Gigabyte Announces Their New Flagship Motherboard: The X58A-UD9
by Ian Cutress on May 12, 2010 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Gigabyte are currently attacking the X58 market; with no less than 10 boards, from the budget EX58-UD3R (and it's upgrade, the X58A-UD3R) to the premium EX58-EXTREME, their latest board tacks on the moniker of the X58A-UD9.
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In terms of board features, you get support for 6-core Gulftown processors, 4 way SLI and Crossfire X across 7 PCI-E 2.0 slots using 2 NF200 chips (for x16, x8, x16, x8, x16, x8, x16 lanes), support for tri-channel DDR3-2200+ memory, onboard buttons for power, reset and clear CMOS, 2x Realtek Gigabit ethernet connectors, 2x SATA 6Gb/s connectors using the newest Marvell controller, and 2 USB3 connectors.
Unsurprisingly, Gigabyte are also marketing their own specific motherboard standards: DualBIOS, allowing for BIOS backup protection; Hybrid Silent-Pipe 2 design for heat conductance across the chipset and VRMs such that a fan is not needed (however connectors are provided for water cooling); and a hardware control IC for precision voltage control. Gigabyte’s penchant for high phase counts also rears its head in the form of a ’24 phase’ VRM (current handling capabilities are unknown to us at present). Also of note is the On/Off Charge support, allowing USB devices to be powered by certain USB ports when the motherboard is powered down - Gigabyte can utilise this by supplying 3x more power to these USB ports.
The board is obviously aimed at enthusiasts wanting to break overclocking records. There's no word on price, but it's most likely to be more expensive than the EX58-Extreme, which currently retails at a $349 minimum.
If this board comes our way, we'll let you know how it performs.
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SonicIce - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link
you got me again i thought this was a review. cool thoChloiber - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link
Remove the "Read More" button if there is nothing more would be great.KaarlisK - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link
For otherwise, we could just read the linked specs :pAs an example:
"using the newest Marvell controller" actually means the SE9128, which has the ability to use multiple PCIe lanes to achieve full(er) SATA 6GBPS bandwidth; though many boards, for example from ASUS, successfully use the older controller & a PLX bridge chip.
2 NF200 chips - how are the PCIe connections routed, which slots are actually closer latency&bandwidth-wise to each other, what is the real bandwidth? What could those slots be useful for? How many 2-slot expansion boards can be used? For an Anandtech writer, this should be easy to find/figure out, and would add much value to the article. The article would still remain short, still take virtually no time to write, but would be MUCH more interesting to readers.
Also, is a board with 7 PCIe slots and two NF200 chips really aimed at breaking overclocking records? Yes, it has significant overclocking capabilities for those who need them too, but for breaking records, there must definitely be better choices. Two NF200 chips also increase power consumption, noting which might be interesting to some readers.
Best luck with future articles :)
jonup - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link
I love the idea to have short articles about new products. I would suggest that you keep the text on the home page to a minimum. This way we could differentiate a review from product announcement on the home page and will reduce the amount of scrolling. Once you click on the title you go to the article and read the full announcement. As it stands right now there is too much clutter on the home page.Typo (please edit my post when fixed): "Gigabyte announce" should be either "Gigabyte announces" or "Gigabyte announced"
Cheers!
Texpat - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link
Thanks for the enjoyable read. It's the perfect length for me, I'll get more info from their site.Oh, and I think 'Gigabyte announce' is good too.
strikeback03 - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link
I went to the Gigabyte site to try and figure out what the expansion card looking thing in the photo is, but while there I noticed it appears to have 2 8-pin CPU power connectors. Does any PSU have 2 of those?Rajinder Gill - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link
The PCP and Antec models have dual 8-pin. Bear in mind the board works fine just using one for 99% of users..bigboxes - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link
Do you think we could get an actual review of any products? If I wanted to read a press release... Seriously AnandTech, this more is not better. Your top four articles don't provide any depth beyond the intro press release. Do you guys really have nothing to write about? More writers, but even less substance. Unbelievable.KaarlisK - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link
Not to mention that for quality writers, it would take literally 5 minutes to add some short, but very interesting substance. Just a short analysis of the specs/implications, notes on what might the advantages and caveats of a certain product be, etc.Affectionate-Bed-980 - Monday, May 17, 2010 - link
Except the problem is we've LOST good motherboard reviews. Anandtech used to cover a lot of great motherboard reviews, and even though we were never the king of Mobo reviews, I remember even AT went into great depth about the DFI NF4 Ultra/SLI board that was the best A64 939 board to get 5 years ago. But now we get nothing.The X58 coverage was trash at best. It was really a roundup of the 4 motheboards that were available at launch. I don't even recall Gigabyte being reviewed. Meanwhile, Tom's Hardware which we all learned to despise used like 3 roundups? (Budget, midrange, and high end) to cover X58 boards. And even that didn't get everything, especially with the new rev2 X58 boards out. So seriously Anandtech, what the hell is a press release of the UD9 for when you never covered the original X58-UD3/4/5 boards, and certainly not the new X58A-3/5/7/9 boards?