Gigabyte X58A-UD9 and GTX480 Quad Sli Review
BIOS and Overclocking
Published: 27th July 2010 | Source: Gigabyte | Price: £465.99 |
BIOS and Overclocking
BIOS
Of the two BIOS available Gigabyte use the AWARD BIOS. The UD9 shows its overclocking leanings with the M.I.T (the overclock menu) is the first option available, rather than on the right hand side like it is with some variants of the AWARD. Whereas the AMI BIOS has most of the overclocking options setup on a single page, the M.I.T has them spread around a little within the submenu. It takes a little getting used to if you're more familiar with the AMI BIOS, but everything is neatly labelled and navigation is a breeze.
Before you get excited that Gigabyte have some secret trick to unlock your processor, we're running the 980x in this, hence the high multiplier.
Everything you could desire to get a good overclock out of your processor is available to tweak. As it is so easy to navigate hopefully we'll see a nice result.
Overclocking
As always with a good overclocking method the first thing is to see how far we can push the BCLK and so we know if this is a real lunatic overclocker, or something that will need a little massaging.
One thing to note before we get to the figure, is that if you have all four PCI-e slots populated then the ability of the UD9 to push the BCLK hard is greatly reduced. This is hugely surprising given its status as an extreme enthusiast board, but it's something to be aware of.
207MHz was the limit of the UD9. Initially this might seem a little disappointing, but the reality is that with most memory topping out just past 2GHz, and with the i7 Extreme's being happier using the multiplier to overclock rather than BCLK, it should be more than enough for our needs.
And so it proved. 4.648 GHz being a new record for this processor, beating the Rampage 3 Extreme by 38 MHz. This is entirely on air and, as you can see from the CPU-Z, without insane voltages. Not the kind of thing we'd want to run 24/7, but my word it's stunning.
Most Recent Comments
P.S. Love the new watermark btw.
Regards to everyone in OC3D even the cleaners if you have any.
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Originally Posted by name='silenthill'
Fantastic, amazing, fabulous, unbelievable, jaw dropping, I enjoyed every minute of it, you deserve a 5 star for this one, just lovely truly professional, pure enjoyment, I truly love you guys,
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Nice review though.
:haha: :haha: :haha:
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Originally Posted by name='silenthill'
Well your signature looks like readings from a cheap hand blood pressure machine
:haha: :haha: :haha: |
4xsli is a joke. How gutted would you be if you bought the board for that reason only to get the results you have shown.
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Originally Posted by name='w3bbo'
Fantastic looking board. I don't think there will be too many wanting to shill out £450 for this though with the new round of CPUs on the horizon.
4xsli is a joke. How gutted would you be if you bought the board for that reason only to get the results you have shown. |
:topic:|
Originally Posted by w3bbo
Fantastic looking board. I don't think there will be too many wanting to shill out £450 for this though with the new round of CPUs on the horizon. 4xsli is a joke. How gutted would you be if you bought the board for that reason only to get the results you have shown. |
I am not rich, by any means. Let me point one thing out though. I do multimedia production work, and use some proprietary PCIe cards in that work. The cards MUST follow consecutive slot orders. So that made the ud9 one of only 3 options for my needs. The EVGA lacked the sata3 and a few features. The ASUS SC has been plagued with problems. So that only left the ud9. Well to be fair there was a small assortment of high end server boards also, but none exactly fit the bill.
ALSO, Gigabyte does make the promise that they will "custom engineer" BIOS features for ud9 users. This is critical for my needs. As my software/hardware matures, I am constantly running into dma/irq issues with mobo's/os's. If Gigabyte makes good on their promise and expedites BIOS implementations even ONE day ahead of the competition. The board has payed for itself.
Not to brag or tout my other hardware, but the proprietary PCI cards I use run about $15k for 3, so the premium for the ud9 was really not that big of a deal (in the bigger picture).
Now for the icing on the cake. I was previously running these cards in a MAC
Apple was forcing me to buy a new $7k computer every 2 years or so, just to keep up. So now that I moved over to a Win platform, the performance is through the roof....and I have under $4k into a system that utterly DEMOLISHES the MacPro in BOTH cost and performance.
I think the ud9 is actually a bargain, considering what it does. If there was ONE single competing product on the market...I would call it as you have.....but there is not.
I don't regret my purchase one bit. I am not just talking artificial benches....I am talking REAL WORLD performance. 24/7
ud9 is truly the current king
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