HARDOCP - Subsystem Testing - Gigabyte EX58-UD3R Motherboard Review

Date:: Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Author:: Daniel Dobrowolski
Editor:: Kyle Bennett
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Gigabyte EX58-UD3R Motherboard Review

The Gigabyte EX58-UD3R represents a budget X58 motherboard, if there is such a thing. While the feature set is somewhat limited when compared to other more robust X58 boards, the EX58-UD3R's performance and overclockability is anything but limited.

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Subsystem Testing

NOTE: For all Subsystem Testing, an Intel® Core™i7 920 clocked at 2.66GHz with 6GB (3 x 2048MB) Corsair TR3X6G2000C8GT DDR3 2000MHz memory modules using latency timings of (8-8-8-24-1T @ 1.65v) at 1600MHz were used. The Intel® Core™i7 920 was cooled with a Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme -1366 RT heat sink and fan.

Sound Hardware

The EX58-UD3R uses the Realtek ALC888 codec. It supports 7.1 channel audio and is pretty much par for the course and relatively unspectacular as far as onboard audio goes. That being said the audio quality was adequate as a whole and I had no driver issues or problems with the sound solution.

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.

CD audio playback worked well. 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.

Well the recording is where I really ran into my first disappointment with the audio solution. Mainly the sample was barely audible when played back so long as the recording was made with the microphone boost option disabled. When enabled it was distorted badly but was audible. It was easy to understand the spoken words in the sample, but the quality was just bad. Not unusual for this type of audio solution. Just bear in mind its limitations up front. If that doesn't work for you, get an add-in board.

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.

The EX58-UD3R has two drive controller ASICs. The first is the Intel ICH10R which is the south bridge chip. It supports 6 SATA ports in various RAID modes. Also included is the less flexible JMB36x. This controller is actually the Gigabyte branded version, but it is the same exact JMicron controller we've seen on countless boards for some time now. It is adequate, and is nothing to write home about, though the performance and CPU usage does vary some due to differences in implementation from board to board. Here both controllers are implemented well. I had no issues with the configuration of arrays or switching from AHCI to RAID mode. The hot plug feature worked fine with the ICH10R and didn't work at all with the JMicron controller.

As expected, the overall best performing solution was the ICH10R while in RAID0 mode.

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.

Gigabyte integrated the Realtek 8111D PCI-Express Gigabit Ethernet controllers for the network interface. It is capable of 10/100/1000 speeds and offers full and half duplex operation.

LAN1

The small files download test showed a very nice 71.29MB a second maximum transfer speed and averaged an excellent 62.83MB a second as well. CPU usage was reasonable at 5%. The small files upload test tanked compared to the download results showing a maximum speed of 32.59MB a second. The average was a pathetic 17.59MB a second. CPU usage was only 3% however.

Like the small files download test, the large files download test performed exceptionally well. The maximum transfer speed was 62.57MB a second. The average was a respectable 46.35MB a second. CPU usage came in at 4%. The large files upload test had even more sad results with a peak transfer speed of...........wait for it............... 27.03MB a second. The average was a staggering (as in bad) 12.48MB a second. The CPU usage was a meager 2% so that's something. I've run this test 3 times all with similar results. So at least in this case, the NIC performs badly. Is it still good enough for most people though.

I'm not a huge fan of the Realtek integrated NICs. Their performance is often all over the place and while they are sometimes ok in regard to download speeds their upload speeds are just awful in some cases. It would be nice if manufacturers besides Intel would spring for nicer Intel integrated NICs but I'm not holding my breath.

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: