Lab Notes - EVGA X58 SLI

[brugola.x]

As of today, the Intel Core i7 processor series and X58 chipset based motherboards are "officially" on sale. With that bit of news out of the way, EVGA is officially launching their X58 SLI motherboard today. We received a retail board on Saturday and have been running it through the benchmark gauntlet for the past 37 (and counting) hours. It's amazing what one can try to accomplish with a case of Rockstar and a few AC/DC albums. However, even unlimited amounts of caffeine and Angus Young failed to get us to the point of having a full preview ready tonight. That will come later today but in the meantime we would like to provide a recap of our experiences this weekend.

First off, the EVGA X58 SLI motherboard is a solid piece of workmanship, feature laden, and offers excellent performance when compared to its competition from ASUS, Gigabyte, Intel, and MSI. Aside from some early BIOS problems and a couple of questionable layout decisions, we have throughly enjoyed our time so far with the board. A few hours ago, we were singing a different tune but have since worked through a few problems with EVGA.
EVGA is prepping a new BIOS at this moment to address some items of interest. Like most initial BIOS releases, there are usually a few items that need to be corrected. Most of our items are minor or just recommendations, but we had a couple of issues that had us shaking our heads. Fortunately, EVGA normally provides excellent customer support and that is the case with this board.
The current BIOS release does not support overclocking profiles, so those enthusiasts who like to overclock will find themselves resetting numerous BIOS options if an overclock setting goes awry. Not a major item, but one we think should have been addressed before retail release for an enthusiast level board. Especially one that will save users significant keyboard time as they go through the process of figuring out what overclocked settings work or not.
We also discovered during testing that setting the ICH10R to AHCI/RAID operation causes a bit of a problem for us storage hounds. After switching from IDE mode to AHCI/RAID on the ICH10R, if the user tries to install a drive on ports four or five, then hard drives on ports zero through three will not be recognized. This also holds true if you attach a hard drive to the JMicron SATA/eSATA ports on the board or install a RAID card on of the available PCIe slots. This problem will be addressed very shortly. (Update - EVGA delivered a new BIOS this morning to address this problem.)
The only other item of note is that the user will need to disable EIST (speedstep) and CxE for the system to overclock properly. We found out the hard way that disabling all the power management functions but leaving CxE set to Auto will create some very interesting and frustrating overclock sessions. EVGA recommends the Load Optimal settings routine after the first POST and then again if the board does not recover properly from an errant BIOS setting as it could remain in safe mode. Several power management items will be turned off as a result of this action, but CxE is left at Auto with the BIOS setting enabled instead of disabled in this situation. This holds true with the available auto overclocking feature and the results will more than likely end in an BSOD or several of them. CxE will be disabled in these situations in an upcoming BIOS release. (Update - EVGA delivered a new BIOS this morning to address this problem.)

Once we had the board setup properly, we were rewarded with some excellent results from our i920 setup. Our "safe" overclock on air cooling ended up being a 21x196 configuration with Turbo enabled. This resulted in a final core speed of 4115MHz on 1.40V. Actual voltage was 1.411V as the board will slightly overvolt at this point.
Our Corsair 6GB DDR3 Tri-Channel kit afforded us a 8-8-8-19 1T setting at DDR3-1568 on 1.65V. EVGA is still tuning memory performance, so we expect this board to match our settings on the ASUS P6T-Deluxe board that ran at 7-8-7-20 1T. Currently CL5 and TRAS 15 is not available for users who want to push timings at 1066/1333. (Update - BIOS update this morning opens up CL5 and TRAS 15 settings) Even so, this board offers excellent performance at stock settings or when overclocked.
We will be back shortly with a quick look at the board, BIOS features, overclocking, and general performance results against the like priced ASUS P6T-Deluxe OC Palm Edition. Our full X58 roundup will be published later this week with boards from ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, Intel, EVGA, and maybe even DFI. In the meantime, we would like to give a shout out to TankGuys for getting us setup with some retail i7 processors this weekend.

AnandTech

è lei..

