EVGA X58 Classified - First Look
by Rajinder Gill on February 27, 2009 5:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
The Wet Stuff
We used water-cooling for our 24/7 stability runs. This is the same configuration we used when testing the EVGA X58 SLI. Using our i7-920 CPU, we were determined to find the maximum Prime95 stable overclock achievable on both boards by using the 19x multiplier (for BCLK addicts) and later the 21x multiplier to find the limits in raw CPU frequency. It is not surprising that both boards managed to overclock pretty close to one another considering our cooling system. The main differences between the boards are when we installed three GTX 280 cards along with a 6GB (3x2GB) memory configuration.
It's mostly academic, but the Classified pulls away by a small margin with 6GB of memory installed, although both boards will run 3x1GB at 215 BCLK. The EVGA X58 SLI board would not run any 8-thread CPU or 3D tests past 215 BCLK for us, while the Classified happily chugs along at 222 BCLK for 3DMark06 and 3DMark Vantage while retaining full stability in other applications. We could increase BCLK up to 227 for suicide runs in these particular benchmarks, but this would create stability problems in other programs.
The Cold Stuff
We used a test room with low ambient temperatures (16C) for the following benchmarks. We used water-cooling when the CPU was operating at 4.5GHz or below and Cascade cooling for benchmarks over this processor speed.
Conventional cooling methods will not show much gain in terms of how far you can push your CPU even with the X58 Classified board in your system. Thermal limitations of the Core i7 will surpass some of the benefits that the improved power circuitry of the Classified board will provide for overclocking users. What you will find is that the more robust nature of the X58 Classified becomes apparent when all slots are completely loaded in a heavily overclocked system.
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CK804 - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
This motherboard costs $400-$450 and it comes with Realtek audio and LAN? Give me a break. I would at the very least expect a dedicated audio card for this price.GaryJohnson - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
And if you load it up with 4x GPUs, I don't think you actually have a slot available for any other expansion cards. They really need to move to some kind of new, longer form factor for boards like this. Something like a 16" x 9.6" 'LATX' form factor.JarredWalton - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
The only way you'll get 4x GPUs is via 2x GeForce GTX 295 or 2x Radeon HD 4870X2... in which case you would have several expansion slots remaining. But as our SLI/CF scaling articles have shown, outside of bragging rights in a few select titles there's little point in going beyond two-way GPU configurations.legoman666 - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
2 8pin power connectors on the mobo? Why?1078feba - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
How about 600W of available power to the proc socket?takumsawsherman - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
Clearly, this board appears to be for crazy people. You spend $400 and you still get old school Firewire 400? At that price, there should be no compromises. Firewire800, and also somebody's soul. Or something.bigboxes - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
Is this all that you have to gripe about? Were you really going to purchase this board, but now suddenly you can't justify it due to this obvious oversight? :eyeroll: Seriously, I bought a 4-port firewire card in the past that sits in a box. Why? Cuz I never EVER used the thing. USB 2.0 will suffice until USB 3.0. Even Apple computers have more USB jacks than Firewire. If you want a function that hardly anyone uses than just buy an expansion card. I am certain the target for this mobo is not one that gives a rats about Firewire. They are gamers. They can always use e-SATA if they need faster transfer speeds in an external.Exar3342 - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
This board is for people that spend $1000.00 on a cpu and have 3-4 GTX 285's, and have spent a ton on a cooling setup. I really doubt they will notice an extra $150.00 for the motherboard.ToeCutter - Thursday, March 26, 2009 - link
Exactly. I'm thinking of snagging one of these just for the simple color scheme that doesn't look like a bag of Starburst.How about just a jet black PCB and some monotone slots.
Skip a sushi dinner and it's paid for....?
Nfarce - Friday, February 27, 2009 - link
While that may be true, said people are becoming fewer and far between these days, and some of those who could afford such machines are probably scaling back their spending (the smart ones anyway). The days of people ordering $3,000+ worth of stuff and putting it on their credit cards and paying it off monthly are numbered. People need to learn to live within their means so we don't get in this huge economic global mess again.