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  • fausto412 - Thursday, July 15, 2010 - link

    i don't think i've even see a $700 dollar motherboard. For that kind of money it better come with a hot super model to spend a few nights with the poor sap who spends that much.
  • mrjminer - Thursday, July 15, 2010 - link

    Actually, it ensures that you will not get a hot super model to spend a few nights with you.
  • Taft12 - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    I could really use one of these. I can't remember the last time I had a night I didn't have to spend with a hot super model. Won't they please just let me game?!
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  • Souka - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    Maybe Gigabyte's marketing dept. gets it advice from Apple?

    Charge more...people will think it's better... ;)
  • SunSamurai - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    Gigabyte doesnt have anything to offer that accounts for the extra cost, like OSX.
  • hansmuff - Thursday, July 15, 2010 - link

    The AOpen AK89-Max had this way before Gigabyte.

    What is commendable though is that Gigabyte puts this even on their lower-end boards. Great move.
  • silverblue - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    Sorry, but the Gigabyte BX2000 has that beat by a good few years.
  • Fuchikoma - Thursday, July 15, 2010 - link

    The branding of these motherboards are getting totally ridiculous and quite comical. What really annoys me about high-end mobos is that the manufacturer spends a lot of time making them aesthetically pleasing, which in turn you spend copious amounts of money, and yet their support software are absolutely horrendous - consisting of a bunch of bad GUI hacks.
  • Powerlurker - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    As far as I can tell, most of these ultra-high-end consumer motherboards are targeted more at competitive benchmarkers than people who actually want to use their computers to do stuff.
  • Etern205 - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    Anyone notice the dual 8-pin on the Asus?
  • EVM - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    You guys make me laugh when you rip the makers of these boards!
  • mobutu - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    You have to be really crazy to spend $700 on a motherboard, video card or cpu.
    Or, for that matter, on any single pc component.
  • Acanthus - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    This just in, 2 year old chipset performs identically to launch, give or take 1%.

    Intel needs to stop revoking the licenses of their competitors.

    But then they couldn't have the best quarter ever during the worst economy in 70 years.
  • jonup - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    Actually economy is doing just fine. If it wasn't for cheating sovereign government in Europe and the resulting debt crisis we would have been doing even better.
  • kallogan - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    I don't see the point really. They're just for geeky fanboys or benchmarks junky. Getting cheap computer parts and push them to their limits is a lot more fun ;-). Buying a celeron dual core E3200 and make it score more than a E8600, that is fun.

    It's like these memory kits :
    Corsair Dominator GT 8-8-8-24 2200MHz 4GB kit
    G.Skill Perfect Storm 8-8-8-24 2200MHz 4GB kit
    .....
    Dominator, perfect storm, extreme my a.... Everybody knows high-end memory kits are marketing jokes and brings absolutely nothing but 0,1 %.
  • Voldenuit - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    Honestly, I think reviewing these things is a waste of time.

    I'd rather see reviews of real products that real enthusiasts would buy. Don't they have sites dedicated to LN2/cascade cooling overclocking and hardware?

    I'd never spend more than $200 on a motherboard, and something closer to $120 would be more like it. I'd also rather find out how the options in that price space would suit my needs rather than read about expensive, impractical halo products on a platform that is going to be obsoleted in a few months by Sandy Bridge anyway.
  • jonup - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    Man, this is like porn. It's what can't don't want to have, but like watching it anyways.
  • Voldenuit - Saturday, July 17, 2010 - link

    Nah, reading a $700 Thermaltake Level 10 case review is geekpr0n. A $700 motherboard based on a 2-year old chipset with no real performance or innovation gains is more like goatse. :p
  • shin0bi272 - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    If they dont really do anything new/better performance wise (save for sata6g, and usb3) and intel is changing sockets with the sandy bridge later this year then what's the point of reviewing these now?
  • strikeback03 - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    So that people don't go spending their money on them? IMO a review that says "This isn't worthwhile" is more useful than one that says something is. And this is probably a valid question for those still buying X58.
  • shin0bi272 - Saturday, July 17, 2010 - link

    good point. Better to have a review that says youre nuts to buy this than say wow this is a great board go get it now then in 4 months a new socket comes out and youre pissed off. I emailed intel and begged them to stop changing their sockets so soon ... I wont get a reply.
  • Juddog - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    They don't show a picture of the setup, but I'm wondering why they didn't mention some of the extra abilities of the MSI board, such as the two 8 pin power inputs, the dip switches for voltage limiters, etc..

    I have the board myself and didn't notice the memory issues listed in the article, so I'm just wondering if they could go into more detail about testing methodologies in this regard.
  • Rajinder Gill - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    Hi,

    All of these boards have two power plugs - they are of no consequence unless you are pulling well over spec via the EPS 12V, which rules out the air/water cooling stuff. For the cascade cooled benchmarking we used our 1200w Turbo Cool which has two EPS 12V plugs - made no difference to any board for overclocking margin.

