by Doors4ever
05/29/2009 | 06:30 PM
Unlike many other manufacturers, Gigabyte Company uses very clear and logically justified approach to putting together model names for their products. Just a model name is already enough to learn a lot about the product and its features. Without going too deep into details we can tell that GA-EX58-UD4P is a Gigabyte mainboard on Intel X58 Express chipset. It is energy-efficient because it supports “Dynamic Energy Saver” technology, i.e. the number of active phases in the processor voltage regulator circuitry may change dynamically depending on the workload. The board also belongs to the “Ultra Durable 3” series, which means that it not only uses high-quality electronic components, but also has a thicker copper layer inside the PCB. The same is also true for Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 and GA-EX58-Extreme, which we have already reviewed before. However, these two mainboards are the top flagship solutions in the lineup, while the number “4” in the model name indicates that the board belongs to the mainstream segment. Therefore, we can expect its functionality and design to be noticeably different from what the top high-end products have to offer.
Everything we have just said is absolutely correct, but the mainboard to best fit our description would be Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4, while our today’s hero also comes with a letter “P” at the end that changes a lot. The letter “P” in Gigabyte’s model naming system indicates extensive functionality. It could be an additional graphics card slot, TPM (Trusted Platform Module) for hardware encoding, enhanced chipset cooling system or a combination of these features. As a result, all Gigabyte mainboards with a letter “P” in the end of the model name may often be especially interesting to check out, because they find themselves in-between the marketing segments. Although the absence of certain functions or features wouldn’t let them join a higher class of products, they still stand out significantly among the other solutions in their category.
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P mainboard is a vivid representative of a transitional model like that. It differs from the regular Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4 without the “P” not only by the TPM encryption module, but also by its PCB layout, ¾ of which are identical to that layout of the flagship models. That is why we are especially curious to check out the functionality of this solution and find out if will be able to be at least ¾ as good as the flagship mainboards.
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P mainboard ships in a vertical box that looks exactly the same as the box for Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5. Looks like that are using unified design and style for all mainboards in this series.
The back side of the box illustrates different features and peculiarities of this solution:
The list of included accessories also is almost identical to what is bundled with the top model and consists of the following components:
Besides, Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P also comes with a step-by-step manual on the hardware cryptographic TPM module.
When you look at Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P mainboard you can notice that it doesn’t differ too much from the top models after all:
If you look at the top half of the mainboard PCB, you will notice no difference at all. We see the same twelve-phase processor voltage regulator circuitry, the same convenient location of all components, the same buttons, connectors and indicators. No differences of any kind here.
The most dramatic difference is in the cooling system used for the chipset and processor voltage regulator components, especially compared with Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme. However, we can’t call the cooling solution installed on Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P weak or limited. On the contrary, we can even say that it has got rid of some excessiveness and looks very much like cooling solutions used on the majority of other contemporary mainboards. Our practical experiments showed that the cooling system in Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P mainboard does its job very well and needs no additional work or modifications to be done to it.
An additional advantage is a secure screw-on retention used for both heatsinks over the chipset Bridge chips. Only the heatsinks over the voltage regulator components are fastened with plastic push-in pins.
As we move over to the lower part of the PCB, we again don’t notice any difference between Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P and elder models. They have the same number of expansion slots that are placed identically. And only when we turn to the lower right corner of the PCB, we notice several differences. It is only here that Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P looks more like its younger sister – GA-EX58-UD4 (without a “P”).
However, although these differences are noticeable, they are not critical. For example, we don’t see a POST indicator that is available on the higher-end models. Moreover, they have ten Serial ATA ports, while Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P has “only” eight: six provided by the Intel ICH10R chipset South Bridge and another two – by the additional Gigabyte SATA2 controller. The same controller that is probably an analogue of the widely spread JMicron JMB363 also adds PATA support to the mainboard features list.
The last difference we can see is on the mainboard back panel. The connector panel looks the same as on higher-end boards, with that only difference that Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P mainboard has only one Gigabit network controller instead of two.
