components under similar circumstances in a bid to monitor variances between idle and CPU load conditions. We installed the vendor supplied power saving utilities on each board and enable power saving modes.

Not surprising the EVGA FTW3 comes out on top in both tests, the Gigabyte has two NF200's on board and explains why it uses more energy, but surprisingly it does better than the ASUS RE3 when we connect the Xpander board.









3Dmark Vantage tests; everything left to stock settings with no intervention or adjustments made to hardware or benchmark.









The Crysis benchtest has been run using High settings with a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 and 8 x AA. We chose these settings to see how well the system would cope.









WinRar was set to run for five-minutes to find the resulting KB/s and processed MB of each motherboard.









Wprime 1024M, as we can see here multi thread performance is very close between the three motherboards









Super Pi 32M has been run to find how well each of the boards deal with this single thread application








OCCT LINPACK set to run for one hour with sleep mode set in the operating system for 30minuets; this would allow us to test each of the motherboards to make sure USB wake would work. We can report each of the boards passed this test.




Part One Recap
With all the stock tests completed, let us take a quick look over the results we have in each of the given sections.


SATA 6 and USB 3.0
We have seen the results, which show us that the ASUS RE3 motherboard has better implemented the use of both SATA 6 and USB 3.0 devices leading to better drive performance.


Power
The EVGA FTW3 is the clear winner here, this is down to the fact it does not carry the NF200 chips that the Gigabyte UD9 has or extra devices that the RE3 carries.


3D Tests
This is a tough one to call. Each of the motherboard results are very close to one another in our tests – the variance in gaming FPS would not be noticeable at the given settings and hardware used to any user . Even though the EVGA FTW3 has done slightly better in 3Dmark Vantage test, at this stage of proceedings things are very close.


Multi and single thread applications
Both multi and single thread applications bench-tests reveal that each of the motherboards (run at default settings) are nigh on identical to each other.
We can clearly see, if you are looking for a stock setup to run a few games and maybe do a little encoding then there really is not that much difference between any of the motherboards tested.


The fact is that the EVGA FTW3 offers the same sort of performance as the other two boards but it does it without using as much energy or costing as much, but will this change in our second part of 4.4GHz tests?

[sacha35]

Part Two of Three; midpoint.

For basic overclocking, we decided to choose a medium of 4.4GHz as an achievable overclock for our Gulftown processor at reasonable voltage levels and still keeping with the Intel stock heatsink. Obviously high-end boards like these are designed to be pushed further and harder, so we deal with that aspect in the third and final part where we will be using liquid Nitrogen.

Part 2, 4.4GHz Bench-test's:

3Dmark Vantage
Crysis
WinRar
Super Pi32M
Wprime
Hyper Pi32M
Sleep mode




We begin the second part of our testing adjusting voltages, Bclock, Multi, Memory speed and timings. Setting all boards to 200 Bclock with a 22 x multi and 12Gb of memory running at 1600MHz CAS 6, Uncore was set to at 4000MHz with QPI at x18 resulting in a speed of 3600MHz we begin the second part of the testing.


3Dmark Vantage tests was carried out first; everything on the motherboard overclocked as listed above, The ASUS GTX460 GFX card this time was clocked to 800MHz Core and 1000MHz Memory.








The Crysis bench test has been run again using High settings with screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 and 8 x AA, with the GTX 460 clocked to 800MHz Core and 1000MHz Memory.








WinRar was again set for a five-minute test to find the resulting KB/s and processed MB of each motherboard.









Wprime 1024M run at 4.4Ghz was going to be our hardest test due to the fact we were still using the stock Intel heatsink, as we can see here multi thread performance is very close between the three motherboards









Super Pi32M has again been run at 4.4GHz would there be much separation between each of the boards dealing with this single thread application









Sleep mode was tested on each of the motherboard at this given settings, but due to the cooling used we were unable to run LinPack this time - all boards resumed from Sleep using USB which was tested over a period of 12HRS


Now we wanted to throw into the mix some stability tests using Hyper Pi 32M. Running 12 thread mode was not going to be easy considering the type of cooling used, but nethertheless the results are shown below.









Part Two recap

The results speak for themselves, you would be hard pushed to find any difference between any of the boards tested in part one or part two of our benchtests, so what separates these motherboards apart from they are all different in price.


We are sure the same could be said if we had cheaper boards from ASUS and Gigabyte, but for now the FTW3 £200 motherboard bears no discernible difference in performance over the most expensive Gigabyte UD9 £400 motherboard. Maybe things will start to look a little different during our LN2 testing…

[sacha35]

Part Three of Three; the final


Before beginning our liquid Nitrogen tests on the motherboards, we wanted to find how well the ASUS GTX460 graphics card would overclock using its stock heatsink. A BIOS flash on the card was needed to fully unlock voltage and other settings but once done were amassed we were able to test just how well this little card clocked. Admittedly, it had a 120mm delta blowing over the card, but nevertheless we managed to clock the card to a whopping 962MHz core and 1124MHz memory (effective 2248MHz), from its stock setting of 700MHz core 920MHz memory (effective 1840MHz).









