Gigabyte EX58-Extreme Sneak Peek

sweet, first! I like that the socket is spaced a good ways away from the edge.
 
looking forward to this review. especially with the air cooled unit on the NB, also Like the idea of all those Sata port perfect for alot of hd space.
 
Ihaveworms said:
sweet, first! I like that the socket is spaced a good ways away from the edge.
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You will notice that on the Intel, ASUS, and Gigabyte boards that the socket is centered with the DIMM slots. When I questioned the ASUS lead engineer about this a month ago he explained that ASUS found that it remedied some DRAM latency issues ASUS was having with the design. So anyway, the CPU socket placement is not by chance.
 
That's an impressive looking board. I can't wait to see the whole review.

Oh, and I know it's been mentioned before, but I absolutely love the video previews and reviews!
 
This thing should clock better than the eVGA board. Care to give us some early hints at the overclockabililty of this board?
 
I didn't see the Crossfire and SLI stickers/logos on the box you showed in the clip but I'm assuming its certified for both?
 
The cooling solution on that board is truly ridicules.
Waiting for DFI to launch their X58 board with Thermalright gear.
 
Very nice looking board.

Having a little sticker shock though... as I'm used to being cheap and paying $150+- for a mobo.

I guess I'm going to have to wait for the mainstream mobos for Nehalem to do an upgrade.
 
trudude said:
This thing should clock better than the eVGA board. Care to give us some early hints at the overclockabililty of this board?
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Dunno about that but, I just got a new BIOS (F4B). F2 was doing some crazy stuff not allowing me to keep settings. BIOS seem to be the X58 weak point so far rather than any hardware issues. Of course none of these are mature yet.

TYoda said:
I didn't see the Crossfire and SLI stickers/logos on the box you showed in the clip but I'm assuming its certified for both?
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Yes, both.

aldy402 said:
do you feel much of a weight difference with the 2oz copper pcb?
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I dropped it and killed the cat. Last time the cat was just unconscious for a while.

HardDrugsUser said:
The cooling solution on that board is truly ridicules.
Waiting for DFI to launch their X58 board with Thermalright gear.
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I am not sure why it is "ridicules." Gigabyte's last NB cooler was the best we had seen and if you are not using those slots, it is greatness to me. That all said, do we need it? Does it make a difference?

Jack Hammer said:
Peach is hardly a manly color, but it'd be hidden in a case anyway. :)
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Roger that. Dark blue would have been much better. That last PCIe just looks out of place.
 
Love the video much much better than a pic.


The 2 ounce copper inner layers (typically power and ground planes) are a welcome quality improvement despite the horror I experienced at learning prior boards (likely all manufacturers) where 1 ounce copper. In my experience (telecom) any trace handling over 50A should be 4 ounce copper and the CPU can certainly pull 50A easy. Just to be clear the oz (weight) of the trace has to do with its thickness in order to dissipate heat and carry more current with carry more current reliably the primary concern. Since they are the inner layers the heat is mostly trapped by the fiberglass substrate anyway. It makes no appreciable difference in the weight of a populated board for any concerns we might have.

LOL I noticed all that fancy cooling appears to be held to the MB with 2 cent weak spring plastic push pins. yuck !
 
Had to login to post.. which I dont do often. Just wanted to say great preview. good video.
 
nice looking board, does look good with the blue.

sorry to hear about the meowmasaurus. :D
 
HardDrugsUser said:
As you demonstrated in the video, the water block is mounted on top of a thick heat sink. As you surely know, the water block effectiveness is greatly affected by the thickness of the metal between the heat source and the running liquid. The less the thickness between the heat source and the running liquid, the greater the cooling effectiveness of the block. All successful water blocks try to have their base thickness to minimum.
Mounting that water block on top of underlying heat sink reduces the water block effectiveness to none.
This is a pure marketing scam to me.
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Thanks for at letting us know what your actual problem with the unit is. I don't agree with you fully however. But that if for another time.
 
Kyle, any initial thoughts regarding this board as compared to the PT6 (Stability and OC'ing wise)?

Thanks!
 
From what I understand, the only difference between this and the EX58-UD5P is added cooling solution. Looking forward to the full review, since I'm deciding between the Gigabyte and the Asus P6T
 
Have been eyeballing this board and am very interested in this board because of the 16-16-8X Crosfire/SLI slot config. (planed on the 10 slot case from Lian Le anyway). Everybody else seems to stuck on ASUS (16-16-1 or 16-8-8), props to Kyle for being the first to seriously consider alternatives & love the videos man!…… :)
 
marzzes said:
Have been eyeballing this board and am very interested in this board because of the 16-16-8X Crosfire/SLI slot config. (planed on the 10 slot case from Lian Le anyway). Everybody else seems to stuck on ASUS (16-16-1 or 16-8-8), props to Kyle for being the first to seriously consider alternatives & love the videos man!…… :)
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i think you were wrong it is the same since x58 has only 32 lane in total
 
Was that a shallow bowl of processors i saw (around 2:15 mark)? Looked to be 5 or so laying in there. I'm sure if you're careful that wouldnt be a danger, but i dont think that's a method i'd use myself. Maybe i'm just too gentle with my hardware or think they're extra fragile in my head.
 