Summing up everything we have just said let’s take a look at the list of Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P technical specifications. It is equipped with a different yet efficient chipset and voltage regulator cooling system, has no POST indicator, only one Gigabit network card instead of two and eight SATA ports instead of ten. However, to its advantage we have to mention that it features a hardware encryption module and lower price. Well, all of us have their own needs, but in my opinion, Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P mainboard looks even more attractive than its higher-end counterparts.
The detailed components layout for Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P will conclude our discussion of its PCB design peculiarities:
We have often come across the situation when the manufacturer would deliberately limit the BIOS functionality of their junior solutions to make the difference between the higher and lower end mainboards more obvious and thus stimulate the demand for more expensive mainboards. They limited the supported value intervals for selected parameters or increased the increments, removed some of the functions altogether. However, the BIOS of our Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P doesn’t seem to be any different from the BIOS of Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 or GA-EX58-Extreme. On the contrary, due to TPM module there appeared a new section called “Security Chip Configuration”. That is why we can save some time on detailed commentary and illustrate the BIOS functionality of Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P mainboard with screenshots:
Overclockers and fine tuning fans hunting for maximum performance will be pleased to see “MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.)” to be the first on the list:
In order to show you the complete list of functions offered by this section, we had to combine three screenshots into one. However, all parameters are very well structured, so the section is very easy to work with. Moreover, some parameters have been singled out into individual sub-sections, the first being “Advanced CPU Features”:
“UnCore & QPI Features” sub-section will let you set the frequencies for the corresponding busses:
The next sub-section is called “Advanced Clock Control”. It contains parameters for chipset fine tuning, options for changing the PCI Express bus frequency and “C.I.A.2” management (automatic overclocking function).
You can change the basic memory timings in the main window of “MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.)”. However, if you need more options for finer tuning of the memory parameters, you can go to a special sub-section called “Advanced DRAM Features”.
Each of the three memory channels is configured separately, although the settings are identical for each of them. We are going to offer you the settings for the first memory channel as an example:
The voltage management is implemented in a similar way. All basic voltage may be changed in the main window, while secondary voltages have been moved to “Advanced Voltage Control” sub-section.
All voltages are set to Auto by default that is why the board may increase them during overclocking, as it sees necessary. A tremendous advantage of all Gigabyte mainboards is that you can set any parameter to “Normal” instead of “Auto”, which will keep the nominal value of the parameter unchanged even during overclocking.
You can also see from the screenshot that the board allows lowering the voltages below the nominal value. Something this option may be very useful, but not all mainboards out there have it.
If the value has been set too high it will be highlighted purple and then blinking red.
Winding up the discussion of BIOS Setup functionality we have to mention numerous informational parameters available in “MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.)” and its sub-sections. We know the current frequencies of different busses, memory timings, voltages – all this makes system fine tuning, overclocking and search for optimal settings a lot simpler and faster.
I suggest that we should skip the standard functionality of a few following BIOS sections, because we are already very well familiar with them. I would like just to remind you that if you want to get access to the complete set of options and parameters on a Gigabyte mainboard, you need to press Ctrl-F1 in the main BIOS screen. Yes, this is some kind of an atavism left from the old times when Gigabyte mainboards were not so user-friendly.
The next section that is of certain interest to us is called “PC Health Status”. Monitoring has never been a strong side of Gigabyte mainboards. And this time again we don’t see anything ultimately exceptional. There is only one unique feature here that is connected with the board’s ability to control the rotation speed of the CPU cooler fan. Unlike many contemporary mainboards, Gigabyte solutions can control the rotation speed of not only four-pin fans but also of three-pin ones.
In conclusion I would like to remind you that by pressing F9 you will get a window with some useful system info on your board.
The “End” key pressed on mainboard boot-up or F8 pressed in the main BIOS window will launch a built-in BIOS reflashing utility.