Changing our memory out for some Corsair CMGTX2 we wanted to find how well the kit would run, this 6GB kit is rated at 2200MHz CAS 8. Keeping within a sensible voltage and only corsair's fan blowing over the modules we where presently surprised to see the 6GB kit running CAS 7 at DDR3-2100.










Maximum BCLK
Just a quick note here of maximum bootable BCLK on our Gulftown processor for those who are interested in such things:
The Gigabyte UD9 and ASUS REIII both topped out at 221 Bclock – anything higher resulting in an instant lock up. The EVGA FTW3 went a little further hitting 225 Bclock; of course the ASUS and Gigabyte boards hit well over this when QPI frequency is set to slow mode, which resulted in both the ASUS and Gigabyte boards locking up at 255Bclock.






Part 3 liquid nitrogen Bench-test's:
3DMark 06
3DMark 05
Wprime




3D Mark 06, 3D Mark 05 and then Wprime 1024M For our base compares in the test suite, the general practice while running benchmarks is to make three runs of and take the middle score. Here, as we are clocking for the best scores, we are taking the highest or fastest out of multiple attempts at each operating frequency whilst using the latest or recommended benchmarking BIOS for each board.


Armed with only 60 litres of liquid Nitrogen we had to find out what settings worked for each of the boards. We used the Dragon F1 LN2 pot in order to find out if which board handles a given CPU and memory kit better in the 3D and 2D benchmarks. We will be comparing cold boot and bug problems if any are apparent.


On testing each of the motherboards, we found that the ASUS RE3 had a problem even with the LN2 jumper and extreme cooling BIOS settings enabled. It had a cold boot problem at -120C and completely locked up at -150C. We investigated this and found that there was a dry joint on the LN2 jumper - which was quickly sorted and allowed us to run the board from cold at -160c all the way up to -190c


The Gigabyte UD9 also had some problems running our CPU cold. The best that the motherboard could do was -130C cold boot and -155C within the operating system. We could of course go a little colder once the system was loaded, but had to make sure when in a idle state we did not go colder than -155C, as this would lead to an instant lockup of the system.. Not having any jumpers or cold specific BIOS adjustments for LN2, means that we have to stick to the given temperatures recorded, (perhaps Gigabyte will have an updated BIOS soon with a fix).


EVGA's FTW3, what can be said, to start with this motherboard is what it is’ a mid-range motherboard that was not really intended for this kind of use. As the FTW does not have any jumpers or BIOS settings for LN2 onboard, we are not expecting too much from this board if we are honest.


We were pleasantly surprised though to find that the FTW3 was in fact the best motherboard out of the three boards tested when it came to using LN2. The motherboard could cold boot over -160C all the way up to -190C, and providing the board was not shut down could loop in and out of the BIOS at maximum LN2 cooling temperature.









Now we had found the cold settings that each of the motherboards was happy to run at, we began our bench tests to find what board offered the best results.


Starting with one of the hardest tests first - 3DMark 06, we began in finding the maximum speeds that each of the motherboards could run the tests at. The CPU tests can be quite demanding (due to fluctuating loads) and means a slower clocked speed. This in turn hurts 3D elements in this kind of benchmark.


The EVGA FTW3 and ASUS RE3 made this very easy as both have the option of using hand held overclocking tools in the way of EVBot and OCStation. The Gigabyte UD9 does not have any of these options so we were forced to use the software tools and preset/save the required frequencies, even though this works well it is not an ideal solution and not what we would expect from such an expensive motherboard.


Keeping the ASUS GTX 460 card on air, we decided to run a 950MHz Core and 2230 MHz effective memory as wanted to rule out any problems if any with the card in the 3D bench tests.


Looking at the 3D Mark 06 results, we can see that the ASUS RE3 motherboard outperformed the other two boards with a total result, but if we look closely the FTW3 hasn't done too bad in 3D performance, only let down by the top end speed in the CPU tests.









3D Mark 05 presented us a problem that is with the ASUS RE3 motherboard. On running the test, the board just cut out and refused to post, at first we thought our CPU must have died, but on strip down and inspection, it was in fact a malfunction with the board. (Perhaps our earlier intervention with the LN2 Jumper fix may have had something to do with this)


Now being only a two horse race between the Gigabyte UD9 and EVGA's FTW3 we begin the 3D Mark 05 testing.


The Gigabyte able to push two Bclock further than the FTW3, reaching a total speed of 6GHz in the 3D Mark 05 test - just giving an edge to the UD9. The best we could achieve on the EVGA board was 5959MHz, which is not to be sneered at considering the cost of this motherboard.








Moving onto our final test Wprime 1024M; we knew from the outset that the FTW3 may have a problem in keeping up with the Gigabyte UD9. This is due to the fact the FETs can only handle 35AMPs a piece, and with our CPU tests hitting way above this we were not expecting too much from this board.
Even though the EVGA FTW3 put up a good fight, it was not able to push our 980X Gulftown CPU to the limit - reaching a top speed of 5813MHz on the CPU it was some MHz off the pace of the Gigabyte UD9 which pushed our Gulftown all the way to 5946MHz.












