GA-X58A-UD5 Revision 2.0 the MOST in Depth Review/ Analysis

[sin0822]

I would like to take a second to talk about general bios strong points about this board, first of all in comparison to ASUS boards; this board has QPI PLL voltage which is a boost to the QPI/VTT voltage, kind of like its punch. This board also allows for CPU PLL to be lowered for better stability and cooler running CPU. Three levels of Load line Calibration are available and this is one of the most useful bios features. I have taken the time and done an analysis of the three levels, and I am going to sum it up for you.

(Green is LLC level 2, Read is LLC level1, and Blue is standard No LLC, all at bios setting of 1.35v and 4ghz)

Conclusion from my article here (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...hp?p=4589139): As expected the average voltage increases from no LLC to Full LLC in a semi linear fashion. Looking at the graphical analysis we can deduce that the LLC settings do indeed vary from one another. For starters the standard level shows a (1.35-1.312) 0.038v vdrop from bios setting to actual voltage given. Vdroop of 0.032v slightly less than vdrop, compared to what it used to be, this voltage drop isn’t that bad, but for current systems the drop and droops are significant, in total under load voltage is 0.07 less than set in bios, but only about half that that is droop.

Moving on to LLC Level 1 vdrop is (1.35-1.328) 0.022, less than standard vdrop, but still significant, under load there is another .016v droop, this is almost half that of standard level. LLC level 1 comes to a combined 0.038 voltage drop. This is slightly more than half the total drop without LLC, a very significant improvement. Moving on to the most aggressive level of LLC control Level 2, we have a starting 1.328 idle voltage (1.35-1.328) 0.022, vdrop. If you recall this is the same as the vdrop of LLC Level 1, but vdroop is an opposite story, there is virtually no voltage droop, instead we have voltage rise to (1.344-1.328) (+0.016), close to bios set amount.

Not only does this vrise occur, it occurs without drop outs nor fluctuations. Another thing to note is that vdroop of Level 1 is Level 2’s vrise. This is a very powerful mode, Level 2 LLC is the LLC available on other motherboards, vdrop is not totally eliminated but reduced, and vdroop is reversed. Although LEVEL 1 seems to be much like standard no LLC, it is a much better alternative than LEVEL 2, for 2 reasons. First it offers 50% less vdroop which is what LLC should be for, has no vrise, and shouldn’t have the dangerous voltage spikes LEVEL 2 most defiantly has. Even though vdrop is present, it’s not a big issue, because we know how much vdrop is you can set voltage accordingly.

Standard is usual Intel vcore fluctuation, standard and safe. The spikes we see in Standard and Level1 does not follow a pattern other than it occurs throughout load, this may be due to the program, but it does not occur in level 2, so it might also be a function of normal voltage operation, either way it shouldn’t be a factor in causing overclocking voltage instability. In general you should look at the results and pick a level that fits your overclock.

Bios/ Over Clocking continued:
The board’s bios has many features, the Asus Rampage Series boards do as well, they have 3 Levels of LLC(0%,50%, and 100%) a tiny bit different, but no analysis is available. The ASUS Rampge 3 series is the competitor to the UD7 and UD5, the UD9 is in a league of its own. Gigabyte works with Marvell to update the firmware for the Marvell controller very often. I have owned this board a few months and my Firmware has been updated 3 times, with three bios updates (every bios). Every time my speeds increased with my C300, and the 2nd Marvell firmware update made the Marvell RAID BIOS available through the gigabyte bios. The Most recent one is only available from Gigabyte. All the settings you could want are available, and I will show you a template for overclocking settings:

Advanced CPU Features:
CPU Clock Ratio ................................ [21]
Intel(R) Turbo Boost Tech ...................... [disabled]
CPU Cores Enabled .............................. [all]
CPU Multi Threading .............................[enable]
CPU Enhanced Halt (C1E) ........................ [disabled]
C3/C6/C7 State Support ......................... [disabled]
CPU Thermal Monitor ............................ [disabled]
CPU EIST Function .............................. [disabled]
Virtualization Technology ...................... [disable]
Bi-Directional PROCHOT ......................... [disable]

QPI Link Speed ..............................[x36]
Uncore Frequency ............................[x13]
Standard Clock Control:
Base Clock (BCLK) Control .......................... [215]
PCI Express Frequency (MHz) ........................ [103]
C.I.A.2........................................... .. [disabled]

Advanced Clock Control:
CPU Clock Drive ..............................[900mv]
PCI Express Clock Drive ................... [900mv]
CPU Clock Skew ............................. [auto]
IOH Clock Skew ............................. [auto]

Advanced DRAM Features:
Performance Enhance ...................... [extreme]
Extreme Memory Profile (X.M.P) ........... [disabled]
System Memory Multiplier (SPD) ........... [6]
DRAM Timing Selectable (SPD) ............. [quick]

Channel A + B + C

Channel A Timing Settings:
##Channel A Standard Timing Control##
CAS Latency Time ......................[9]
tRCD ..................................[9]
tRP ...................................[9]
tRAS ..................................[24]
Command Rate.....................................[1]


Advanced Voltage Control:

Load Line Calibration ................. [level 1]
CPU Vcore ..............................[1.44]
QPI/VTT Voltage 1.150v .................[1.375]
CPU PLL 1.800v .........................[1.80]
PCIE 1.500v ...........................[1.56]
QPI PLL 1.100v ........................[1.25]
IOH Core 1.100v .......................[1.2]
ICH I/O 1.500v ........................[1.6]
ICH Core 1.1v .........................[1.16]

DRAM
DRAM Voltage 1.500v .............. [1.66]
DRAM Termination 0.750v.......... [AUTO]
Ch-A Data VRef. 0.750v ...........[AUTO]
Ch-B Data VRef. 0.750v ...........[AUTO]
Ch-C Data VRef. 0.750v ...........[AUTO]
Ch-A Address VRef. 0.750v ........[AUTO]
Ch-B Address VRef. 0.750v ........[AUTO]
Ch-C Address VRef. 0.750v ........[AUTO]

One note this bios Revision is GOOC competition bios which lowers internal latencies (Super Pi tweaked)and was designed for the X58A-UD7 rev 2.0 for the Gigabyte GOOC World OC Championship. Since this board is identical in every way to the UD7 rev 2.0 they made this bios available for the UD5 rev 2.0 , and did further modding for the UD9 GOOC BIOS. The GOOC bios offers, Extreme voltage mode to unlock voltages up to 2.1v and disable OCP(over current protection) for very HIGH benchmarks, it has Cold bug mode, to allow the board to boot at sub-zero temperatures, as well as a Lean Mode which disabled un-needed peripherals during OC. The Rampage 3 Series has this option as well, but Gigabyte does now as well.


Those are my settings for 4.5ghz with my puny 930 with VID of 1.24v this board took it to 4.5ghz easily with 215 blck, I have reached 220blck with this board (without slow mode), but I feel my chip’s crappy IMC is holding it back ( I can boot with up to 224 blck, but voltages for CPU need to be increase by 150mv). A capable 920 D0 or 970, Xeon, or 980x would reach over 230+ blck with the PCI-E boosted, there are many examples in the official UD5/UD7 thread spreadsheet I run.

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1363602