by Doors4ever
08/31/2009 | 05:03 PM
In the latest LGA1366 mainboard reviews we have little by little moved over to discussing less mainboard models. First of all the manufacturers try to roll out top solutions with maximum functionality. It is always especially interesting to review flagship mainboards, because they always represent the peak of engineering thought. They usually boast a lot of expansion card slots, numerous additional controllers, sophisticated cooling systems, often support unique brand name features and technologies. It is interesting to read about mainboards like that, but not everyone will be able to utilize the entire range of features and functions that they offer, so in reality, not too many people actually need them. The functionality of the Intel X58 Express chipset makes even low-end mainboards based on it functional enough to satisfy the needs of a mainstream user without involving any numerous expansion cards. And taking into account that even junior mainboard models are usually equipped with a number of additional controllers, we can conclude that the functionality of these mainboards will be sufficient even for users with more advanced needs. Therefore, we are always extremely interested in checking our all flagship product reviews, but usually purchase mainstream or budget mainboards for ourselves. And our interest to these particular solutions is quite logical: unlike the flagship products (“wow, what a mainboard!”), it is of more practical nature (“I want a board exactly like that!”).
Our today’s hero is Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R (rev. 1.6) mainboard. It is interesting because it is the junior model in the Gigabyte family on Intel X58 Express chipset. Moreover, so far this is the only Gigabyte board that has a revision 1.6 follow the startup revision 1.0. Off the top of my head, I can say that the new model uses a new network controller and chipset cooling system. Our today’s review is going to talk about all the details regarding this mainboard, its features and functions, and if they are sufficient to satisfy our needs.
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard comes in a small box, which front side is decorated with the logos of the supported CPUs, functions and technologies.
The back of the box contains a little more details information about the mainboard functionality:
Inside the box you find the board, of course, and the following accessories:
Compared with the top models, there is no kit including cables and brackets to connect external Serial ATA devices as well as no bridges for multiple-graphics card configurations. The accessories bundle includes the only the necessary items, it allows putting a system together and start working immediately. Of you need extended functionality, you will have to purchase everything else separately. If the existing functionality is sufficient for your needs, then you can be happy about the money you saved on the accessories that you don’t really need.
The PCB layout of Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard, just like the layout of all other contemporary Gigabyte boards, looks very convenient and well thought-through. However, you can immediately notice the features indicating that this solution is the junior one in the family: four DDR3 DIMM slots instead of six.
I don’t think that the availability of only four memory slots is a serious drawback, because most of you will use only three of them utilizing thriple0channel memory mode, which is standard for Intel Core i7 processors. Besides, all other features typical of Gigabyte LGA1366 mainboards remained intact. There is enough free room around the processor socket to accommodate large CPU coolers, all power supply connectors are in very convenient spots. The processor voltage regulator circuitry uses only high-quality components and supports four-stage algorithm for changing the number of active phases depending on the operational load at the time.
This way you can get a good look at the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard cooling system built with aluminum heatsinks of pretty sophisticated shape. The heatsink over the chipset North Bridge uses secure screw-on retention that goes through the PCB to the metal plate on the back of the board. All other heatsinks use traditional plastic push-pin retentions.
The expansion card slots located on the lower part of the mainboard PCB include two PCI Express x16 slots for the graphics cards, one PCI Express x4 slot, two PCI Express x1 slots and two regular PCI slots. Intel ICH10R South Bridge provides six Serial ATA ports with RAID support. Two more SATA ports and a Parallel ATA supporting up to two devices are implemented via Gigabyte SATA2 controller. Only the floppy and PATA connectors are in a little inconvenient spots; however, these outdated interfaces become of lesser significance day by day.
The back panel of Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard carries the following connectors and ports:
The quality components layout from the user manual accompanying Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard will give you a complete picture of the layout advantages. You can see six fan connectors, two of which are four-pin ones, two BIOS chips, a COM port, and a row of LEDs indicating the number of active phases in the processor voltage regulator circuitry.
The list of technical specifications from the official company web-site will sum up everything we know about Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R:
Among numerous advantages of Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R we can only find three small drawbacks:
Gigabyte Company designed highly functional and very convenient BIOS for their LGA1366 mainboards. They usually release BIOS updates simultaneously for the entire lineup, and the BIOS of Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard is barely different from the BIOSes of Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme, GA-EX58-UD5 and GA-EX58-UD4P, which we are already very well familiar with. That is why let’s take a quick look at all the features without going too deep into details here. Just in case I would like to remind you once again that you can only get access to all BIOS settings on Gigabyte mainboards by pressing Ctrl-F1 keys in the main menu window.
