EVGA X58 Classified - First Look

Initial Thoughts

That is all we have for you at this time as the final retail release is rumored to be sometime in March with review samples arriving right beforehand. Users will need to gauge if they think spending an additional $100~$150 on the Classified is justified over excellent boards from ASUS, Gigabyte, DFI, and even EVGA in the $300 price range. This board will provide slightly higher QPI frequency abilities when overclocking with air- or water-based cooling solutions. It also has the ability to handle high capacitive loads (slots loaded completely) with ease. So far, the NF200 bridge chip has not been an adverse liability on graphics performance. Yes, there is a slight latency penalty, but it is not noticeable in most conditions.

For the ever demanding benchmarking community, you'll need to find a CPU that can take advantage of the 600W peak power this board can deliver. 8-thread CPU tests over 5GHz CPU speeds draw in excess of 400W peaks on this platform. Thus far, it's been hard to divide the various X58 boards in our labs into certain overclocking categories because there are very few "pre-screened" processors available from Intel that allow both high QPI and core speeds under chilled conditions. Our various retail processors do not fall into this category, although we have a couple of excellent processors for air- or water-cooling. However, they are not the same when run at subzero temperatures as some of the processors in the hands of the more fanatical benchmarking personnel found at various forums.

Below 4.5GHz, most of the X58 motherboards available are usually not a limiting factor. Perhaps we'll have to wait until the release of the upcoming D0 processor stepping before we can really start to see a gap between i7 motherboard capabilities in the 4GHz~4.5GHz range. EVGA's own results with higher quality processors have the board running 8-thread CPU tests at over 5GHz with an SLI configuration, so the potential is certainly there on this board.

We have found the X58 Classified to be the easiest board to use for subzero cooling. All of the other boards we have (ASUS, Gigabyte, Foxconn, and DFI) seem to present us with earlier cold boot limits, memory limits, and/or power up limits, which combine to make benchmarking at subzero temperatures very tricky.

The Classified's slot layout will appeal to those that run multiple graphics cards and still need room for a RAID controller or sound card. Most of the users we have spoken with over the past few weeks are weighing these types of options. Testing to date has indicated a multitude of peripherals work fine on this early sample with the current BIOS, so one would hope that retail release continues or betters this state of affairs.

If money is no object, the X58 Classified and its overclocking features make this board the new king of the hill. There is nothing on the horizon quite like it or as robust in no-nonsense power delivery for high processor clocks (even in early production form). With a high launch price, estimated to be in the $400~$450 region, EVGA knows they cannot afford any slip ups and rightly so.