The X58 Motherboards You Can Afford

The X58 Boards You Can Afford

Our past on Intel X58 motherboards had been written more for the high-end enthusiasts. As it should be, since the Intel X58 chipset remains the platform for those who wish to have the top Intel processor, like the Core i7-980X. Today, we look at the more affordable X58 motherboards out there, though 'affordable' is a very subjective term here when it comes to these motherboards. 

At least you'll know that the boards reviewed here will not cost up to S$800 like the ones we have seen. However, you will still have to fork out anywhere from S$300 to more than S$400 for them. All of these boards are updated, refreshed models that support the Core i7-980X out of the box, without requiring a BIOS update. They also come with the latest SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 features. While not as extreme as some X58 models, multi-GPU technologies like SLI and CrossFireX are supported on these boards, along with a wide range of features and proprietary technologies from their respective vendors.

Here then are the three boards from ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI and their specifications:

ASUS P6X58D-E

Compared to the ASUS P6X58D Premium that we before, the ASUS P6X58D-E is almost identical. The board layout for one is exactly the same, with the slightly 'inferior' P6X58D-E lacking some of the features that's on the Premium version. If one were to superimpose the Premium over this board, there are three major differences that's obvious to the naked eye.

However, before we get to the differences, let's recap what you'll find on this and the Premium version, at a glance. Both are using the Intel X58 chipset with ICH10R Southbridge. The newer USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps features are courtesy of third-party controllers from NEC and Marvell respectively. Given its enthusiast leanings, both boards have three PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, supporting up to 3-way SLI. Legacy interfaces are mostly removed while there's also no eSATA support. Besides the SATA 6Gbps ports from the Marvell controller, ASUS has not implemented any additional SATA 3Gbps connectors to supplement the standard six from the ICH10R Southbridge.

Moving on to the differences, the Premium comes with two Gigabit Ethernet controllers, while this board only has one. The difference can be seen in the empty PCB space just to the left of the first PCIe 2.0 x16 slot. Then, you will notice that the P6X58D-E has no Reset button, just a single Power button. Apparently, having an onboard Reset button is a 'premium' feature. Finally, we also noticed that the passive heatsinks on the Premium are connected by a heatpipe throughout; for the P6X58D-E, the heatpipe present only links between two heatsinks, not four like on the Premium. One will likely notice slightly higher temperatures on this board as a result.

But that's about all the differences that we spotted. Like the Premium, the ASUS P6X58D-E comes with the full complement of the manufacturer's proprietary technologies. Hence, features like MemOK!, and TurboV (real-time Windows OC tool) are all present. Since these are pretty well-known by now, we'll not be going into what each feature does.

Just like the Premium, we are more than pleased with the layout. There was really nothing to criticize here and the slightly fewer features only meant more PCB real estate.

Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R

Just like how the ASUS P6X58D-E is a lesser version of the P6X58D Premium, the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R shares much of the same DNA as the . Of course, some of those features are scaled down or removed for the more reasonably priced UD3R. For instance, the water block option has been removed from the UD3R, along with the Hybrid Silent-pipe 2, the optional heatsink which takes up one expansion slot. There's also only has a single heat pipe connecting two of the heatsinks surrounding the CPU socket. On the UD7, one gets an interconnected arrangement of heatsinks, with heatpipes linking all of them.

Generally, the layout and arrangement of the onboard components remain similar, but there's a bit more room on the UD3R, since features like dual Gigabit Ethernet controllers have been reduced to just one. Gigabyte however has not sacrificed any storage options going from the UD7 to the UD3R. One still gets floppy and IDE connectors, the six SATA 3Gbps ports from the Southbridge, two more SATA 3Gbps ports from another controller, two eSATA/USB combo ports, and finally, the two SATA 6Gbps ports from the Marvell controller.

Surprisingly, there are no onboard power or reset buttons, so you'll have to fall back to the good old front panel headers. Obviously, Gigabyte believes that the intended users of this model will have this board installed in a chassis, with no reason to boot up the board on an open-air system.

These storage connectors make for quite a crowded board, and with four PCIe 2.0 x16 slots thrown in, it's even more of a squeeze. While there are four slots, this board only has the bandwidth to support up to 3-way SLI/CrossFireX and the space constraints also make it impossible to fit four dual-slot graphics cards anyway.

Like the UD7, the UD3R 'suffers' from its overwhelming number of features. For instance, the first PCIe x1 slot is unusable for longer expansion cards due to its proximity to the heatsink. While we have complained about Gigabyte's layout before, the manufacturer has got it mostly right on this board and if you discount the PCIe x1 issue highlighted, there's really nothing too serious that we could spot.