The first section that we see is “MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.)”, with almost all the settings that might be of interest to enthusiasts and overclocking fans.
This section is very informative and convenient to work with, it allows adjusting most of the critical system parameters. You can fine-tune the settings by using more extensive functionality of the corresponding sub-sections:
“Advanced BIOS Features” section contains a very interesting parameter called “Backup BIOS Image to HDD”. Besides the reserve BIOS microchip, you can also save the BIOS image on your hard drive so that you could use it for system restore in case of failure, but for some reason there is no mention of this feature anywhere in the user manual. How the saving is performed, what file systems are supported, and if it is performed automatically, then where will this image be saved?
“Integrated Peripherals” section offers standard functionality for management of peripheral devices and additional controllers. Among the definite advantages we can mention “Green LAN” function that disconnects the network controller if there is no connection detected. Among the drawbacks, we should point out that USB keyboard and mouse support are disabled by default.
“PC Health Status” section has very little info on the voltages, as usual. However, Gigabyte mainboards still allow adjust the rotation speed of three-pin processor fans, which is an advantage, of course.
I would like to give Gigabyte due credit once again for giving us the opportunity to save up to eight full BIOS settings profiles. Each profile can be given its own unique name, and when you are saving a new profile over the old one you will receive a warning message. You can even say profiles on external storage devices. The system automatically saves the current settings after every successful boot-up so you can use them, too. The only problem is that all profiles will be lost once you update the BIOS.
In conclusion I would like to check out not the most functional but still very well working Q-Flash utility for BIOS updating.
Despite several small drawbacks that any mainboard out there has we can conclude that the junior member of the family - Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard – boasts all the fine tuning options necessary for system optimization and performance improvement as well as for overclocking. Let’s see how the mainboard will behave during our practical performance tests.
We performed all our experiments on the following test platform:
We used Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate (Microsoft Windows, Version 6.1, Build 7600) operating system, a set of chipset drivers version 9.1.0.1012, and ATI Catalyst 9.7 graphics card driver.
I would like to bring to your attention the fact that we continue to upgrade our testbed. This time the changes touched upon the software part of our platform. Namely, we switched from Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate to Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate. I use Windows 7 on my home computer system since the end of last year. Release candidate came to replace the beta version, then came out an even newer version of the OS, but I discovered no serious issues with this operating system over the entire period of time that I have been using it. Since the official launch day is getting close and this OS promises to become very popular among computer users, this transition seems to be happening in the right moment, as it will allow us to prepare for all upcoming innovations.
We experienced no problems of any kind during system assembly, operating system installation or regular everyday work with Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard. All functions and technologies work in default mode that is why the processor clock frequency multiplier was increased to 21x due to Intel Turbo Boost technology. DDR3 SDRAM worked in triple-channel mode at 1066 MHz with 8-8-8-20-1T timings.
In idle mode the multiplier and processor Vcore lowered due to Intel processor power-saving technologies kicking in.
There would be nothing else to add at this point if it weren’t for our four-pin processor fan. The interesting thing is that each of the new mainboards we have tested so far demonstrates a unique ability to control its rotation speed. The first mainboard to “meet” the new fan was ASRock X58 Extreme. Unfortunately, the mainboard controls fan rotation speed using some unrealistically low processor temperature as a reference, which increases and lowers very slowly. This big lag only allows controlling the fan rotation speed automatically only in nominal mode. If we overclock memory or CPU, the fan must be working at its maximum speed, otherwise the system will get overheated long before the mainboard starts responding to temperature increase.
EVGA X58 SLI LE mainboard demonstrated a completely different rotation speed control approach. We can call it “digital”, because the mainboard can’t gradually change the fan rotation speed, it knows only two possible states: zero and 1, on and off. When the CPU temperature is below a certain threshold, the fan rotates at a very low speed. Once it exceeds this threshold, the fan immediately speeds up to maximum 2200 RPM. Despite some evident drawbacks this approach has, this fan rotation speed control solution proved efficient enough for an overclocked processor.
As for Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard, we were very concerned at first that the approach it offered wouldn’t be efficient enough at all. Unlike ASRock X58 Extreme, Gigabyte solution responded immediately to increasing operational load and growing CPU temperature. But unlike EVGA X58 SLI LE, it increased the fan rotation speed slowly and gradually, reaching the maximum at by far not all times. Of course, it means that mainboard will work flawlessly in nominal mode, but will the board cope with an overclocked processor; will it be able to speed up the processor fan before the system starts showing errors caused by massive overheating? Luckily, all our concerns proved ungrounded. It turned out that we don’t have to push the processor fan rotation speed to its maximum every time. Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R proved that in most cases our CPU cooler was efficient enough even at lower fan rotation speed. It improves the acoustic comfort. Moreover, smooth transition from low fan rotation speed to high and back is perceived much better than abrupt jumping from low rotation speed to high and back.