By pressing F11 in the main window you can save the current BIOS settings profile with a detailed description. Moreover, the board also saves the latest settings every time POST is passed successfully. If you reflash the BIOS, all profiles will be erased, however, you can save them on an external storage medium. By pressing F12 you can load you own saved settings profile or one of automatically saved ones.
It is obvious that the functionality of Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P BIOS hasn’t been limited in any way - the number of options as well as the supported value intervals remained intact. Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P BIOS is just as good as the BIOS of its higher-end counterparts. We are anxious to get down to system overclocking now, but before we do so, we need to get familiar with a few operational peculiarities of Gigabyte based systems.
In fact, we have already discussed all meaningful peculiarities of Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P BIOS. However, we need to dwell on two more things that we haven’t yet touched upon or that we didn’t discuss enough.
In particular, Gigabyte mainboards based on Intel P45 Express chipset revealed a new function that we hadn’t seen before by Gigabyte or on any other mainboards. I assume that this function may have appeared way earlier, but I only noticed it for the first time during Gigabyte GA-EP45T-Extreme mainboard tests. If you clear the CMOS but don’t access the BIOS right away to configure the parameters, you will get a window with the saved settings profiles. By default the mainboard would offer you to load the last known successful configuration profile, but you might as well choose any other profile or access the BIOS to set everything manually.
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P mainboard also has a similar feature; however, when we tried to use it, we revealed certain issues. For example, you can only load the first profile (when the system is not overclocked) out of three saved profiles you see on the previous screenshot. Formally, nothing should prevent you from trying to load any of the overclocking profiles, but the board will still boot with default settings. If you access the BIOS and check the “MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.)” section, you will see that the settings of the chosen profile have been loaded and put in place, but you will see no warning message about a failed start.
It looks like the problem is connected with the fact that contemporary Intel chipsets require the so-called “double reboot” when it comes to serious changes of the configuration parameters including the changes made during processor overclocking. The mainboard shuts down and then reboots applying the selected settings. This is what happens when we select the overclocking profile in the BIOS. If we select it from the menu that pops up after CMOS has been cleared, then the mainboard reboots as usual and no wonder that system parameters do not change. As we know from the DFI LanParty JR X58-T3H6 Review, currently only DFI engineers managed to somehow overcome this problem with “double reboot”.
Actually, I think it is not a very serious problem. We don’t clear CMOS that often enough to be concerned about this issue. But since Gigabyte mainboards have this unique function that does in fact speed up and simplify the loading of the desired profile saving you time and trouble entering the BIOS, then it would be better if it worked correctly also for the overclocking settings profiles.
The next thing that I would like to dwell on here hasn’t yet been discussed in our previous Gigabyte mainboard reviews. And the reason for that is not because the issue has been eliminated or is no longer acute, but because we are very tired of repeating the same thing over and over again. Today we have already brought up the Ctril-F1 key combination that goes back to the days when Gigabyte mainboards were not very overclocking-friendly. We used to be upset about the whole bunch of different issues that have been eliminated almost completely by now. There is only one of them left: in case of over-overclocking all parameters get reset back to defaults without warning.
When you search for optimal overclocking parameters, you can often make a mistake and select the settings that turn out too high for the CPU, memory or mainboard. This is when the so-called “Watchdog Timer” comes to your rescue. This system may have different names by different makers, but the idea behind it remains the same. After a failed attempt (or multiple attempts) to change the faulty settings, the mainboard reboot automatically in safe mod and stop displaying a warning message. Usually they offer the user to continue booting with default settings or access the BIOS to correct the settings. All mainboards except Gigabyte ones acted exactly like that. They have long learned to reboot correctly without dropping all BIOS settings down to their nominal values, but they didn’t stop after rebooting and proceeded quietly with the OS loading.
