Final Words & Conclusion
The Verdict
What a lovely board. The X58 from eVGA is some work in progress though, so if you are really afraid of BIOS FLASH updates ... steer clear of this one for another couple of weeks. During my one week of testing this board, two new BIOS updates were released.
Why do I tell about that? Well, I did stumbled into a small number of issues. When I flashed the latest BIOS in we still had a problem with getting the motherboard to post every now and then. One day later I we received a mail back from eVGA, again a new BIOS, identifying what one of my problems was. So again a flash update was needed.
Then there was the fact that the baseline performance of thus motherboard performs roughly equal to Intel's X58. And that was something we didn't see on any of the other brands which all were marginally faster. Now, these differences are so small that you actually have to measure them synthetically, and in real world performance you'll not notice that difference. But it's there alright. We think that the current motherboard does not pick up our memory timings 100%
The first two BIOSes did not have a selectable 1600 MHz DDR3 frequency. So to achieve that we had to start overclocking the QPI. Which was a little weird having to do. The latest BIOS however now supports a 1600 MHz memory out of the box. So as you can see, things like these are what you need to be aware of. It will take eVGA probably a couple of more weeks to iron out these smaller bugs and features.
What I can't ignore is that the potential of this motherboard is really good. The overall baseline performance is on par with the Intel reference board, but the board starts to really shine once you start overclocking. So in retrospect I'd say that the motherboard is a bit of a challenge and targeted at the die-hard enthusiast users out there who know what they are doing. It's a rough diamond in the works.
Fact is, the overall design of the motherboard is just really good. Everything is placed onto the PCB in an orderly and logical fashion, from 8-pin power header for the CPU, up-to the color coding of the front panel headers.
Features. Well, you get everything you need, and then a little more really. This is where eVGA did their best for sure. Simple items as optical SPDIF, 8x USB, two Gigabit Ethernet connection are just great. But where real quality shows is the 9 SATA ports and that additional eSATA header, the POST Diagnostic LED, CMOS switch, six DIMM slots, 3-way SLI compatibility. Really the motherboard is jammed full with little surprises, and that what I like to see so much with motherboards in this class of products.
You'll absolutely like how much detail goes into the design. It's an excellent match for a delicious processor series. Next to being one of the most feature rich X58 products we tested so far, we do believe it has massive tweaking potential as well. If you'd buy this product right now, you'll likely will have to flash the BIOS a couple of times before it has reached it's fullest potential. But I didn't mind and figured it was worth it. Within a couple of weeks, this little diamond won't be so rough any more and though the board already shines ... by then it'll be downright good.
High-end enthusiast gear like this does come at a price though, expect to cough up somewhere between 289 EUR or 299 USD for the product, but it's a very nice platform for your processor to sit comfortable and relaxed in. We enjoyed testing it very much, and to see that Core i7 processor run at 4.2 GHz within a couple of minutes tweaking was just awesome. Definitely recommended.
Give eVGA a visit here.
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