Table of contents
- Twelve X58 Boards roundup
- 02 ASUS Rampage II Extreme
- 03 Biostar TPower X58
- 04 DFI Lanparty DK X58-T3eH6
- 05 DFI Lanparty JR X58-T3H6
- 06 Elitegroup X58B-A
- 07 eVGA X58 3X SLI
- 08 Foxconn Flaming Blade GTI
- 09 Foxconn Renaissance
- 10 Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4
- 11 Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5
- 12 Intel DX58SO
- 13 MSI Eclipse SLI
Features:
Intel X58/iCH10R
6-phase VRM, dual lane design
Intersil 6336A
2x Realtek RTL8111DL PCIe Gb LAN controller
JMicro JMB363 SATA II/PATA controller
JMicro JMB322 SATA II port multiplier
Texas Instruments TSB43AB23 PCI Firewire controller
Winbond W83667HG-A super I/O controller
ICS 9LPRS918JKLF clock generator
passive cooling of chipsets/VRM
8Mb BIOS, version: F7
Mainboard Revision: 1.00
Slots:
3x PCIe 2.0 x16, 2x 16x, 1x 16x/2x 8x
2x PCIe x1
1x PCI
Memory:
6x Triple-Channel DDR3-slots for PC3-12800U memory up to 24GB
Storage:
6-Port SATA II featuring RAID 0, 1, 5, 0+1, JBOD
2-Port SATA II
1-Port IDE
1-port Floppy
Backpanel ports:
1x PS/2 keyboard
1x PS/2 mouse
2x Gb LAN
8x USB 2.0
1x Firewire 400
7.1 analog audio
1x optical audio out
1x coxial audio out
1x CMOS clear button
Accessories:
1x Dual-SLI bridge
1x Triple-SLI bridge
1x IDE cable
1x Floppy cable
1x 2-port eSATA slot-bracket
2x eSATA cable with clips
2x eSATA cable angled with clips
As we already said, this is the UD4 series' big brother, so you get three PCIe x16 slots, which run either at 2x16 speeds or 1x16 and 2x8 speeds. The PCIe x1 slot is blocked by the massive heatsink, so only small cards will fit. The PCIe x4 slot is open, so even bigger cards will fit in nicely.
This board does also not feature native eSATA ports, you need to use the bracket. If you do really use a triple SLI setup you can forget about putting the bracket in, because some compoents will hinder you to do so. So it's time Gigabyte changes its mind and does the smart thing by putting them on the backpanel.
Gigabyte was the only vendor not considering a debug-LED, but yes, this board does have one. But of course Gigabyte forgot the code to activate the CPU temperature after booting into an OS. The BIOS settings are also very crude. Besides, nobody wants to boot from a floppy, also to disable USB keyboard support is one of the most stupid things we saw.
For some reason this board is heavily factory overclocked, and we don't like that.
Overclocking:
The UD5 is the same story as with the UD4, auto-settings for overclocking is not an good idea. Lowering the VCore for the i7 920 to 1.2750V and reducing the VCore of the i7 975 to 1.2625V again.