I noticed countless times that overclocking settings have been cleared after Windows had already loaded. I wrote about this issue countless times in my reviews of Gigabyte mainboards. Finally, thanks to notorious “double reboots” I learned to hear if the selected settings were applied successfully or reset back to defaults. I already put up with the fact that Gigabyte engineers didn’t want or couldn’t fix that issue. It is just recently that I found out that the problem has been successfully eliminated. I only wished that I had learned about it under better circumstances.
I wrote in one of our previous reviews that one day our Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme mainboard refused to overclock CPUs and memory for some reason. The weird thing about it was the fact that the board was still running impeccably in nominal mode, but wouldn’t boot even after the slightest overclocking, such as even 1MHz increase in the base frequency. However, it would reboot after a few failed attempts and get back to the nominal mode, though it didn’t continue booting but stopped and displayed the following:
I would have been very happy that after so many years Gigabyte mainboards had finally learned to respond properly to over-overclocking, if I hadn’t lost one of the best mainboards for Intel Core i7 overclocking. However, it turned out that Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme mainboard was working perfectly fine on a different testbed in the nominal mode as well as during CPU and memory overclocking. Therefore, I was especially curious to test the new Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P mainboard: would it be able to overclock?
It did, but with a lot of effort. Time after time when a couple of boot attempts failed the mainboard kept producing the same message about boot failure and resetting the parameters. Although I used to look forward to seeing this message before, now I almost hated it. And then, on the third, fifth or eighth attempt to boot with the same parameter settings it would suddenly start working just fine. It passed all tests, rebooted and did absolutely find until system shut down. After that all problems came right back up. I assume that Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme could also start eventually with the selected overclocking settings, if I had been a little more persistent. But I had never had problems like that before; I didn’t see this warning message even once. So, what changed? I got a new power supply unit. I recently started using Enermax Infiniti EIN720AWT PSU in my testbed. As soon as I replaced it with a different model, Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P was cured from all the booting issues during processor overclocking and began booting successfully on first attempt, just the way it should. I hope Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme will also work fine when it returns to me.
I can’t find a reasonable explanation to what happened here. I could get it if Gigabyte mainboards didn’t work with Enermax Infiniti EIN720AWT power supply at all, because I had experienced things like that with several mainboards and PSUs before. But when the board works perfectly fine in the nominal mode and refuses to boot during overclocking – this is something I can’t perceive. Moreover, if this only had been the case during some serious overclocking, but 1MHz base frequency increase is not even overclocking. I don’t know who is more responsible for this issue: Gigabyte or Enermax. We have been working with Gigabyte mainboards and performed some overclocking experiments on them with the following power supply units: Antec NeoPower Neo HE 550 rev. A4, Sunbeamtech NUUO Series SUNNU550-EUAP, OCZ GameXStream OCZGXS700, Seasonic M12D SS-850EM, SilverStone SST-ST85ZF and Enermax Liberty ELT620AWT. I am sure that this list is way bigger, I just didn’t have a chance to check out all PSUs available. But what is so special about Enermax Infiniti EIN720AWT? What is different between Gigabyte and all other boards that work just fine with this PSU?
Well, all’s well that ends well. As a result, we have once again replaced the power supply unit in our testbed, but it is a minor change. Most importantly, Gigabyte mainboards have finally learned to react adequately to over-overclocking. This is a significant thing, in my opinion. They have finally got rid of the last serious issue on Gigabyte mainboards that has been a pain to overclocking fans for many years. The company was persistently working on eliminating the problems with their products one by one. We have long known that Gigabyte mainboards works perfectly and overclock processors very well. Now it has become even easier. At this point I can’t name any serious issue with Gigabyte mainboards. The company offers dozens of very different models, so some may have certain drawbacks of their own. However, there are no global issues with Gigabyte mainboards anymore. There is no such thing as an ideal mainboard. And Gigabyte mainboards for Intel processors are not ideal either. However, they have now gotten closer than anyone else to my hypothetical idea of a perfect mainboard.