    As for the memory testing detail leading to the discovery of high VTT etc: All memory sub-timings were tried both at vendor defaults (apart from the very loose B2B CAS delay MSI default to - spacing back to back reads by 13~14 clocks, which is terrible for performance) and also matched to a looser set at which all other boards passed the stress testing. RTL parameters were adjusted from base to see if it helped the MSI board. Unfortuantely, nothing worked, and that's on two boards. The issues have been reported back to MSI and they are aware. If you head over to XS forums and HWbot you will see others reporting similar issues – we are not alone.

    Ragards
    Raja
  • Juddog - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    Good response, thank you. :)

    Question - did it make a big difference on the MSI board using the black memory slots versus the blues?
  • Rajinder Gill - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    You cannot use the blue slots without populating the black - IMC limitation.

    Regards
    Raja
  • Juddog - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    Is it ok for me to link the thread at HWBOT?
    http://hwbot.org/forum/showthread.php?t=7155

    Like you said, it appears that only some have this issue where others do not, very strange indeed. Some people in that thread mention your exact same issue, one of the replies states they replaced the motherboard for another and the new one didn't have the issue, very strange. Thanks again for the good work.
  • dia - Saturday, July 17, 2010 - link

    Juddog. You must be a re-seller, how can anyone that has the board not know about X58 and memory slot use?
  • zero2dash - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    The only board I'd consider spending this type of megabucks on would be the (EVGA Classified) SR-2 and that would be just because I've really gotten into Folding@home over the last year.

    If I didn't already put together 2 X58/i7 systems, I'd get an SR-2 today.
  • LoneWolf15 - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    I can't see why I'd dump my Gigabyte EP-45 UD3P, 8GB of RAM, and Q9650 clocked at 3.6GHz for all of this when Sandy Bridge is just around the corner, which won't even use Socket 1156 or 1366.

    My rig performs somewhere between an i5-750 and an i7-920. I still can't believe how insane Socket 1366 boards are compared to previous-generation equipment.
  • Etern205 - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    People who get this all they cared about is the amount of nonsense that's place on these board and the size of their e-penis without any thought as to whether spending this much will bring the same in return.
  • SniperWulf - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    It's official, Gigabyte is officially off their rocker!

    Now I get that they don't expect to sell these to everyone, but still for what you get, it's totally not worth it. I bet this board still has crappy fan controls too...
  • MGSsancho - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    Could you tell up what ACPI version these mobos use? I was able to find out the Gigabyte X58A-UD9 uses ACPI 1.0b but c'mon people version 4 is out. I have gone to every common mobo website and there is no board that supports anything higher than 2. Supermicro does sell version 3.0 and 4.0 on their latest offerings. ACPI is important to those of use who run other Operating systems and want to be able to use all those fancy power saving features with out drivers.

    Having many PCIE lanes is awesome for those of us into making file servers. But I suppose I am just better off with a server mobo, ECC ram and its better features
  • xetura - Friday, July 16, 2010 - link

    These I7 setups are great and all, but they're still way too expensive. My [email protected] still does just fine. I can't justify spending $650 for a mobo, cpu and ram setup that doesn't perform that much better than my setup. Sure, if I had SLI or XFIRE it will be a big jump, but I don't have either.
  • Finally - Saturday, July 17, 2010 - link

    ...when was the last time, AT reviewed an AMD chipset board?
    4 (!) months ago. Just click on the big "motherboard" button above.
    Check out the ratio Intel:AMD...

    Funnily enough the last AMD board had its price right in the title: $140!

    ...seriously, guys. If you have to admit to yourselves, that you are running out of Intel board to review, MAYBE test something I'm actually interested in.
  • tercathian - Sunday, July 18, 2010 - link

    Yeah, 19 of 20 reviews on Intel, some as multiple boards (just on the first/latest directory page). 1 AMD board review????
    Balance, AT, Balance!
    What are the good, the bad, the great, and the ugly of AMD boards out there currently?
  • ggathagan - Sunday, July 18, 2010 - link

    So...
    What was your translation of the first paragraph of the article?

    You know, where Raja stated:
    "Thus far, we’ve spent most of 2010 focusing on mainstream segments for our motherboards reviews, there’s more of that to come over the next few months starting off with a long overdue focus on AMD"
  • MaxMax - Saturday, July 17, 2010 - link

    WTF !!

    $700 for a motherboard ?!

    What so special about it even $200 - $250 motherboards bypass it !!

    It is not even fit in my Coolermaster HAF 932 case !!

    They got mad !!
  • MacGyverSG1 - Monday, July 19, 2010 - link

    I have read a few reviews and I think the memory problem might only affect the early production boards. I noticed in your pictures, and you stated, that the SATA 6GB/s ports are facing up. Other reviews have pictures that show the SATA 6GB/s ports at a 90 degree angle like the rest. I also was able to see that that board was v1.1. Maybe you have a v1.0 board that had problems that were fixed with v1.1?
  • Rajinder Gill - Monday, July 19, 2010 - link

    Hi,

    The rev 1.0 change is an input inductor change (to support the OCP increase), a default OCP for VCC increase to 360 amps. plus a small change for PSU startup. These modifications were performed by MSI (by hand) to our second board before they shipped it out to us. Further, there are retail consumers with rev 1.1 boards reporting memory issues like ours.