So, we could call Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R a leader among all recently tested solutions. It implements the most optimal approach to controlling processor fan rotation speed, which is efficient enough even during overclocking and doesn’t annoy you from acoustical standpoint. However, when it comes to giving away awards, we should never forget about Asus solutions.
The BIOS of Asus mainboards has so-called “Q-Fan Control” parameter responsible for the adjustment of processor fan rotation speed. It can be set to one of the following three values: Turbo, Standard and Silent. Turbo mode turned out too aggressive for our testing conditions. It increased the fan rotation speed too quickly under heavy processor load, but it still remained way too high in idle mode. Standard mode seemed to be the most optimal of the three. In this case, the startup fan rotation speed is pretty low in idle mode, but as soon as the load increases, it jumps to the maximum very quickly. As for Silent mode, we didn’t consider it as a possibility at first. The startup fan rotation speed was the lowest, which was good, but it didn’t immediately increase to the maximum under heavy load and we assumed that this mode won’t suit for an overclocked processor. However, Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard proved that even during overclocking the fan rotation speed doesn’t have to be pushed to the maximum limit. That is why we got back to Asus P6T tests and confirmed that Silent mode was perfectly suitable for an overclocked CPU and provided much more acoustically comfortable environment than Turbo or Standard modes.
The ability to select one of the three modes for fan rotation speed control in the BIOS is the advantage of Asus mainboards. Overclocking fans have always been pleased with their momentary reaction to workload increase. Even such simple single-threaded application as SuperPI can be detected by ear in this case. Even when an application starts, you will be able to hear slight increase in the fan rotation speed and the immediate return to the previous rotation speed level. This impressive response time is definitely an advantage, but I have to admit that slower and smoother reaction provided by Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R seems to be more acoustically comfortable for everyday work. It may not react to an application launch, but will respond in time to really serious workload increase.
Since at first we didn’t trust the slow and what seemed to be insufficiently effective response time demonstrated by Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R during the adjustment of the processor fan rotation speed, we resorted to brand name EasyTune6 utility to lower this response time. Later on we discovered that even with default settings the board could cool the CPU (and even an overclocked CPU) just fine and all our additional measures only increased the levels of generated noise. However, we would like to use this opportunity and tell you about all the features and functions that EasyTune6 utility has to offer. This is a pretty old program and you should theoretically be well familiar with it by now. In fact, we have already introduced this utility to you in one of our previous articles. However, its functionality has been expanded since then, that is why I believe it makes sense to take a quick glance at this utility one more time in order to refresh your memory on the existing features and introduce the new ones to you.
The first window in EasyTune6 utility reports the major system parameters and CPU specifications:
The second tab shows what’s written in the memory modules SPD. WE can find out the current memory frequency in the next tab, but the memory timings will unfortunately remain hidden from us. Too bad, as this info could be extremely helpful.
“Tuner” tab opens a new window for us. “Quick Boost” function allows selecting one of the three possible overclocking modes that will push the base frequency from the nominal 133 MHz to 140, 150 or 160 MHz.
Don’t miss small tabs in the upper right corner of the utility window that will allow to switch to more detailed overclocking settings. Easy mode allows changing the base frequency manually, while Advanced mode also allows selecting the memory and PCI Express bus frequencies.
“Ratio” tab allows changing the processor clock frequency multiplier. “Voltage” tab offers you to monitor all current voltage settings and change any of the voltages controlled by the board.
“Graphics” tab can help increase the graphics chip and memory frequencies, read the GPU temperature, adjust the graphics card fan rotation speed.
“Smart” window offers you to select one of the automatic overclocking modes, enable or disable processor fan rotation speed control using “Smart Fan” function, or set your own fan rotation speed control parameters with the help of appropriate sliders.
The last tab called “HW Monitor” has very few settings, just like the corresponding BIOS Setup section. Now you can set the temperatures and rotation speeds for the fans when the warning messages should pop up, select the sound alarm signal, change the temperature measuring units.
Overall, despite a number of drawbacks and a few obvious directions for improvement, EasyTune6 utility belongs to a very rare class of brand name applications that can be used normally on everyday basis. It is sufficiently informative, intuitively simple to work with, boasts very strict interface without any excess graphics. In these aspects, the current version is definitely better than all the previous ones as well as some of the alternative tools offered by other mainboard makers.