All our tests were performed in the following system:
We used Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 x86 OS. We didn’t experience any difficulties during testbed assembly. The system worked flawlessly in nominal mode, however, we did have to apply some effort to achieve stability in overclocked mode.
Keeping in mind that Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P mainboard boasts very similar PCB layout and identical BIOS functionality as the higher-end models, I assumed that it would be enough to use the same settings that worked perfectly for Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 and GA-EX58-Extreme and we would achieve the desired results. However, our attempt to overclock the CPU to 3.95GHz ended with a blue screen of death after the first few seconds of stability tests in LinX and Prime95. The same happened when we attempted to overclock the CPU to a slightly lower frequency of 3.8GHz without increasing the processor Vcore. I understood that I wouldn’t be able to succeed that easily and would have to act in a traditional step-by-step manner.
Let’s leave the CPU in the nominal mode for now and try increasing the memory frequency to the nominal value for our Kingston HyperX KHX14900D3T1K3/3GX: 1867MHz. After another round of failures we discovered that the problem was the insufficient “QPI/VTT Voltage”. In case of higher-end mainboard models we had to increase it only to 1.335-1.355V, while Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P required an increase to 1.395V. Only after that our memory worked stably at high frequencies and we could easily overclock our processor to 3.8GHz frequency after corresponding increase in the memory frequency and lowering of its timing settings.
We overclocked without touching the processor core voltage. We only enabled “Load-Line Calibration” function that prevents the core voltage from dropping under heavy load and hence keeps all Intel processor power-saving technologies up and running in idle mode.
We assumed that then it would be enough to simply increase the processor Vcore in order to overclock it to the maximum frequency of 3.95GHz. However, all our attempts failed. I was subconsciously ready for this outcome, because I had to increase “QPI/VTT Voltage” more than before, which in its turn increases the CPU temperature. Well, looked like we might have to stop at 3.9GHz. But I was very surprised to find out that even this frequency remained unattainable and all my attempts end up in errors.
It took me a while to find out that the mainboard was setting the frequency of the North Bridge part integrated into the CPU way too high. I am talking about the parameter called “Uncore Frequency”. I have actually stopped paying attention to this frequency, because mainboards usually set it at twice the memory frequency most of the time. However, in our case it was always at 3720MHz for some reason, which corresponded to 1860MHz memory frequency no matter what the actual memory frequency was. We overclocked our processor to 3.95GHz by raising the base frequency to 188MHz. The memory in this case worked at 1504MHz with 7-7-7-20 timings. For this memory speed Uncore frequency should be set at only 3008MHz. Once we corrected this setting, our system worked stably with the CPU overclocked to 3.95GHz, which was confirmed by LinX and Prime95 stability tests.
However, we had to increase the processor Vcore to 1.3V to ensure stability at 3.95GHz. As a result, Intel processor power-saving technologies were partially off. Only the CPU clock frequency multiplier would go down in idle mode, while the voltage remained constant.
Well, despite certain difficulties our overclocking records obtained on top Gigabyte mainboards before have been successfully reproduced on Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P. Now all we need to do is find out how well the mainboard performs in these conditions and how much power it consumes in this case.
We used Asus P6T mainboard as a reference for performance comparison in all our previous reviews of Intel X58 Express based solutions. Although we didn’t achieve maximum CPU overclocking on this mainboard, it performs pretty fast during overclocking as well as in nominal modes. Take, for instance, the results of our comparisons vs. DFI LanParty JR X58-T3H6 or EVGA X58 SLI Classified, where Asus P6T is convincingly ahead of the competitors. This time we’ll do exactly the same. At first we will compare the performance in nominal mode, when the boards set all parameters themselves.
Overall, these mainboards perform very close, except Everest benchmarks where Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P falls significantly behind. However, we are not surprised to see it happen this way. We have already explained why Asus P6T does so well in our earlier review. Unlike Gigabyte mainboards, Asus increases the processor clock multiplier to 22 much more frequently. Due to this peculiarity of “Turbo Boost” technology implementation the board performs very well in synthetic Everest benchmarks. Unfortunately, this “advantage” has no effect on any other applications.
