Gigabyte X79-UD5 Motherboard Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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Gigabyte X79-UD5 Motherboard Review - Gigabyte brings us another beautiful board in the form of the X79-UD5. Should this board be on your short list or is beauty only PCB deep? See how this LGA 2011 socket board stacks up with the Sandy Bridge E boards we have seen so far. This UD5 model is feature rich for a decent price, but, does it blend?
 
Dan, does this BIOS that Gigabyte released lock the ability to overclock significantly? From the statement it reads as if they're basically neutering a $300 motherboard instead of dealing with the supposed issue via a replacement.
 
pelo said:
Dan, does this BIOS that Gigabyte released lock the ability to overclock significantly? From the statement it reads as if they're basically neutering a $300 motherboard instead of dealing with the supposed issue via a replacement.
Click to expand...

They pretty much kill the OC for existing boards until you get a replacement board from the new series (= recall).
 
The update on that link says that the BIOS update does not remove overclocking and that the BIOS was the culprit. I really hope that's all the problem was.
 
Yeah, maybe it was just the bios. We'll see in a few days from more user results/comments on these boards.
 
Man, it is starting to sound like X79 is Intel's Bulldozer.

This of course sucks for enthusiasts with $$$ to spend... thank God I am broke right now.

At this point I'd be pissed to get the 2600k...no longer shyny ;)
 
First of all, thanks for the great review. I always enjoy reading the reviews here and they're always informative and helpful.

So... unless Gigabyte was remiss in their testing, they must have known about this before release. X79 is an enthusiasts product that will be used by a lot of people who buy it to overclock [H]ardcore. Why release this at all? Why not just wait until revision 2 was ready? If they didn't know about it then their testing is extremely poor.

So many companies lately seem to be releasing dodgy products when they surely have to know full well that it's going to explode in their faces. Why? Is it just so they can say they have a product out? My opinion of Gigabyte motherboards hasn't been great in recent years and now this has dropped it even further. I have a Gigabyte GTX580 in my system, so I'm not against them... it's just their motherboards seem to be lacking.
 
Gigabyte really messed it up with the VRM issues which is currently plaguing their X79 boards, though I'm a huge fan of their products and will continue to use them. My compliant of this board is I wish they slapped 2 LAN ports on this board and having an onboard LED indicator would have been nice, because the X58 had both these features and its rather disappointing that Gigabyte has recently been cutting down features on all their high end motherboards.
 
These BCLK strap settings sound like a total waste. Not sure where to point the finger... the motherboards? Sandybridge-E? X79? Whatever it is, all these extra "overclocking options" make me roll my eyes when I hear how difficult it is to OC and get any [stable] results. :rolleyes: 2500k/2600k/2700k's sound so much simpler.

Whatever, the i7-3770k is currently on my wishlist, but if money is going to be tight I'll try to hold out so I can hear about Ivy Bridge-E and Haswell for 2013.

Good review as always.
 
I had the Asus P9X79 Pro and the Gigabyte UD5 and I found the same things, the bios is slow and annoying in particular. I have a Gigabyte X58-UD4P and 890FXA-UD5 and like both of those though.

With the Asus board I fought a little bit to get it running at DDR3-1600, running 6 cores at 4.00ghz, 4 cores at 4.2ghz, 2 cores at 4.4ghz and 1 core at 4.5ghz while being able to run down to 0.9v at idle. For no real reason about half the time when changing things in the bios it would force the idle voltage up to ~1.3v or whatever I had the cpu set to when overclocking.
 
Tbh,i expected something to get burned and smoked while i saw the introduction of this review,given the heat issues with Gigabyte X79 motherboard lines.

Nice review though.
 
In the same vein as Dr. Nut, there are a few places on Page 1 that reference the UD7 instead of the UD5. Do you have one of those to look at as well? ;)

At least this is what I was able to decipher from the marketing speak on the Gigabyte product page for the X79-UD7
Click to expand...
The version of the Gigabyte X79-UD7 we received also came with a WiFi card and Bluetooth 4.0 support.
Click to expand...
As always, a great review!
 
Yes, i think your going to find this is another intel design issue. They alreadys state theres not alot of room to put the pwn due to board layout. Interesting. Wait and see peeps. I wouldnt recommend x79 at this time. However i would have thought that this issue would have been found out by more reviewers. The throttling issue is pretty much across the board even though cpu temps are not hitting traditionally high temps.
 