Just like during work in nominal mode, we didn’t experience any serious problems during CPU and memory overclocking on Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard. However, the mainboard does have a few peculiarities, which we should point out here.
At first we found out that this mainboard guaranteed memory modules stability at their nominal frequency of 1867 MHz. However, besides increasing the memory voltage to 1.65 V, we also had to increase to 1.415 V the QPI/VTT Voltage of the UnCore part of the North Bridge integrated into the CPU. It is a relatively high setting. After that, when we lowered the processor clock frequency multiplier, we confirmed that Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R, just like all other quality mainboards, allows increasing base frequency from 133 to 215 MHz. This is a very good result. After that all we had to do was check if the mainboard could provide the most optimal overclocking mode for our system. In this case we increased the base frequency to 181 MHz. taking into account that Intel Turbo Boost technology increased the processor clock multiplier to 21x, the resulting CPU frequency was 3.8GHz. The memory in this case had to work at 1810 MHz with 8-8-8-22-1T timings. No problem, all performance and stability tests were passed with flying colors.
This overclocking didn’t even require increasing the CPU Vcore, we just had to enable ‘Load-Line Calibration” that prevents the processor core voltage from dropping under heavy load – VDroop. As you can see, the voltage is 1.216 V, which is very close to the nominal setting for our processor sample of 1.225 V. Unlike many other mainboards, Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R doesn’t increase the processor Vcore when VDroop protection is enabled. Due to the fact that processor core voltage wasn’t increasing, all Intel power-saving technologies remained up and running at full swing. In idle mode the clock frequency multiplier and processor core voltage were lowered.
Things looked nearly ideal, but this is when we suddenly uncovered one very unpleasant thing about Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard: it refused to “cold start”. The mainboard successfully passed all tests and checks, turned off and on, but only if it received the power. Once the board was completely disconnected from the power source even for a few seconds, it immediately refused to start. It did undertake a few vain attempts to boot and then started in safe mode displaying the corresponding warning message on the startup screen.
Formally, you don’t need to take any measures, just enter the BIOS and confirm the saved overclocked settings without changing anything. The board will continue to work just fine, but again until the power is fully disconnected. The need for these additional actions, such as accessing the BIOS and confirming the parameter settings on every system boot-up, makes it considerably less comfortable to work and spoils the joy from overclocking achievements.
We have already come across mainboards acting like that and in most cases it was enough to lower the overclocking parameters just a little to fix the situation. So, we lowered the base frequency from 181 to 170 MHz, then to 150 and 140 MHz, but the board still didn’t start. The system refused to boot even when we set the base frequency to the nominal value of 133 MHz. So, it looks like CPU overclocking actually has nothing to do with it, so maybe we have to lower the memory frequency? Nope, even at 1067 MHz memory frequency the board refused to boot. Lowering the memory voltage also didn’t help. It turned out that the problem was in the excessively high “QPI/VTT Voltage. As we found out, the board booted just fine at 1.355 V, but as soon as we set this voltage to 1.375 V or higher, it doesn’t want to boot anymore. Unfortunately, we had to increase QPI/VTT Voltage to 1.415 V to ensure that our memory modules could run at high frequencies, which resulted in failure to cold start.
This is a pretty complicated situation. On the one hand, we don’t want to sacrifice high memory frequency just for the sake of convenience, but on the other, we don’t feel like performing a bunch of extra moves on every boot-up, virtually patting the mainboard on the shoulder and saying “go on, overclock just like I told you before”. Of course, had our memory been working on a bit lower frequency, we may have not noticed this issue at all, but now it is obvious that the owners of high-frequency memory modules should keep in mind the existence of these complications. It is a real shame that this little drop spoilt the so far impeccable image of Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard. The table below will sum up everything we know about the overclocking peculiarities on Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard:
We are going to compare the performance of the junior model in Gigabyte’s family - Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R – against one of the least expensive solutions on Intel X58 Express – Asus P6T. At first we will compare the performance of two testbed configurations in nominal mode. The only changes made to the mainboards’ BIOS settings were connected with enabling Intel processor power-saving technologies. The mainboards configured all other parameters on their own.
We have already come across the situation when Gigabyte mainboards fall dramatically behind their competitors in synthetic memory benchmarks. I don’t know how to explain it, but I have stopped worrying about it long time ago, because in all other test applications Gigabyte mainboards are just as fast or even faster than their opponents. This time, the mainboards performed about the same in all tests except the memory benchmarks, as usual.