[brugola.x]

EVGA X58 Sneak Peak









After years of building motherboards based exclusively on core-logic from NVIDIA, today EVGA is set to introduce their first motherboard relying on a non-NVIDIA chipset; EVGA’s aptly named X58 SLI based on the Intel X58 “Tylersburg” platform with ICH10R South Bridge.

We’re going to take you on a quick guided tour of the board as the motherboard just arrived and we’re still busy cranking away with our benchmarks of the board.











8-phase power

To power Intel’s Core i7 CPU EVGA has implemented a 8-phase power design. EVGA says they've designed the power subsystem to deliver up to 430W of power. Interestingly enough EVGA cools the power circuitry with a dual heatpipe cooler. Some of the preproduction board shots suggested that the heatpipes would be made from copper, but it seems like EVGA changed their plans for the final retail product, as the heatpipes are made from aluminum.

As you can see the cooling for the MOSFETs is independent of the North Bridge. EVGA cools the heatpipes with a stacked fin heatsink that’s a little over 1.5” tall. The cooling array is secured a little loosely, so we’d suggest care when working around it, as its height could make it vulnerable to accidents.


Chipset cooling

EVGA’s North Bridge cooling is similar to the coolers EVGA has implemented on their newer 790i SLI FTW boards. The cooler consists of a heatsink+fan unit that’s responsible for keeping the North Bridge of the chipset cool.









Those of you who have experienced chipset fans in the past may be a little squeamish at the thought of this, as chipset fans have a notorious reputation for running on the noisy side, but EVGA’s newest chipset fan runs considerably quieter than fans we’ve experienced on other motherboards.

EVGA uses a small heatsink to cool the ICH10R South Bridge. As you can see, the heatsink is adorned with over a dozen “e” logos. These are not only decorative, they also serve a real purpose, helping to ever so slightly increase the surface area of the heatsink itself and thus improve its cooling performance.


The CPU area

With so many large heatsinks located in close proximity to the CPU socket, some of you may have concerns about mounting large CPU coolers to EVGA’s X58 SLI motherboard. However we had no problems whatsoever mounting Thermalright’s Ultra-120 eXtreme RT cooler to the board.


















As you can see in the pictures, the Ultra-120 is not a small CPU cooler, so we don’t think this will be an issue for most CPU heatsinks.

6 DIMMs and 3-Way SLI/CrossFire

The EVGA X58 SLI ships with 6 DIMM sockets with support for single, dual, and triple-channel memory configurations. In fact EVGA ships the board with a handy sticker that outlines how to properly install the for each memory mode, including those of you with 4 DDR3 DIMMs.

EVGA equips the X58 SLI motherboard with three PCI Express graphics
, providing support for CrossFireX as well as 2-Way and 3-Way SLI.









Under dual graphics operation both PEG will run at x16 speeds, while 3-Way devotes 16 PCI Express lanes to the primary graphics slot, while the remaining two PEG slots get 8 PCIe lanes.








Finally, at the bottom of the motherboard EVGA provides onboard power and reset buttons with integrated LEDs for the power LED and HDD activity LEDs you’d use on your case. Next to the power and reset buttons is a handy button for clearing CMOS. This is a great feature to have when OC’ing, after an unsuccessful OC attempt merely press the button to clear CMOS and start over. EVGA also continues to provide a diagnostic LED display located just behind the SATA ports.





The motherboard’s back panel is nicely equipped. Next to the USB and keyboard ports EVGA provides a second button for clearing CMOS, so you won’t have to reach inside your case to reset your motherboard’s BIOS, while 8 USB 2.0 ports are provided total (an additional 4-port USB also ships with the board’s packaging). EVGA also provides audio jacks for 8-channel audio, coax and optical SPDIF outputs, dual, and a FireWire and e-SATA port. We also should mention that Gigabyte ships the board with round IDE and floppy cables.

