![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Tuesday , December 23, 2008
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Gigabyte EX58-UD5
Gigabyte brings its engineering expertise to the new EX58-UD5 motherboard that is targeted at the no-frills hardware enthusiast. It is still packed with all the OCing essentials. We get past the marketing speak to find out if this board is worth your hard earned dollar or if it should wind up in the computer hardware shooting gallery.
Subsystem Testing
NOTE: For all Subsystem Testing, an Intel® Core™i7 920 clocked at 2.66GHz with 3 x 2048MB Corsair TR3X6G1600C8D – 1600MHz DDR3 8-8-8-24-1T @ 1.66v memory modules running at 1333MHz were used. The CPU was cooled with a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme mounted with an LGA1366 bracket.
Audio – Subjective Listening
For subjective listening you want to listen to something that covers a range of sound types. For this portion of the review I went with Disturbed, Indestructible.
The onboard audio solution proved to be adequate for CD audio playback. No distortion, hissing or popping was heard.
Audio – Microphone Port Testing
The onboard audio MIC-IN port was tested using a Logitech Internet Chat Headset. Spoken words were recorded from the Windows Sound Recorder found under the Accessories\Entertainment folder in the start menu within Windows XP. The recording was made with the Microphone Boost option disabled, then enabled. The Microphone Boost option is found within the advanced menu under the microphone section within the Volume Control Menu.
The microphone recording sample proved to be mediocre. The audio sample was barely audible with the microphone boost option disabled and while much more audible with the option enabled, the audio was extremely distorted. People looking for a high end recording solution need to look elsewhere. This is typical as motherboard audio rarely excels at this type of usage.
Drive Performance
To test the capabilities of the on board USB 2.0 connections, we used an ACOMDATA HD060U2FE-72-USB 2.0/FireWire HDD connected first to the USB port. SATA and IDE drive tests were performed using Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD hard drives on the primary SATA header and Samsung 40 GB SATA 3G with NCQ hard drives on additional SATA headers. The SATA drives were used for testing in RAID 0 16k block size configurations on all applicable controllers. Testing was also conducted using a standalone SATA drive on all applicable controllers, and an EIDE drives connected in a primary slave configuration on the appropriate controller All drive benchmarks were done using the open source Iometer program.
It comes as no surprise to me but the ICH10R RAID-0 configuration was the fastest tested here. What was a pleasant surprise here was the lack of problems I experienced with the onboard drive controllers. Sometimes their onboard BIOS functions, RAID options or quirky behavior diminishes the experience. So far everything has gone exceptionally well with all the X58 boards I've tested thus far and this one is no exception.
Network Utilization Tests
Hagel Technologies’ DU Meter software was used with Windows Task Manager to determine the performance levels of the onboard network interface. DU Meter was used to measure bandwidth and transfer speeds, while Windows Task Manager monitored CPU utilization on the test system. For the testing, a 750MB Archive file consisting of several compressed WMA/MP3 files was used for the large file transfer, and 750MB worth of MP3/WMA files were used ranging in sizes from 3 to 30MB was used for the small files transfer test. The test was performed using a plenum rated category 5e crossover cable to bypass any traffic, routing or other transfer issues and possible packet loss or corruption that can be caused by a router/switch or hub. The cables were connected between two test machines, one using the onboard NIC(s) of the board being reviewed and the other is an Intel EXPI9400PT 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI-Express Gigabit Ethernet adapter installed into a test machine using an Intel DX48BT2 motherboard.
For the integrated LAN ports Gigabyte chose the Realtek 8111D embedded Ethernet controllers which are capable of 10/100/1000mbps speeds.
LAN1
The small files download test showed a 68.59MB a second maximum transfer rate. It showed a 52.68MB a second average transfer speed with CPU utilization hovering at 4%. This is actually quite excellent. The small files upload test showed slower transfer speeds peaking at 43.46MB a second and averaging a fairly low 26.94MB per second transfer speed. CPU Usage was a whopping 2%.
The large files download test almost mirrored that of the small files download test but with a lower average transfer rate of 38.57MB a second but the maximum was still 68.33MB a second which was close to the small files download test results. CPU usage was again a paltry 4%. The large files upload test showed a maximum transfer speed of 35.18MB a second and 23.06MB a second average transfer rate. CPU usage was again a solid 4%.
LAN2
I experienced slightly better results with the second LAN port in the small files download test. The transfer maxed out at 74.20MB a second and averaged 68.20MB per second which is on the higher side of what I usually see with integrated network adapters. CPU usage was slightly higher than previous tests at 5%. The small files upload test was a bit disappointing at 42.70MB a second max and averaging 26.09Mb a second with an average CPU usage of 3%.
Again I saw great results with LAN 2 in the download test. The large files download test showed a maximum transfer speed of 74.40MB a second and averaged 67.10MB a second. The CPU usage was again 4%. As with the first few tests, the upload tests were less impressive. The large files upload test maxed out at 41.70MB a second and averaged 23.67MB a second and came in at 3% in regard to CPU usage.
Overall not too bad. Realtek is not the best integrated adapter around but it is nice to see that while uploading isn't the NICs general forte, the download speeds are actually quite good and the implementation of the adapters here is at least very predictable.
Test Systems
The following system configurations were used for the Sandra memory benchmark graph, as well as all graphs listed under the Application and Gaming Benchmarks sections:
Graphs are labeled as follows: Motherboard - CPU Clock - FSB Clock - Memory Clock
Sandra Memory Bandwidth Buffered Integer
Note that all results above were obtained running the installed memory in Triple Channel mode.
Oddly enough the less expensive EX58-UD5 actually bests the more expensive EX58-Extreme. It still falls just slightly short of claiming victory against ASUS' mighty P6T Deluxe.
Sandra CPU Drystone ALU (2009 v1542)
In this test the Gigabyte EX58-UD5 loses to the more expensive boards in the round up. Though it does so by a small margin.
Hiper Pi v 0.99B
We see identical results in Hiper Pi across all the X58 motherboards. This is really a CPU test and with the motherboard no longer having the memory controller built into the chipset, motherboard design differences and implementation will become less of a factor than we've seen on the Intel side of things. This is exactly what we saw before when AMD went to an integrated memory controller on the Athlon 64 processors.
wPrime v2.00
We see some minor variance between the EX58-UD5 and the EX58-Extreme. All in all the score is certainly a good one but it doesn't claim the top spot here.