Now let’s check out the mainboards performance when the CPU is overclocked to 3.8GHz. Here most BIOS settings are adjusted manually to identical values. As a result, the boards perform almost identically, as we have expected:
The results of these comparisons show that Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P mainboard is exceptionally fast. It will outperform many competitor solutions, even those from the higher price segment. And in order to outperform Asus P6T, Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P may resort to its ability to overclock processors to 3.95GHz, which Asus couldn’t achieve. However, strange as it might seem, there is no convincing victory here for some reason. We only see a slight advantage of Gigabyte mainboard in a few applications, while in others it even falls seriously behind.
In fact, there is nothing strange about these results, if we recall that we had to sacrifice the memory frequency in order to push the CPU speed to 3.95GHz. The difference will be more illustrative in the next table that compares the performance of Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P mainboard with the CPU overclocked to 3.8GHz and to 3.95GHz. The CPU speed is 150MHz higher that is why we see about 3% performance boost in applications sensitive to computational capacity, such as Cinebench 10, Fritz Chess Benchmark, 3DMark Vantage CPU tests. Lower memory frequency explains a serious lag in Everest benchmarks. However, synthetics tests were not the only ones to suffer. We see the board slowing down in games, namely Custom PC Bench 2007 Multitasking Test that uses 7-Zip for data compression, which is sensitive to memory speed.
The obtained results once again prove a known fact that size (overclocking in this case) doesn’t always matter. Maximum overclocking results may not always ensure performance superiority. Sometimes, optimal parameters choice pays back better.
We used Extech Power Analyzer 380803 for our power consumption measurements. This device is connected before the system PSU, i.e. it measures the power consumption of the entire system without the monitor, including the power losses that occur in the PSU itself. When we took the power readings in idle mode, the system was completely idle: there were even no requests sent to the hard drive at that time. We used LinX to load the CPU and FurMark utility to load the graphics card and recorded the maximum readings.
The power consumption of Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P and Asus P6T based systems is very similar in nominal mode, however, things change dramatically during overclocking. When we overclock to 3.8GHz CPU speed, Gigabyte mainboard keeps all Intel processor power-saving technologies up and running as they are, while thing isn’t the case on Asus board because of specific BISO issues discussed earlier. No wonder that Gigabyte mainboard consumes less power. Only when we overclock our processor to 3.95GHz by raising its Vcore, the mainboards power consumption levels become equal in idle mode and under VGA load, and under heavy CPU load Gigabyte board requires even more power than Asus.
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 and GA-EX58-Extreme mainboards were the first ones we used to start our Intel Core i7 overclocking experiments with. At that time we didn’t know how were good the obtained results. Only later we found out that these boards boasted exceptional combination of features and functionality. Some of their competitors performed just as good in nominal mode, but fell behind during CPU overclocking; some couldn’t make the memory work at high enough frequencies; some scared us away with very high power consumption. Only Gigabyte mainboards looked very attractive from all standpoints. However, these were top of the line flagship solutions that were expected to perform accordingly. Therefore, it was even more rewarding to see mainstream Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P mainboard prove just as good as its higher-end sisters. The performance of this mainboard in nominal as well as overclocked modes is equivalent to that of the best competitor solutions while its power consumption stays very moderate.
Let’s once again repeat the distinguishing features between Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P and the higher end solutions:
However, Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P has a number of advantages, too. It is equipped with a hardware encryption TPM module and is priced not only lower than top Gigabyte boards, but even lower that many competitor solutions we have tested so far. Taking into account the highest performance of this product, it has every chance to settle down in smart users’ systems who can truly appreciate the numerous advantages Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P has to offer.
Summing up the results of our today’s test session we are proud to award Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD4P with our prestigious Editor’s Choice title as the Best Mainstream Core i7 Platform:
