D-LarafiqCyber: 2009

GIGABYTE GA-EX58-Extreme

We've seen X58 boards from Asus and MSI already, but now Gigabyte has sent us its X58 to scrutinise. The 0.2 revision we received in the post was minus final heatpipes though, and for the Extreme model we have here we expect them to be well, Extreme, in typical Gigabyte fashion.

Instead of pursuing the idea of fancy looks and very niche over clocking features, Gigabyte is maintaining the status quo once again, even if this is the "Extreme" model. We've got to be honest though - since the Extreme has become the new DQ6, what significance does the DQ6 have? Or then the 5 for that matter? It's difficult to ascertain what market each is designed for because the differences are so slight.

We did discuss the style of the Extreme model with Gigabyte and its position is basically to keep a uniform color scheme. This not only keeps its whole range immediately identifiable, but also helps the end user easily differentiate between the sockets. Gigabyte also claimed that it doesn't concentrate on style so much as features and quality of product are what it considers more important as it pushes its Ultra Durable branding into its third generation recently. While we can sympathise and relate to Gigabyte's reasoning, yet again we'll argue that the Extreme lacks a level of special that justifies the price.

Cue the inevitable car analogy: Should you go out and buy a reassuringly expensive high performance beast, with all the latest electronic gizmos and built in, you'd at least expect it to feature a kick ass body-kit and styling to shows off the purchase. It's the synergy between style and technical excellence that creates desirability. While Gigabyte has the latter in spades, it could do with a serious Botox injection and some nip-tuck surgery to attain the former.

But what about the newbies that don't know where a graphics card goes? Well, if they don't know that much, then how are these people expected to navigate an advanced overclockers' BIOS or use the rest of the Extreme's features? Gigabyte strongly risks the association of appearing dubbed down and alienating budding overclocking gurus at just a first look. If you couldn't tell a Ferrari from a Fiesta without having to research it, then quite frankly you're doing it wrong.

Our concerns about style aside, feature-wise we've got a very good board here - there are three PCI-Express 2.0 x16 lanes that follow either the x16-x16 or x16-x8-x8 way of things. Both ATI CrossFireX and Nvidia SLI are supported but there's no (unnecessary) extra Nvidia NF200 chip in sight.

Organised in this way with PCI-Express lanes solely from the X58 northbridge for maximum efficiency, cards used in pairs should be preferred to attain a maximum bandwidth. This makes ATI's X2 hardware technically better off, however 3-way SLI is still supported even if the bottom slot is a little low set for dual height cards. The open ended PCI-Express 2.0 x4 slot at the top means if you really, really wanted to run four ATI cards, you could, but the bandwidth would be pretty limited. Its greatest benefit is for PCI-Express x4/x8 RAID cards or other performance peripherals, however it'll likely be used for long x1 cards since the x1 slot above it runs directly into the northbridge.

Extreme Features

Gigabyte has rated its six DDR3 sockets to 1,800MHz+, and although we've had some overclocking success with our brief exposures with Core i7 to date, we'll wait to see what memory companies pull out to complement this claim first. There's no mention of special hardware capacity to overvolt memory without killing an i7 CPU either, but this is still a sub 1.0 revision PCB - Gigabyte simply hasn't stated this specifically to us yet.

The backlit, on-board power button is strangely placed, but not badly, however there's not much room down the bottom corner where we're used to find it. The reset button on this early board is the cheap and simple type - and in actual fact I prefer them being different. Too often I've hit the wrong button by mistake because they're too close together, and I've been blindly feeling inside a case or around the graphics cards for just a square (oh the inevitable innuendos - I'll never hear the end of that one).

The ten SATA is made up of six from the ICH10R and four from a pair of JMicron JMB322 controllers that are classed by JMicron has "Hardware" RAID 0 or 1 and they both convert a single SATA 3Gbps port from the square PCI-Express x1 Gigabyte (JMicron) SATA 2 controller into two purple SATA ports. Extra SATA is always welcome and these sockets can just be used as normal, single hard drive sockets instead of RAID, so a total of ten will certainly give some of our storage-loving members a hard drive-on, but we are somewhat concerned about the bandwidth narrowing from two SATA to one SATA to a single PCI-Express x1 lane.

Down this end of things there's also the two digit POST readout that's always useful for diagnosing what's wrong when the board doesn't boot, and while it's very well placed and easy to see in the corner, it's no external Asus LCD Poster. After all, this is the Premium, Extreme model.

The colour coordinated front panel pin-out is always helpful, although we wish Gigabyte would invent something (borrow the ideal) like the Asus Q-connector or MSI M-connector to make it easier once the board is in a case and stuffed with cables. The other pin-outs are not only colour-coded, but stamped to identify them as well, although, however unlikely, if you do go down the three-graphics card route then they all become pretty much unusable.

Likewise, the IDE socket is placed right at the base of the board so getting a fat cable around your graphics cards and up to the optical drives in the roof of a case is likely to be a task and a half. IDE is good for some legacy support and we're constantly told that some countries always ask for it, with 10 SATA we'd happily drop it along with the useless floppy port.

The rear I/O features eight USB 2.0 ports, two RJ45 for Gigabit Ethernet - of which the Realtek RTL 81110 PCI-Express chipsets support the teaming function should you need it - one six-pin Firewire and PS2 keyboard and mouse still. PS2 keyboard - yes, but PS2 mouse - why? Six 3.5mm jacks provide 7.1 channel analogue audio as well as microphone and line-inputs from the premium "106dB SNR" Realtek ALC889a High-Definition audio codec. There's both optical and RCA digital S/PDIF out, as well as pin-outs on-board for S/PDIF input to complete the package.

Lights, Camera, Action

Up top, Gigabyte includes the same virtual 12 phase CPU power regulation with VRD 11.1 support and six stage power switching from the DES Advanced software that we're used to on its EP45 boards.

The northbridge and memory gets a pair of phases too, and while on paper this is less than Asus and MSI, whether it actually makes a difference we'll have to see. As part of the Ultra Durable 3 specification there's the usual environmentally sealed ferrite core chokes and low RDS-on MOSFETs used almost everywhere, as well as the 50-million-squillion hour solid aluminium capped Japanese (likely Fujitsu on the 1.0 revision) capacitors.

Across the board here there are also a few dozen little SMD LEDs that are labelled DDR phase, NB (northbridge) phase, NB temp among other things. We did try to boot the board up with some heatsinks we found elsewhere, but unsurprisingly it merely coughed at us then went back to sleep. During the splutter it was evident that the whole thing lights up like a Christmas tree - there are three LEDs by the southbridge, several shown below and a few more to show the CPU power phases used like usual.

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Motherboard GIGABYTE EX58-Extreme

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