Apart from the main hardware features, Gigabyte has quite set of handy hardware frills like 3x USB power boost that delivers more power through a USB port for greater convenience and compatibility to power various devices effortlessly. Complimenting this feature is On/Off Charge feature that ensures adequate standby power to charge various devices such as an iPhone or iPad even if your PC is shut down. For the OC enthusiasts, Gigabyte has also incorporated other safety touches like LEDs to visually indicate if the voltages used are in safe level, whether the OC is low or high, and if the temperatures of the CPU and chipset are reasonable. These are the OV-Alert LED, OC-Alert LED and TMP-Alert LED. All of these features aren't unique to the UD3R variant but are also prevalent in most other new Gigabyte boards.

Gigabyte is also differentiating itself from the competition in its level of software utilities provided. From easy installation, to easy overclocking and even power management, Gigabyte has most of its bases well covered. However real-time overclocking tools are what they've been lacking considering ASUS had it TurboV utility available since 2008 for this purpose. Well, Gigabyte has just trumped ASUS in quite an unorthodox but commendable move in this department with Cloud OC - real-time internet based overclocking made a reality. While the idea of overclocking via the internet seems absurd at first, not when you consider that you can now interface with the system while its busy benchmarking, even in full screen. The utility works only in Windows Vista and Windows 7 to set up a virtual server to interface with the motherboard directly. Think of it as a real-time overclocking interface, only this time, you can access this control on any internet capable with a browser. Cloud OC gives access to overclock on-the-fly, monitor vital system status, and even remotely shut down, restart or hibernate your system. While trying this feature in a wireless LAN environment, we found that that settings applied on the Cloud OC utility were almost instantaneous - give and take a second of delay at most.

Currently Cloud OC utility works with any Gigabyte Intel X58, P55 or H55 chipset based motherboards and the utility is a free download. Complimenting Cloud OC, is Hotkey OC, which allows users to save various OC profiles and activate them via shortcut keys even while the system is busy benchmarking in real-time. Overall, this combination of Cloud OC and Hotkey OC are far more useful and practical solutions that can be applied across many motherboard models rather than the high-end ASUS TurboV Remote feature that's very confined to a particular motherboard model and is expensive as well. Cost aside, all of these functions are applicable only to a niche group of people, but it's good to see how Gigabyte has progressed traditional overclocking functions in this new decade.

MSI X58A-GD65

Finally, we get to the MSI X58A-GD65, which along with the high-end , is the company's attempt to rejuvenate the X58 chipset with newer models that offer SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 support. Since it has been more than a year from the last budget X58 board we saw from MSI, the , the board design has changed significantly. Gone is the brown PCB, for a darker, but still brown PCB, but we jest.

The main difference between now and then is the choice of components, with MSI embarking on its 'Military Class' components, featuring new ferrite chokes and digital PWMs. MSI has also ditched older interfaces like IDE support, with the space going to the two new SATA 6Gbps ports (Marvell controller again).

Not everything has been changed though, with MSI strangely keeping with its hardware OC jumpers, which allow users to toggle between three set base clock frequencies, 133, 166 and 200MHz. Naturally, we aren't too keen on using this, unless it's to bring an overclocked system back from the brink, but again, that's what the Clear CMOS button is for. So instead of the OC Genie that's prominently featured on the Big Bang-XPower, there's no such equivalent on the more budget-friendly GD65. More than the high-end boards, we think features lik the OC Genie should propogate to their lower tier boards as well.

Like its competitors, the MSI X58A-GD65 offers a similar set of features, with USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps the important ones. Others include 3-way SLI/CrossFireX, the ICH10R Southbridge and its six SATA 3.0Gbps ports and of course, the same triple-channel memory architecture. Unlike the ASUS and Gigabyte boards in this roundup, we did find Power and Reset buttons on this board.

The layout of the GD65 was mostly excellent, due in part to its lack of onboard clutter. The passive heatsinks on this board were minimal, with ample amount of PCB space. Interestingly, no heapipes were used. The SATA ports were aligned outwards and will not interfere with the graphics cards. In short, except for a possibly limited PCIe x1 slot, we were quite pleased with what we found on this board.