And the guys at [H] can't seem to find a decent motherboard that can handle the 6 core // 12 thread SB-E's. I guess if you're buying a 3820 then you'll be okay? If it doesn't catch on fire, of course.
 
Does this have good fan header control? All of Gigabyte's recent boards have lacked this.
 
As usual the article doesn't go far enough. Does anything get disabled if you use all x16 slots? Does anything run at reduced bandwidth in any circumstance? Can I have every PCIe slot filled and every SATA port in use and every USB port in use?
 
bAMtan2 said:
anand did 4.75ghz with a 3820, sounds fine to me
Click to expand...

Mind you, the power consumption of the 3820 was measured as being only slightly higher than a 2600k and only has 4 cores versus the 6 cores of the 3930k and 3960x. The end of Anand's 3820 article effectively reads as: If you need memory bandwidth, memory capacity, or you need PCIe Gen 3, this platform works for you; otherwise save your money and avoid it entirely.
 
Sorry to say this, but this review seems so completely pointless. There is no comparison of similar motherboards that use x79. So every single one of the charts is completely pointless. Its like comparing apples to oranges, the new lga 2011 processors to lga 1155 processors. Yes of course the new extreme series is faster than 2600k but how does this motherboard compare to others in this bracket. Is this motherboard faster at usb than say this other motherboard that supports this proccessor. Why even compare x79 to p67 motherboards at all?
 
[H] prob needs to do an update with the F7 bios.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Gigabyte-X79-UD3-Motherboard-F7-BIOS,14397.html

I've had a UD3 running a 3960k at 3.8ghz (80c in a rack stuffed with other computers doing the same thing) on air for about two weeks now at 100% load on whatever bios it came with. It's doing cinema 4d work; once its done (another two weeks or so), its going to be my first water cooling project. I too ran into flaky usb3 issues, other than that, it seems fine; but I didn't really test the rig out.
 
So, based on the above comments, running a 4 core CPU all is fine but when running 6 core it has heat and power issues?

Sounds like a compromise was made on parts, then again, two more cores is 50% more power and heat. I think the standard components that 'were' good enough on the 4 cores needs to be rethought.

Considering server hardware I have here does just fine with two 6 core and even four 6 core cpus, the enthusiasts parts would probably be much more expensive if they were made more robust, not that any of these are just chump change to start with.
 
Considering voltage control was the biggest thing talked about in the boards overclocking, what PSU was used for these tests?
 
Here's some updates:

Gigabyte has released a number of bios updates: http://techreport.com/discussions.x/22232

The company also notes, "If any existing user is still unsatisfied after the recommended firmware (BIOS) update of their X79 Series Motherboard, GIGABYTE will offer an unconditional replacement of their X79 Series Motherboard (same model). No Questions Asked."
Click to expand...

And also another thread on it: http://techreport.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=79436

Apparently if you're not willing to part with your board they have a newer BIOS that limits the operational draw of the board instead.
Click to expand...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_Wk4QWHjpc&t=3m40s Oh and here's a fun video for ya. Killed the processor too.
 
The gigabyte boards aren't the only ones experiencing throttling issues with the SB-E chips. Though it may be a case of Gigabyte being a bit cheaper with their VRM than others, I highly doubt the Gigabyte boards will be the lone manufacturer with any issues. Throttling seems to be common with the power-hungry SB-E chips regardless of the manufacturer

That really sucks. I do feel for people who bought a $300 motherboard, +$500 processor and can't even OC it properly. Along with the chipset issues it seems like X79 is turning into quite a disaster for Intel
 
sounds like if you have x58 you should wait for ivy bridge/ivy bridge-e

Intel keeps insisting that 4.8ghz 6 core overclocks but.....many of the real reviews (not the advertising reviews) show otherwise.

Personally, if you do go with this.....you need watercooling. Why do you think intel released the astek h20 cooler?
 
hmmm...thnx for the article guys - a good idea on what the Giga range of X79 will be like, probably even after F7 bios is on all boards. I know this isn't what the article was about but do you know if other vendors had/have similar issues with 'hot bios'??
Pity, I really wanted a SB-e rig to be worth the effort, we are baking in 38C hot days, last thing one needs ATM is an oven PC:(:(:eek::eek:..i found a way to get that festive season feeling - -got some watercooling (H100) and a nice DSLR for Xmas instead of a CPU/mobo/ram etc., man these cameras are nifty these daiz!!!:rolleyes::rolleyes:
So for now, X58 with shiny new w/c...THnX again for your work guyz:p:p:p:p:p:p:cool::)
PS

HAPPY NEW-YEAR EVERYONE, hope it is a great year for you, wd Kyle and all the [H] slaves, this year will be your best again!!!!
 
