Intel X58 Motherboard Roundup - What does $300 Get You?
by Gary Key on December 5, 2008 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Test Setup
We are utilizing the Intel i7 920 processor in our testing today. We believe this processor will be the top selling i7 processor for the near term due to its reasonable cost and excellent performance capabilities. We test with Hyper-Threading enabled, all power saving options enabled, and memory set to DDR3-1066 at 6-6-5-15 1T timings unless noted. Memory sub-timings are set to auto along with all voltages set to auto. All peripheral options on the board are enabled along with the Vista HD audio drivers for each audio solution.
Our 6GB memory kit is provided by Corsair and this particular kit will reach DDR3-1800 on 1.75V, thus providing reasonable overclocking headroom for our i7 920. We also tested with several different kits from Kingston, OCZ, Patriot, G.Skill, and Mushkin that have all provided excellent results from 1066 up to 2000 speeds depending on the kit. The retail i7 processors do not have a memory multiplier or QPI lock as we noticed in our engineering samples. We will take a look at all of the available DDR3 tri-channel kits running at various clock speeds in a separate article.
Our video card choice is the Sapphire HD 4870 512MB edition. We originally had decided to test with the Sapphire 4870X2 card but constant driver problems prevented us from effectively utilizing the card in our first benchmark results. The latest 8.11 drivers are a welcome relief, but problems still exist in a few games with AA disabled. We will show CF results with the HD 4870 today and GTX 260 results in our overclocking guide shortly. At this point, at least in motherboard testing, we prefer the NVIDIA GTX260/280 series on the X58 due to better driver support.
We stored everything in an ABS Canyon 695 chassis for these particular tests. This is case you have to see and touch in person to really appreciate it. We are also testing our GTX 260 setups with the Thermaltake Spedo. We might add that the Spedo is an excellent case for the money. For those of you who have spent most of your money on upgrading to the X58 platform but still need a case on a budget, the Antec Nine Hundred Series worked very well for us during thermal testing. If you already have a case like the Cooler Master 830 Stacker or Cosmos 1000, then you are set.
Cooling is provided via the Vigor Monsoon III and allows us to reach 4.0GHz~4.1GHz on air-cooling. Our other coolers from Thermaltake, Thermalright, and Cooler Master offer similar performance. CoolIT Systems has provided their updated Freezone Elite to handle overclocking duties when we push our CPUs and GPUs to the limit in part two. Storage duties come via the superb WD Black Edition 1TB drive. Power delivery is provided by the Corsair 1000HX PSU.
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MarchTheMonth - Friday, December 5, 2008 - link
Let me just say this, i haven't read through the entire article yet (i'm on only the first page still), and for any motherboard maker to focus strictly on extreme overclocks is just stupid to me.I bought my system the day the core i7 was released, got the i7 920, asus mobo, and 6GB of memory (and honestly, I think most users buy 6GB of memory, i really dont think many people get 3GB), and i couldn't overclock because the only HSF i had was the stock one, and at 100% cpu usage, my processor was reaching 96-100C after 3 minutes. I dumbled down my usage to make sure that nothing was making the computer run above 80, and now that i have a noctua HSF, i havent seen anything above 65C (even with my overclock of only 3.33Ghz).
My point is, if all my mobo could do out of the box was do extreme overlocks and run really high scores in synthetic program X, I would have been pissed. This is my main system, I expect it to be 24/7/365 stable, and I expect the mobo makers to make a product to provide this.
bob4432 - Friday, December 5, 2008 - link
i don't care about superpi scores if my $300 m/b can't do prime95 for 1hr. reliability is key - number 1 importance.i have many friends that are always buying top of the line m/bs and when we game, they are always the first to drop out as their machines have crashed. my 1-2gen old chipsets that at may offer crossfire/sli or a raid able southbridge are always bulletproof and i just keep on gaming.
in reality, nobody really cares if your machine is 1-3% faster in either fps or superpi if the damn thing can't stay on for any amount of time or only 60% of its onboard items work.
good job to you guys for geting this point across, and it is nearly criminal that you have to talk to them nearly 1000 times to get stuff resolved, utterly ridiculous.
Prozin - Friday, December 5, 2008 - link
I am very impressed that somebody has finally addressed this issue because in my opinion this has been going on for a while now. The trend in the industry seems to be clear, many of the larger companies seem to be not only advertising their products overclocking abilities but also getting on board with standout people in the overclocking community. Keeping with your article I won't mention any names here but the marketing strategy seems to have paid off, but at the expense of working products unfortunately!As you mentioned in your article (and I agree) these companies should focus on at least getting the standard features working correctly before insuring that the motherboard will boot at FSB speeds in access of 600Mhz! Its seems to me that once they get all their features (at least the advertised features) working properly they could focus their time and energy on the motherboard's overclocking ability without having to worry about the multitude of RMA's because of non-boot issues or drives not being identified.
Unfortunately I'm not able to articulate my thoughts as well as you guys did but I think its great your changing your review process to help industry focus more on releasing a fully working product before releasing a product that can overclock well at the expense of everything else. Please keep up the great work because consumers like myself will be the first ones to benefit from it!
Degloriath - Friday, December 5, 2008 - link
Something seems wrong with this article, interesting as it is, there's multiple broken image links and the next page link breaks. Just thought I should give you an early heads up!sciwizam - Friday, December 5, 2008 - link
"(What do you think about doing this) (listing out problems encountered is a good idea, not crazy about the thank you Gary,but that is just me)"Notes?
Gary Key - Friday, December 5, 2008 - link
The rough draft went up instead of the final article, it is correct now. :)trailertrash - Sunday, December 7, 2008 - link
i just ordered the asus p6t mobo an 6 meg of corsair 3 chan. ram. after reading that the 3rd sticks not seen by vista 64 i felt a pain in my gut but after looking around people have fixed the issue by flashing the bios to 0804.P.s. i hope its that simple
TheBeagle - Saturday, December 6, 2008 - link
Gary,Once again you have done a very good service of objectively reviewing and evaluating the latest batch of high-end boards - Well Done! As for any minor editorial/typo annoyances, just ignore them for the most part, and fix the ones you choose in due course. Overall, it's an excellent review, and worthy of publication on AnandTech's front page. And for those who might criticize any portion of it - just have them post THEIR comprehensive review so we can all compare those editorial products.
Best regards and Merry Christmas! TheBeagle