Gigabyte X58A-UD9 review

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BIOS | Final Words & Conclusion

BIOS / features overview

Below, an overview of the BIOS. The BIOS very much caters for overclocking and offers a really wide variety of choices.

Since showing motherboard BIOS screenshots always misses out a lot we are now switching to high-definition video footage showing you around in the BIOS. This way we hope to give you a better insight of BIOS features and functionality.

A plethora of options can be found in the BIOS really -- it's a tweakers Valhalla. We hope you like this new approach of showing you BIOS features with the help of high-definition footage.

Final Words & Conclusion

It is nearly ridiculous how mouth-watering the X58A-UD9 really is. Not a single part was not thought through extremely well, you seriously only get the best of the best. This motherboard is a performance beast!

The baseline performance is top notch and ranks as the fastest X58 motherboard we have tested thus far, and when you start to overclock, then that's where things really take off. With the Noctua D14 heatpipe based cooler cooler on the processor this motherboard allowed us to drive the processor very close to 4.5 GHz and and that's a six-core Core i7 980X processor. Reaching even higher performance would require us to use liquid-cooling, phase-change cooling, dry ice or liquid nitrogen. But we are happy @ a 100% stable 4.5 GHz with a heatpipe based cooling solution.

What's very positive is that Gigabyte went all the way and decided to include two NVIDIA NF200 ICs. The result is that we have seven (!) PCI-Express slots, and even more importantly we can opt to go quad-SLI with x16 PCIe lanes available on each of the four ports. The NF200 ICs are a mandatory requirement from NVIDIA, locked at driver level to make that happen. Now understand the logic of that, as it adds additional cost of the chips to this motherboard. Especially for the professional overclockers scene trying to break records this is mandatory. We do think that with a single graphics card, the NF200 switch ICs add a little latency on the bus, as performance was a tiny bit slower than expected in baseline configuration. But it's very little though.

We also notice that there is plenty of bandwidth for the USB 3.0 and SATA3 6G controllers as their respective performance is really good. The overall motherboard design is spectacular in all ways as well, the really nice design, the option to use the liquid cooling block on the chipset, the exceptional arrangement of all apparatus used, the high class components, the functions, the wide variety of options, the overclockability, and on and on...

Is there a negative then? Oh yeah...  a couple of hundred of them, this motherboard costs 650 USD / 475 EUR. Just looking at that price automatically enables nervous laughter on my face. It is a ridiculous amount of money for a motherboard, true. But in a weird way it is however justifiable. See, all the extra ICs on this motherboard like the NEC USB controllers, Marvell Sata6G chips, the two NF200 NVIDIA chips, the liquid cooling block, the components usage and on and on simply accumulate in production cost. So even at the current price I doubt that Gigabyte is even making a decent profit on the motherboard, as this is one hell of an expensive motherboard to produce considering the small market that will buy it. But yeah, 99.98% of you guys can never afford it either. Small stuff, we'd like to see manual FAN RPM control in the BIOS and more standard G1/4" threads on the PCH block instead of barbs.

The overall board layout is just excellent, the integrated passive cooling performs exceptionally well, the number of expansion slots is... well, nearly ridiculous, and then the extra candy like SATA 6Gbps, USB 3.0, full Quad SLI support and a BIOS personalized for overclockability; it's just a few tricks of many that this product has to offer. And you know what, there's just so much more to discover with all the GBT software, and then just look at the PCB from a different angle and you'll discover something new.

Now I know less than a handful of people who already purchased this motherboard, and simply asked them this question... "Was it worth that massive investment?" -- and they all answered yes. So if your wallet matches your requirements and wishes then we actually dare recommending it.besthardwareaward4.jpg

One last note, have you noticed that the PCB is chock full and literally there isn't any space left for other ICs and components? Now bear in mind that this mobo is larger than your typical motherboard, it has an extended XL-ATX form factor, and as such will not fit into 'any' case. Make sure that it actually fits your chassis okay?

Regardless of what you feel about the price level, the Gigabyte X58A-UD9 is a leading class of its own, a grand motherboard that belongs amongst enthusiast end-users, pro-users and professional overclockers. It is an excellent piece of hardware.

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