Final Words

All of our motherboards performed admirably, some better than others, but in the end any motherboard sporting an X58 will perform the same when it comes to standard performance attributes. Which board is better really comes down to your needs, budget, and for some, product brand loyalty.

All of the BIOS releases we utilized are stable and offer good performance, and have addressed the majority of usability problems. That said, each manufacturer could accomplish improved overclocking performance.

Out of the three motherboards tested, we have to sit on the fence for any recommendations, each of the boards offer something different to each other and not priced equal.





Gigabyte UD9
If you are looking for a motherboard that offers the most SATA, USB and PCI-E ports with crazy current handling capabilities then look no further than the Gigabyte UD9. It offers all this, but make sure to look at the price tag though, as it’s one expensive bit of hardware.


Price aside, the UD9 is an easy to use motherboard with a good BIOS and feature set that overclocked reasonably well in our air tests. The board seemed to came alive when pushed on LN2 as we can see from the WPrime 1024M result.


You will have to ask yourself the question; do I want a server sized like motherboard that overclocks well? Well do you?






ASUS RE3

The ASUS Rampage III Extreme did not clean the floor in all departments, and we did have problems with LN2 testing, But the R3E is an easy to use motherboard that has a good BIOS, decent feature set and overclocks reasonably well.

Overclock recovery works with one loop back to BIOS instead of having to clear COMS. We think ASUS did a good job with the RE3, but would have liked to see a second Ethernet port, even though the Intel NIC used is great, one is not enough for some users.

That said we would like to have the chance to re-test another RE3 motherboard under LN2 conditions as we felt there should have been a lot more in the sample we had.






EVGA FTW3
The EVGA FTW3 is late to the market with their SATA6 motherboard, the lack of eSATA, Optical S/PDIF ports and the need for a better BIOS update program is urgently needed. However, since this is a midrange motherboard and not really the enthusiast's motherboard like the Classified version, the FTW3 is an excellent motherboard.

It was easy to use, and overclocked our i7 980x Gulftown from 3.3GHz to 4.4GHz completely stable using the stock heatsink and even further when using LN2. It offers a good blend of features and good all-round performance. The FTW3 performed equally to the other offerings with a 6GB or 12GB memory configuration but buckled slightly with full load liquid Nitrogen overclocking. Considering the price tag of the FTW3 though, this motherboard has to be a top consideration

[DAK1640]

Outstanding review...

[Aerou]

A proper OCing review

[chispy]

Very very nice review Sacha , sad that RIIIE died during the LN2 session , it would been nice to the results under LN2 compared against the other 2 boards. Well done.

Regards: Angelo.

[G.Foyle]

Excellent

So the ROG Expander will be available in retail, unlike that "OC panel" gadget with LCD poster and buttons on a small separate PCB?

[Kryja]

Top notch review there mate

[ChristianGordon]

Very Nice!!

[Biker]

Excellent review!

Thanks for taking the time to put this together



Ps. did the R3E after it cut out just have the CPU red LED lit on boot and refuse to post ever again?

If so exactly the same thing happend to mine @ 4.2Ghz....

[Nautilius]

Holy dude, amazing review! Outstanding work!

[sacha35]

Thanks guys, tried to make it as fair and true as possible. Which board is better really comes down to your needs, budget, and for some, product brand loyalty.

[SubZero.it]

Great review!!

[corpses3]

Looks goodie

[lkiller123]

Very nice job.

[Clint]

Great stuff! Looks like the R3E comes out on top in performance almost all over the range of tests. Maybe they should rename the eVGA to FTL as well, hehehe!

[Aerou]

Would be cool to have Classified 3 in the pack

[GoD_tattoo]

Great review. I was expecting more out of the UD9...The Rampage seemed to do the best until it died...

[DomagojX]

great review
maybe would be better test with new classifed 3 but doesn't matter

[sacha35]

great review
maybe would be better test with new classifed 3 but doesn't matter

At least we have a benchmark set with these results for any other boards like the classified 3 compare against.

So if a classified 3 comes my way it will be easy now to run the same benchmarks in the same way and Compair against what we have seen in these results.

[Buckeye]

Very nicely done Sacha !

Thanks for all the hard working going into that review, the best I have seen yet

[sacha35]

Excellent review!

Thanks for taking the time to put this together



Ps. did the R3E after it cut out just have the CPU red LED lit on boot and refuse to post ever again?

If so exactly the same thing happend to mine @ 4.2Ghz....

Yes, same sort of thing, but of course we were pushing past the 6GHz mark at the time running 3DMark 05.

The symptoms were very much like the CPU had died. Power up the board, fan spins and LED lights up but no post.

Hope that I be able to conclude the full review with a replacement board from ASUS a little later; we may even have the classified 3 to throw into the mix by then as well..