BIOS Settings

The BIOS on these three boards were typical of the vendors, with their own proprietary technologies integrated within. There were plentiful of options for tweaks on all the boards and anyone who will be looking to purchase such motherboards will find them unfamiliar. Here are some of the more important settings:

Test Setup

While our high-end X58 roundup used a pretty expensive configuration, we go back to our usual setup for these three boards. That means a quad-core Core i7-965 XE instead of the 6-core Core i7-980X and a modest GeForce 9800 GTX graphics card. The configuration used is listed below:

• Intel Core i7-965 XE (@3.2GHz, Intel Turbo Boost, HyperThreading enabled)
• 3 x 1GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1333 @ 7-7-20 CAS 7.0
• Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gbps hard disk drive
• NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX (ForceWare 195.62)
• Intel INF 9.1.1.1025 and Intel Matrix Storage manager 8.9.0.1023 driver set
• Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit

The following benchmarks were used:

• BAPco SYSmark 2007 (version 1.05)
• Futuremark PCMark Vantage (1.0.3.1)
• Futuremark 3DMark Vantage (1.0.3.1)
• SpecView Perf 9.0
• Far Cry 2

Results - SYSmark 2007 Preview

The ASUS P6X58D-E scored the highest in SYSmark 2007 overall, beating the MSI narrowly. However, with the Gigabyte even further behind the MSI, it should lead to a comfortable win for the ASUS over its rivals. Productivity and Video Creation were the stronger segments for the ASUS, though it was leading for most of the sections here.

Results - Futuremark PCMark Vantage

The ASUS board took the top spot in PCMark Vantage overall, but the boards were closely matched in most of the segments. Only the MSI was evidently slower in the Memories and HDD portions.

Results - SPECviewperf 9.0

Continuing with its excellent run, the ASUS was the top dog again in SPECviewperf, with the MSI and Gigabyte sharing the spoils, with MSI having a slight edge in 3ds Max that extended further in PRO/ENGINEER.

Results - Futuremark 3DMark Vantage & Far Cry 2

While the graphics performance from these boards was generally similar, we could find the MSI slipping a bit behind in 3DMark Vantage, while the same could be said of the Gigabyte in Far Cry 2. These margins however are very minor and unlikely to be detected by the user.

Temperature

We measured the temperatures of the heatsink at the Southbridge and found the ASUS to have the lowest temperatures among the three. The Gigabyte and MSI both had almost identical temperatures that hovered around 50 degrees Celsius.

Power Consumption

When it came to the power draw, the MSI continued its excellent record in our books, with a significantly lower idle power draw. It wasn't too shabby also when it came to peak power consumption. The ASUS and Gigabyte meanwhile were quite similar here, with the Gigabyte having the higher numbers.

Conclusion 

There will always be a market, no matter how niche it is, for the most extreme products in the tech industry. With the Intel X58 chipset, it's tempting to argue that the entire platform is meant for the high-end. We have previously seen some rather expensive examples, but our three boards today are among the more reasonably priced offerings for this chipset. Of course, there are even more affordable ones, especially if they come in microATX form factor.

First, before we go into the merits of each board, we'll have to say that most users would be more than satisfied with any of them. ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI are the biggest motherboard vendors around and they don't mess up often, not for a high-end market at least. Starting off with the most costly of the lot, the ASUS P6X58D-E is only a slightly scaled back version of the very similar P6X58D Premium. Even the layout was similar, which like the Premium, was excellent. With its performance also topping the benchmarks, we have to say that this ASUS board had the edge over the competition. The question is, whether you're willing to pay the higher asking price of S$439?

Next, Gigabyte's X58A-UD3R is, as its naming convention indicates, targeted at those hoping to shave costs by opting for fewer features. That did not stop Gigabyte from dishing out its usual barrage of additional storage controllers. It made for a crowded board, but less so than the higher end models which squeezed even more features. For what you get, the price of S$365 appears decent value, though we weren't that impressed with its performance, which was mostly average. The layout too suffered slightly, but not to the extent that we had to flag it. Hardware and performance aside, Gigabyte has impressed us with its latest addition of software utilities, especially with the new Cloud OC feature and we've given the board additional brownie points in the features department. As a whole, the Gigabyte board is perhaps the best equipped board out of the box when all things are considered and it shouldn't be taken lightly.

Finally, MSI continues to be very aggressive in terms of pricing, with the X58A-GD65 just undercutting the Gigabyte at S$359. While it was not exactly short of features, the MSI, like the ASUS was clearly trumped by the Gigabyte in this department. MSI even removed its OC Genie feature that has appeared on its newer motherboards. The performance of this board was also not convincing - it was left to compete with the Gigabyte in our benchmarks, with the ASUS clearly in the lead. On the bright side, this MSI board did well for our power consumption tests and for its price, you do get the same quality of components as its competitors.

Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.