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RMA a MSI X79A-GD65(8) because it only could run with two sticks of memory. Brought the Gigabyte X79-UD5. For the moment could't be more pleased. Overclocked to 4.5 with no problems. Odd thing is CPU-Z reports CPU varies between 1200 and 4500 with a .936v whereas easytune 6 reports 4.5 with a voltage of .960v. Temp remains about 22 C. easytune 6 does show a minor change but only 1 to 3HMZ.
 
Looks like I will be waiting a little longer to bounce the gaming rig from x58 to x79.. I am continually impressed with the longevity I have gotten out of this x58 platform..
 
The review was probably the best I have seen for the board, and certainly the most honest. I also prompted me to register here to share my experience with an X79-UD5

I have :

X79-UD5 revision (1) Firmware V7
3930K running at stock (for the moment)
GTX570
32Gb ADATA Gaming series DDR3 1600G - 9.9.9.24
Windows 7 64bit

The box was built for video editing with Premiere Pro CS5 which means lots of storage, and at least two fast drives for captured video and exports, but I have not been able to use it because of unresolved issues with the drives. After much swapping and hair pulling, I currently have:

2 300Gb v’raptors in hardware raid0 on Intel ports 2/3
2 1Tb WD blacks in raid0 on Intel ports 4/5

Both striped at 128kb because the large video files they will be used for.

The white Intel SATA3 ports are unoccupied because I was not able to mix raid and non-raid drives with the Intel ports set to raid in BIOS.

On the grey Marvell ports I have:

Toshiba 256Gb SSD for OS
2Tb WD Green for back up and non-crucial files
150Gb v’raptor reserved for Photoshop scratch space
DVD burner

I also have two 1Tb WD USB3 externals (which I love because they work so well)

The raid0 tested well with Crystal Disk Mark 3 but the system hangs every time I try to move large blocks of data to either raid0 array, and regardless of source drive. The quickest it has hung was after 70Gb, and the most was 500Gb, but it hangs every time and needs a reset to re-boot the system.

I have checked and rechecked everything I can think of, and spent many hours with Google. I have read about issues with the Marvell drivers, and big issues with the Marvell 6G drivers, but with eight internal drives, I either have to use the Marvell ports of invest serious money on a raid card. I am starting to think that my cheapest way forward would be to scrap the Gigabyte board and go with probably an Asus.

I think the BIOS front end must have improved with later firmware versions, because while it is not perfect, it is quite useable with mouse and keyboard. It did take me a little while to find my way round though. For instance I reloaded the BIOS defaults after an early problem setting up my raid arrays (on the Marvell ports) and I had quite a search to find and set my boot order because the SSD was not on the list of drives.

Something the review eased my mind over was the three instances of Marvel 91xx SATA 6G controllers in Device Manager. It seemed plain wrong to me.

I am at a loss where to go from here other than start from the beginning adding one component at a time, and testing to try and isolate the problem, but I kind of feel it will come down to issues with the board and be unresolvable if I want to use all my drives via the on-board controllers.
 
I’d barely posted to this forum when I got a fix for my problem on the Adobe Premiere Pro Hareware forum from Erik Bowen of ADK Video Editing. I was using Intel driver 3.0.0.2003 downloaded from the list of drivers for the board on the Gigabyte website. Erik said that I should be using the Enterprise drivers from THIS LINK which were 3.0.0.3020. He also said:

“The X79 uses the Intel Enterprise software raid controller which does all of its caching to ram. If you’re running into issues on long drive transfers the ram is corrupting the data.”

But the RAM was set as per the ADATA website, and the info on the sticks. Anyway, I have successfully moved two large data blocks onto each of my raid0 arrays without any problems. I have been chasing this problem for several days, and am more than pleased to have it fixed.
 
Thank you for the info. Haven't you tested stability before putting the computer to use?
 
pelo said:
Dan, does this BIOS that Gigabyte released lock the ability to overclock significantly? From the statement it reads as if they're basically neutering a $300 motherboard instead of dealing with the supposed issue via a replacement.
Click to expand...