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that we included Resident Evil 5 Benchmark into our gaming tests. We added this game for its rare ability to use processor resources extremely effectively. By default, the number of threads a game can use equals “n-1”, where “n” is the maximum number of computational threads in the system. Of course, if you have a single-core CPU, the game will share the core computational capacity with the OS, and in case of a dual-core processor will have only one thread at its complete disposal. In our case, the calculations were performed using seven threads and the achieved average test speed was only a little over 100 fps. Remember this number, we will need it later on.
Now let’s see how the two solutions will perform during system overclocking. Gigabyte mainboards used to be known for yielding to their competitors during overclocking even if their performance was the same in nominal mode. These sad times are long gone, this time the boards perform almost equally fast and we don’t see Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R fall behind even in memory benchmarks.
I would like to draw your attention to the Resident Evil 5 benchmark test once again. It is no secret that Intel Hyper Threading technology known from the days of Pentium 4 processors is not always good for performance. This technology allows to double the number of computational threads, which significantly speeds up the applications that can be well paralleled. However, disabling Hyper-Threading in games often allows to increase the performance even at the same CPU frequency, no matter how paradoxical it may seem. And if we take into account that this technology contributes a lot to processor power consumption and heat dissipation, disabling it usually allows us to overclock the processor even more and therefore increase the performance even greater.
Resident Evil 5 belongs to the new generation of games that can efficiently use the potential of multi-core processors, including those supporting Intel Hyper-Threading technology. After we overclocked our system the performance increased beyond 150 fps, which is more than 1.5 times (over 50%) higher than in the nominal mode. We have never seen such an impressive performance boost without any graphics card overclocking involved. This game should be available on PC platform in the fall, so I don’t know yet how good it is, but we definitely need games like that and have been waiting for them for a long time.
We measured the power consumption using Extech Power Analyzer 380803 device. This device was connected before the system PSU, i.e. it measured the power consumption of the entire system without the monitor, including the power losses that occur in the PSU itself. When we took the power readings in idle mode, the system was completely idle: there were even no requests sent to the hard drive at that time. We used LinX program to load the CPU. For more illustrative picture we created a graph showing the power consumption growth depending on the increase in CPU utilization as the number of active computational threads in LinX changed.
In nominal mode both mainboards - Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R and Asus P6T – demonstrate almost the same level of power consumption, in all modes the difference makes no more than 5 W. both mainboards are pretty energy-efficient, but the differences stand out during overclocking.
In idle mode Gigabyte mainboard consumes less power, which isn’t surprising. Asus mainboards, except the top models from the Republic of Gamers series can’t overclock CPUs well without increasing their core voltage. However, in this case Intel processor power-saving technologies partially stop working, while on Gigabyte mainboard they stay up and running without any restrictions. The difference in the beginning of the graph is quite noticeable and makes 11 W. under relatively low workload the boards consume about the same power, but I can’t explain why Gigabyte mainboard starts consuming considerably more power under maximum CPU utilization. We have already mentioned that unlike many other mainboards, Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R doesn’t increase the processor core voltage under heavy load for a reason. However, there is no mistake here: the difference is very noticeable and makes 19 W, but this time not in Gigabyte’s favor.
We often come across excellent looking mainboards that suddenly demonstrate their by far not the most attractive sides during the practical tests. This is when the review that starts greatly, ends on a sad note. I am extremely pleased that nothing like that happened this time and our initial great impression from Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard remained the same.
Gigabyte engineers did a great job with the design of this solution, provided it with a list of features that are up to all contemporary standards and may satisfy even the most pretentions users. Some of you may be upset to see no additional brackets for external Serial ATA devices or bridges for multi-card graphics configurations, but most will hardly even notice that. Just like the entire LGA1366 Gigabyte mainboard lineup, our today’s hero has BIOS with excellent functionality that doesn’t yield to any of the top solutions. Moreover, nothing prevented us from taking advantage of all these functions: the board worked perfectly fine in nominal mode and allowed us to easily overclock CPU and memory. As for the performance and power consumption, the board again proved up to the mark, having proven just as efficient as any other similar mainboards. However, Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R has a serious advantage over many competitors: since it is the junior model in the lineup, its price is relatively low.
Unfortunately, the failure to cold start at high QPI/VTT Voltage settings becomes a sharp dissonance to this idyllic picture. Although this is an obvious drawback, it is still pretty relative. Users don’t often buy elite memory modules for use in junior mainboard models, and if you don’t hunt for high memory frequencies, then you won’t even experience this issue at all. So, for you Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R is very likely to become that ideal mainboard with a bunch of advantages and no drawbacks. The board that you have been looking for all this time.