    Hope this helps.
    -Raja
  • eva2000 - Monday, July 19, 2010 - link

    Shame bclk hasn't improved much with those sample boards. Interesting to see if you got 4 samples of each model and averaged their max bclk, how would each brand/board do.
  • Rajinder Gill - Monday, July 19, 2010 - link

    Probably the same as four samples from first gen boards.
  • mapesdhs - Monday, July 19, 2010 - link


    These prices do seem a bit wierd given there are dual-socket boads starting at around $300 (eg.
    Tyan S7002G2NR-LE) though of course such boards don't boast RAM speeds or other features
    that enthusiast boards have. On the other hand, a Tyan with two i7s is going to stomp all over
    an enthusiast board with just one i7 for any task that can exploit the higher thread limit, eg. rendering,
    scientific apps, etc.

    Flip side of course is such boards don't normally support SLI/CF. All depends on what one wants
    to use it for. A fair chunk of the enthusiast market might be bragging rights and downright fun, but
    if there's a demand for such things (and there is) then what the heck. :)

    Ian.
  • Zombie1914 - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 - link

    Nice review as always.
    Could you post some infos on the temperatures of the Northbridge/Southbridge in standard and overclocking modes?
  • Triple Omega - Tuesday, July 20, 2010 - link

    Google Translate much?
    Well at least your stuff doesn't cost $700.
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  • nyran125 - Thursday, August 19, 2010 - link

    So far ive got a ASUS P5B Deluxe Wi-Fi and its outlasted everything and still running everything smooth 4 adn a hlaf years later with no issue and the ASUS video cards seem to be more vigilant and outlast the rest... This is from experience with various boards adn video cards and ive been happy with every ASUS product ive bought thus far.
  • Rare.human - Sunday, October 3, 2010 - link

    Hey guys, what's the best motherboard currently available that I could buy?
  • Rajinder Gill - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link

    Very broad question that. Best X58 board you mean? Typically don't spend more than $250 and you'll get what you need - ASUS & Gigabyte is where I'd personally go from a BIOS standpoint in that price range. If you don't want to overclock, then ASRock, Biostar and EVGA and MSI will do the job too.

    -Raja
  • rustycurse - Wednesday, December 1, 2010 - link

    1. I wish ask an important question for me - Why I should purchase a new PC (a component), when development engineers of programs (or of games) do not wish to "see" (completely to use) those resources the PC which one are already presented? An instance - during a play "Dragon Age Origin" (and not only it) and if is more exact - during conversations when the static picture with several alternatives of answers is presented - I see, that only nearby 1GB (this game, and almost same for Windows resources ) memory uses and CPU fan turns as the craziest! What is it - limitation INTEL for the chipsets with embed video (like mine 945G), or it's inexperience of software(games) developers?
    In other words - that I wish see it - low CPU and HDD (page file.sys) loadings at a high memory loading!
    I doubt, that Intel, Microsoft or software makers will give me any reasonable answer in this matter, so i've a request to Anandtech team «to give me a light» on this problem. And, of course, to show the public the solution(s) in your further tests!
    I'm planning to purchase a new PC (preferentially a notebook) in the near future, as alternative my present - (MB: P5LD2VM-dh/c; CPU - Pentium D945; Memory: 3x1GB 'all planks are - patriot'; Video: ASUS 7600GS; Win 7 ultimate), but I am "restrained" by above indicated problem, and here appears one more question (as I'm not wish create a superfluous topic):
    2. Why almost on all notebooks use D-Sub connectors, instead of DVI? (I use CAD programs in double-screen mode - one person watching a movie through HDMI and second person doing a CAD job through DVI with high screen resolution )
    O yeah, nearly has not forgotten! I had a similar situation during a play "Gothic 3" earlier - the memory loading on the screen monitor "Windows Task Manager" attained a breaking point nearby 2 GB and after a while the game hung (or was BSOD).
    I'm waiting for reasonable thoughts and Thanks to Anandtech team for your guides and please forgive my English!
  • rustycurse - Wednesday, December 1, 2010 - link

    Woops! I looked through these MBs and remembered another "a little issue" to mention.
    THE one of the reasons of the buying P5LD2-VM-DH/C was - Try to guess? - the location of the floppy connector!!!!!!!!
    I don't know why all (almost) MB makers locate this connector at the bottom of a MB!!!, but i'm getting MAD when i see that, especially if it (GARBAGE) is MOST expensive and has ATX form factor!!!
    So, MB makers - PLEASE F*** OFF with your expensive S*** and try to remember that some software require to be activated by using floppy drive, especially if it is located at THE TOP of the case ( like mine IN-Win Q500) !!!! sorry for"language" but i won't have other words for such matters!

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