Gigabyte X79 UD7 review -
The X79 chipset
The X79 chipset
Sandy Bridge-E needs a new accompanying chipset, X79 is what it's called. For those that are wondering, the internal codename for this chipset is Patsburg. Compared to X58 with a Gulftown processor there are obviously significant changes, since the Northbridge is housed inside the actual processor these days. That means that Sandy Bridge-E will connect directly to the X79 Express chipset through the DMI interconnect.
X79 Express chipset has been the topic of much discussion over the months as specs simply did not seem to finalize. Fact remains that it seems the chipset has been downgraded. Two of the changes might explain what we told you earlier, we think the PCI Express 3.0 storage uplink to the CPU was canceled out and Intel decided to cut out four SATA/SAS 6Gbps ports. And that brings us to a chipset that resembles P67 very much.
In the end you will only two SATA 6 Gb/s ports and four SATA 3 Gb/s ports supported natively by the chipset. So that is six in total for which you may configure RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 if that pleases you.
Motherboard manufacturers can, and likely will add Marvell, ASmedia and JMicron controllers to get that number up as for the most high-end chipset this seems a little too "mainstream".
USB ports then; this is just weird, the chipset only supports USB 2.0, not 3.0. A choice we do not understand for Intel's best offering anno 2011. You get 14 ports made available to you. USB 3.0 support once again will need to come from 3rd party controllers with extra core logic and thus overall costs mounted onto the motherboard.
Overclocking with Sandy Bridge-E
Good news for Sandy Bridge-E based platforms is overclockability. The original Sandy Bridge processors at the default baseclock (BLCK) were rather horrible to overclock. It has a lot to do with how the processor deals with the embedded graphics subsystem. If you were lucky you'd be able to increase the baseclock maybe 5 to 10 MHz multiplied at best. This is why the K and now X model processors have been introduced, easy overclocking by increasing the multiplier up-to a multiplier of 57.
This feature of course remains the same for Sandy Bridge-E with the X (Extreme) and K models. However, you should be able to overclock on the baseclock a little better now as well thanks to a new buffer chip that allows for 33 MHz increments.
Meanwhile we'll all still overclock based on the multiplier as it is 10x more easy and efficient to do so. We'll show you the overclocked results throughout the article. Regardless, the results will be flabbergasting.
In this review, we benchmark the GeForce RTX 3080 AORUS XTREME 10G from Gigabyte; yes AORUS is back with their super-premium model loaded with cooling, an LCD screen, and among the best factory tw...
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Gaming OC PRO review
We review the Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 Ti Gaming OC PRO 8GB. Armed with admirable looks, a beast of a cooler this card runs both silent and at low temperatures, whilst performing at GeForce RTX 2080...
Gigabyte B550 Vision D review
Meet the Gigabyte B550 Vision D motherboard. This product from the Vision series (which includes also a Z490 motherboard) is an AMD AM4 socket product targeted at creators. Built in the ATX form-factor, the design resembles GB’s Designaire models. Make no mistake, this is a high-end product. It should provide excellent stability, and boasts features not to be found in cheaper models.
Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro review
B550 Chipset based motherboards are among us, and there are some pretty interesting ones available. We review the B550 Aorus Pro that offers 2.5 GigE Ethernet and two M2 NVMe slots. The board price si...