Buyers said:
Was that a shallow bowl of processors i saw (around 2:15 mark)? Looked to be 5 or so laying in there. I'm sure if you're careful that wouldnt be a danger, but i dont think that's a method i'd use myself. Maybe i'm just too gentle with my hardware or think they're extra fragile in my head.
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Have not lost one yet. And I just counted, there are 27 processors on the table now. All 775, 1366, and AM2. Maybe I should get a really big bowl and ditch the trays? ;) In all seriousness the bowl keeps them together better and is easier to pick them up out of.
 
fine print

(Note 3) For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16_1 slot; if you are installing two PCI Express graphics cards, it is recommended that you install them in the PCIEX16_1 and PCIEX16_2 slots.
(Note 4) The PCIEX8_1 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16_2 slot. When PCIEX8_1 is populated with a PCI Express graphics card, the PCIEX16_2 slot will operate at up to x8 mode.
 
PAo_ReVoLT said:
fine print

(Note 3) For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16_1 slot; if you are installing two PCI Express graphics cards, it is recommended that you install them in the PCIEX16_1 and PCIEX16_2 slots.
(Note 4) The PCIEX8_1 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16_2 slot. When PCIEX8_1 is populated with a PCI Express graphics card, the PCIEX16_2 slot will operate at up to x8 mode.
Click to expand...
heh, what a drag.
 
marzzes said:
heh, what a drag.
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The real question is, "Would you ever know unless you were told?" My contention is that it has no impact on gaming. There is more than enough bandwidth there for we are doing now days.
 
So whats the deal you CAN do triple SLI? I was under the impression that only a two card config was supported. Thats good to hear though and what a great looking board! ::drools::
 
marzzes said:
heh, what a drag.
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yes it is. 32 lanes only total on most x58 boards, a few workstation x58 boards will have the nf200 chip on them giving full x16 x16 x16, though it has been speculated, not tested as of yet to my knowledge, that the nf200 will create more latency and that even x16 x8 x8 will fair better for gaming due to the latency in the nf200 chip. i waiting tell there are benchmarks available from others before deciding what x58 board to purchase
 
HardDrugsUser said:
As you surely know, the water block effectiveness is greatly affected by the thickness of the metal between the heat source and the running liquid. The less the thickness between the heat source and the running liquid, the greater the cooling effectiveness of the block. All successful water blocks try to have their base thickness to minimum.
Click to expand...

None of those things are especially true. The main factor in thermal transfer (aside from the respective thermal conductivities of the materials involved) is surface area, not thickness.
 
I just want to know one question, I'm well aware doing tri SLI and Crossfire the slots will operate at 16x/16x/8x. By adding the third card will the first two slots will operate at 8x/8x/8x too or what?
 
John Vuong said:
I just want to know one question, I'm well aware doing tri SLI and Crossfire the slots will operate at 16x/16x/8x. By adding the third card will the first two slots will operate at 8x/8x/8x too or what?
Click to expand...

Tri-SLI will cause the slots to run as 16x/8x/8x. The X58 chipset has 36 PCI-E lanes, so the first slot will have 16 and the other two will have 8 each for a total of 32 lanes. The other four are used for the remaining PCI-E slots.
 
Great vid.

I also liked the music, took me back to High School :p

I wish designers would figure out how to get the headers placed in a way they they don't block all the ports when you are running double width cards. I had to go without USB on the front of my case in one of my builds because of this.

 
Whoa! Too much thermal grease on the northbridge block there. Cover the whole area sure, but it should still be transparent through to the metal, not the solid white paste thick.

You can even see it squeezed off the edge when the block is put back in place..
 
Zero82z said:
None of those things are especially true. The main factor in thermal transfer (aside from the respective thermal conductivities of the materials involved) is surface area, not thickness.
Click to expand...

Surface area and thermal conductivities are too obvious to mention.
 
biofrog said:
Whoa! Too much thermal grease on the northbridge block there. Cover the whole area sure, but it should still be transparent through to the metal, not the solid white paste thick.

You can even see it squeezed off the edge when the block is put back in place..
Click to expand...

If you had a perfect mating surface that might be true. But it is not. You want to fill the air gaps. Anything else you would like to teach me about heatsinks?
 
This EX58 board has the best BIOS I have seen yet.
 
Kyle and others:

I want to buy an x58 board and run LOTS of ram on it -- 12 or 24. I'm holding off on buying only b/c I want some clue about which board (gigabyte or p6t) would possibly be the most stable. I don't worry overmuch about OCing. And it's not helping the asus board is listed as supporting only 12gb -- someday there might be 4gb modules out there...

So at 12gb ram, do you have any idea what board would be stable?

Thanks. I'll donate to your favorite charity if you can answer this.
 
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