Nickbaldwin86 said:
Good to see that the board didn't catch fire while you guys tested it.
Click to expand...

It doesn't lock out any options that I am aware of. Not that I've spent any real time with it. I found out about the problem after I was already done with this article.

Dr.Nut said:
The update on that link says that the BIOS update does not remove overclocking and that the BIOS was the culprit. I really hope that's all the problem was.
Click to expand...

I do as well. Their press release also showed "Overclocking record breaking performance" or something like that to try and reassure people that this isn't a hardware problem but rather a BIOS issue.

SpeedyVV said:
Man, it is starting to sound like X79 is Intel's Bulldozer.

This of course sucks for enthusiasts with $$$ to spend... thank God I am broke right now.

At this point I'd be pissed to get the 2600k...no longer shyny ;)
Click to expand...

Not even close. X79 is fine. It just doesn't seem like 6 core Sandy Bridge-E CPUs overclock as well as quad core Sany Bridge CPUs do. More cores, more power and more heat. This isn't at all surprising. Gulftown aside, CPUs with more cores typically don't overclock as well as CPUs with less. And VRM issues may be a result of motherboard manufacturers not building to the proper VRD specifications or just using cheap components.

pelo said:
And the guys at [H] can't seem to find a decent motherboard that can handle the 6 core // 12 thread SB-E's. I guess if you're buying a 3820 then you'll be okay? If it doesn't catch on fire, of course.
Click to expand...

Not to worry, we actually did. You'll be seeing more X79 articles soon. :D
 
TrevorD said:
The review was probably the best I have seen for the board, and certainly the most honest. I also prompted me to register here to share my experience with an X79-UD5

I have :

X79-UD5 revision (1) Firmware V7
3930K running at stock (for the moment)
GTX570
32Gb ADATA Gaming series DDR3 1600G - 9.9.9.24
Windows 7 64bit

The box was built for video editing with Premiere Pro CS5 which means lots of storage, and at least two fast drives for captured video and exports, but I have not been able to use it because of unresolved issues with the drives. After much swapping and hair pulling, I currently have:

2 300Gb v’raptors in hardware raid0 on Intel ports 2/3
2 1Tb WD blacks in raid0 on Intel ports 4/5

Both striped at 128kb because the large video files they will be used for.

The white Intel SATA3 ports are unoccupied because I was not able to mix raid and non-raid drives with the Intel ports set to raid in BIOS.

On the grey Marvell ports I have:

Toshiba 256Gb SSD for OS
2Tb WD Green for back up and non-crucial files
150Gb v’raptor reserved for Photoshop scratch space
DVD burner

I also have two 1Tb WD USB3 externals (which I love because they work so well)

The raid0 tested well with Crystal Disk Mark 3 but the system hangs every time I try to move large blocks of data to either raid0 array, and regardless of source drive. The quickest it has hung was after 70Gb, and the most was 500Gb, but it hangs every time and needs a reset to re-boot the system.

I have checked and rechecked everything I can think of, and spent many hours with Google. I have read about issues with the Marvell drivers, and big issues with the Marvell 6G drivers, but with eight internal drives, I either have to use the Marvell ports of invest serious money on a raid card. I am starting to think that my cheapest way forward would be to scrap the Gigabyte board and go with probably an Asus.

I think the BIOS front end must have improved with later firmware versions, because while it is not perfect, it is quite useable with mouse and keyboard. It did take me a little while to find my way round though. For instance I reloaded the BIOS defaults after an early problem setting up my raid arrays (on the Marvell ports) and I had quite a search to find and set my boot order because the SSD was not on the list of drives.

Something the review eased my mind over was the three instances of Marvel 91xx SATA 6G controllers in Device Manager. It seemed plain wrong to me.

I am at a loss where to go from here other than start from the beginning adding one component at a time, and testing to try and isolate the problem, but I kind of feel it will come down to issues with the board and be unresolvable if I want to use all my drives via the on-board controllers.
Click to expand...

The reason behind multiple instances of Marvell drivers is due to having multiple controllers on the motherboard. There are in fact 3 Marvell controllers. Each supporting two devices. Two internal for a total of four ports, and two eSATA ports. And these aren't supposed to support optical drives. So I'd get that off of there.
 
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