Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 Review
by Ian Cutress on December 26, 2011 4:37 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Gigabyte
- X79
- Sandy Bridge E
Many thanks to...
Many thanks go to G.Skill once again, for providing us with their latest RipjawsZ kit, after an accident caused one of my previous review memory kit DIMMs to no longer work. The kit G.Skill sent us is their F3-19200CL9Q-16GBZMD, a 4x4 GB kit for X79, rated at DDR3-2400 CL9 11-11-31 at 1.65V. This makes it a very fast kit on the market, which is represented in its large price tag.
Test Setup
| Processor |
Intel Sandy Bridge-E i7-3960X 6 Cores, 12 Threads, 3.3 GHz (3.9 GHz Turbo) |
| Motherboards | Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 |
| Cooling | Intel All-In-One Liquid Cooler, made by Asetek |
| Power Supply | Silverstone 1000W 80 PLUS Silver |
| Memory | G.Skill RipjawsZ DDR3-2400 CL9 11-11-31 4x4 GB Kit 1.65V |
| Memory Settings | XMP |
| Video Cards |
XFX HD 5850 1GB ECS GTX 580 1536MB |
| Video Drivers |
Catalyst 11.8 NVIDIA Drivers 285.62 |
| Hard Drive | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed - CoolerMaster Lab V1.0 |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit |
| SATA Testing | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| USB 2/3 Testing | Patriot 64GB SuperSonic USB 3.0 |
Power Consumption
Power consumption was tested on the system as a whole with a wall meter connected to the power supply, while in a dual GPU configuration. This method allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency. These are the real world values that consumers may expect from a typical system (minus the monitor) using this motherboard.
CPU Temperatures
With most users’ running boards on purely default BIOS settings, we are running at default settings for the CPU temperature tests. This is, in our outward view, an indication of how well (or how adventurous) the vendor has their BIOS configured on automatic settings. With a certain number of vendors not making CPU voltage, turbo voltage or LLC options configurable to the end user, which would directly affect power consumption and CPU temperatures at various usage levels, we find the test appropriate for the majority of cases. This does conflict somewhat with some vendors' methodology of providing a list of 'suggested' settings for reviewers to use. But unless those settings being implemented automatically for the end user, all these settings do for us it attempt to skew the results, and thus provide an unbalanced 'out of the box' result list to the readers who will rely on those default settings to make a judgment. CPU Temperatures are not really indicative of quality or performance, even though one would postulate that worse parts may produce higher temperatures. However, if a manufacturer uses more conductive material in the power plane, this reduces resistance and increases the voltage at the CPU, causing a higher temperature but potentially better stability.
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Death666Angel - Tuesday, December 27, 2011 - link
But there are those that use X79 as a gaming rig because of it's higher PCIe-lane count. So I see nothing wrong with offering options for everyone. :-)alxnet2003 - Tuesday, December 27, 2011 - link
FWIW, I've been buying up 16GB (2x8GB) sticks of G.Skill from newegg for what I thought was pretty cheap. I've got my ASUS X79 populated with 48GB right now (4x4 and 4x8). What's the point of using 48GB? I do a lot of video editing and x264 encoding. Having a sizable RAM drive really speeds up the editing and muxing process.freedom4556 - Tuesday, December 27, 2011 - link
These have been recalled. Seems the VRM likes to explode while overclocking! Gigabyte owners have two choices, update to a neutered BIOS that will err on the side of caution to protect the weak VRM, or get a replacement board from Gigabyte sometime later down the line.TechPowerUp reports:
http://www.techpowerup.com/157543/Gigabyte-Recalli...
A video of one such incident:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detail...
sonci - Tuesday, December 27, 2011 - link
Ha Ha again Gigabyte,I remember my nforce 4sli, one of the mosfet exploded in fire, with not so agressive overclock,
Gigabyte at that times used a dual power board, so I still used my board for some years after the explosion..
vailr - Tuesday, December 27, 2011 - link
How does the "Fresco" USB 3.0 controller on this board compare with the more common NEC/Renesas USB 3.0 controller?Also: when might we see Windows officially support a bootable USB 3.0 external hard drive?
This "rev.1.0" board is still listed for sale at Newegg, even though it has been officially recalled by Gigabyte?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Perseides - Wednesday, December 28, 2011 - link
If im not mistaken, is'nt this model of mobo havin some problem with the MOFSET burnin off, n GIGABYTE is recalling them?http://www.gigabyte.tw/press-center/news-page.aspx...
LoosCarl - Sunday, January 1, 2012 - link
Get this GIGABYTE GA-X79-UD3 Motherboard from Amazon: http://cl.lk/21hkxjrsdougal - Monday, January 2, 2012 - link
Looks like the new F7 BIOS does indeed fix thermal issues and improve overclocking.http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Gigabyte-X79-UD3-...
binqq - Friday, January 6, 2012 - link
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