Gigabyte Shows off its Premium X58 Motherboard

[btarunr]

Motherboard vendors are preparing rigorously for catering to the market that the upcoming Intel Core i7 series processors generate. The processors are based on a new 1366-pin land grid array (LGA-1366) socket and would require you to purchase a compatible motherboard. ASUS had recently revealed that it would be in a position to make its LGA-1366 offerings available by launch-day of the Core i7. Gigabyte is getting ready with its high-end offering, the GA-X58-EXTREME, TweakTown caught more than just a glimpse of it.



The board's a looker. Gigabyte maintained its signature colour scheme. Over to the north, you can see the new LGA-1366 socket. Gigabyte sought to provide active cooling to the northbridge with a water-block. It uses four PCI-Express slots arranged in a manner similar to that on the MA-790FX-DQ6. The board supports Tri-Channel DDR3 memory. Gigabyte could carve-out a value model, the GA-X58-DS4 out of this board design, presumably by blanking or reducing the orange PCI-Express x16 (electrical x8) slots, and the chipset and VRM cooling. The board in the picture is a non-functional sample.



Source: TweakTown

[AddSub]

Not a fan of Gigabyte or their products, but the board does look decent. Very neat component arrangement. Although, if I were ever thinking of switching over to the Nehalem architecture, then I would look for something from nVidia for my chipset needs. I'm old fashioned that way I guess and Intel has never been enthusiast friendly, especially when it comes to their chipsets, which is something people forget all the time. They just happen to have overall faster CPUs at this moment.

I never buy components when they are in their first generation or revision. I'm speaking not only about the motherboard which itself is sporting a brand new CPU platform, but the new CPU architecture as well. We can probably expect a Nehalem refresh within 6 to 8 months with possible bug-fixes and many other improvements and you can be sure that these early motherboards will have issues of varying severity with any future refreshes.

[flashstar]

Is it just me or is that first pci-e slot blocked by the north bridge heat sink?

I hope that they fix it before releasing the final revision.

[yogurt_21]

pcie slot arangements aren't dual slot card friendly and definetly not practical for quadfire

[trt740]

nice too see but man are these chips gonna be overkill and boy do I like overkill

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

addswub? what do u mean by "enthusiast friendly??

[qwerty_lesh]

single slot gfx cards will fit in that board for quadfire no problem, but fat chance chucking an x2 or whatever which needs better cooling (4 in quadfire isnt gonna happen with that little space), aside from that though unlike other posters, im pretty happy with gigabyte boards, provided you pick the right revision, some they seem to cheap out on compared then others, and also the right series of board, (flagship ds4/ds5 is my favorite). can anyone confirm if the x58-extreme uses the realtek ethernet chipset? i wish they would resume using marvell for there premium motherboards, their so much more reliable over the realtek (known as database killers). id pick one over an asus, even if the colours are a train wreck on the gigabyte boards. lol

[Viscarious]

Looks like a bag of skittles.

[PCpraiser100]

They have to carve out a value model. DDR2 is still a superstar for the enthusiast. I wonder about the BIOS.

[csendesmark]

this board has support Tri-channel DDR3 + PCI-e 2.0 + ?USB 3.0?
why has floppy and ide connectors???
at least, no COM + LPT ports to waste space on I/O shield

[VIPER]

What else should they put instead of the FDD or IDE?

[csendesmark]

Originally Posted by VIPER

What else should they put instead of the FDD or IDE?

more usb or sata or both

[..'Ant'..]

Originally Posted by Viscarious

Looks like a bag of skittles.

Haha yeah it does but you can't go wrong with Gigabyte their good alright. Yes they look ugly but their good.

[Scrizz]

Gigabyte's treated me well: I'm happy.
can't wait to get my hands on one of 'em

[VIPER]

Originally Posted by csendesmark

more usb or sata or both

Well, you have a point! I will suggest them this, you are right.

[PP Mguire]

Am i the only one that thinks the placement of everything on this board is crap? I mean seriously, 4 16x slots all together?

[VIPER]

Relax, I worked with (and for) them a lot, you can easily install there 4 x 4850.

[Wile E]

That is a terrible gfx layout. Even my Maze5 gpu block takes up slightly more than 1 slot. That layout is about useless for anyone considering more than 2 high end cards.

[VIPER]

Guys, is just Rev. 0.1. This means is no way final! And all what you write here is read in HQ (trust me on this). And they usually take note of user's ideas.

Damn, I still talk as I am still their employee

[ktr]

I wonder when the ATX layout will be retired for a new standard layout. It seems that ATX is reaching its peak.

[Wile E]

Originally Posted by ktr

I wonder when the ATX layout will be retired for a new standard layout. It seems that ATX is reaching its peak.

That's what E-ATX is for.

[ktr]

Originally Posted by Wile E

That's what E-ATX is for.

Your probably right. I have read some where that usb3.0 requires a shit load of pcb layers.

[Hayder_Master]

gigabyte do great's mobo's but im thinking abou quad crossfire of hd 4870x2 how can put it in this sticking pci-e slot , maybe mobo more big in real not look clear in the picture and there is enough space between pci-e slot's but the 4870x2 still long card i think it is go over south bridge that's mean more heat for SB , so gigabyte must thinking about this

[REVHEAD]

Originally Posted by hayder.master

gigabyte do great's mobo's but im thinking abou quad crossfire of hd 4870x2 how can put it in this sticking pci-e slot , maybe mobo more big in real not look clear in the picture and there is enough space between pci-e slot's but the 4870x2 still long card i think it is go over south bridge that's mean more heat for SB , so gigabyte must thinking about this

South bridge wont heat up much it will be fine, as for quad 4870x2? are you serious?

For one the PCIE lanes wont support the badwidth needed for 4 x2 cards, but neither will the drivers, and the PCIE spacing for that matter.
You can either run 4 x4850s, 4x 3850s, 2x 3870s, 2x 3870x2s, 2x 4870s, 2x4870sX2.

There are not enough PCIE lanes to do any other configs, even if there was the CPU would be so shit ass slow for 8 gpu cores to even get any performance from them.

[Wile E]

Originally Posted by REVHEAD

South bridge wont heat up much it will be fine, as for quad 4870x2? are you serious?

For one the PCIE lanes wont support the badwidth needed for 4 x2 cards, but neither will the drivers, and the PCIE spacing for that matter.
You can either run 4 x4850s, 4x 3850s, 2x 3870s, 2x 3870x2s, 2x 4870s, 2x4870sX2.

There are not enough PCIE lanes to do any other configs, even if there was the CPU would be so shit ass slow for 8 gpu cores to even get any performance from them.

What about 3x4870 configs? The chipset should have plenty of bandwidth for that, yet it's not a possibility with this layout.

I think they definitely need to go back to the layout drawing board.