[brugola.x]

BIOS Interface, E-LEET Utility

X58 SLI BIOS

The X58 SLI BIOS is extremely robust. Bus speeds up to 500MHz are available for the base clock frequency in 1MHz increments, while three memory multipliers are selectable providing memory speeds up to 1333MHz at the default 133MHz base











For users who aren’t familiar with OC’ing and would like the motherboard to do all the work for them, EVGA provides a “Dummy OC” BIOS setting. When enabled, this setting automatically ups the base clock speed to 150MHz, providing an OC of 11%. An extreme cooling feature is also provided for those of you with liquid nitrogen cooling who are running your CPU below 0 degrees Celsius.











In terms of voltages, CPU voltages up to 2.30V are available in BIOS in increments of 0.00625V. EVGA also provides voltage settings for CPU PLL and VTT voltage for even greater fine tuning, while DIMM voltages up to 3.075V in 0.025V increments are also selectable. For overvolting the QPI link, EVGA provides voltages up to 1.875V in increments of 0.025V while chipset voltages and PWM frequencies can also be adjusted, allowing you to choose between running the MOSFETs as cool as possible, or you can crank up the PWM frequency when overclocking.








All the voltages are color-coded, so in case you’re not sure how far you can push your system components, the colors provide a good general guideline, although you may not want to push your memory beyond 1.65V for extended periods of time. According to Intel, DDR3 voltages above 1.65V may shorten the lifespan of the processor.

E-LEET

One new feature EVGA also includes with the motherboard is their E-LEET motherboard tuner. If you’re confused by the myriad of options available within BIOS, E-LEET can be used to OC your system from within Windows. The software has most of the functionality you can find within BIOS, including a of voltage options and settings for adjusting the base clock and PCIe speeds. E-LEET also has Turbo mode control functionality as well.












The utility does lack a few features that can be found within the EVGA BIOS though. For instance, memory multiplier adjustment isn’t available, nor are CPU multipliers.











E-LEET is incredibly easy to use though and it also has built-in panes for hardware monitoring as well as CPU-Z front-end. The hardcore crowd is probably going to want to stick with conventional BIOS overclocking though, especially if you have an Extreme CPU and would like to adjust the CPU clock multiplier (Turbo multiplier adjustment is limited to a max ratio of 30.0)


Conclusion

Our first impressions of EVGA’s X58 SLI are overwhelmingly positive. Hardware-wise the motherboard has all the features an enthusiast would want, including 3-Way SLI and CrossFireX support as well as 6 DIMMs, 10 SATA ports (1 e-SATA), and support for 12 USB ports total out-of-the-box. The motherboard’s BIOS also leaves no unturned when it comes to available settings.

The really sweet part about EVGA’s X58 SLI though is its lifetime warranty and Step-Up. These are two features EVGA’s graphics cards are famous for, so it’s nice to see them extend this to their X58 SLI motherboard as well.


Firigsquad.com

bella.. è bella forte.. mi piace perchè è semplice.. pulita.. senza tante menate o rampe..

PS speriamo in bene

[VisioN]

Si é bella forte, però non capisco le scelte cromatiche...non potevano fare tutti i connettori verdi e neri? Quel blu proprio non ci sta...

Ottimo e molto comodo cmq l'Eleet...:hihi

[brugola.x]

Si é bella forte, però non capisco le scelte cromatiche...non potevano fare tutti i connettori verdi e neri? Quel blu proprio non ci sta...

se avessero fatto tutti i connettori blu ci sarebbe stato chi provava ad infilare le ram nel pci-e o viceversa.. con un paio di colori in più sono andati sul sicuro

[VisioN]

Di certo chi si compra una mobo di questo tipo non è un nabbo che assembla per la prima volta:rrot

[cibo]

Bene bene vedo che prendi appunti

[MaxWrt]

oltre le 8 fasi non si buttano?? sempre e solo 8 fasi!! un po pochine forse per un core i7 che consuma come uno scaldabagno.

[brugola.x]

oltre le 8 fasi non si buttano?? sempre e solo 8 fasi!! un po pochine forse per un core i7 che consuma come uno scaldabagno.

430w di laod test dovrebbero bastare anche per nahalem...

guarda shamino...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzvgsI43iFQ

Vr Zone EVGA X58 Test on i7 965XE - VR-Zone IT & Lifestyle Forum!

[MaxWrt]

430w di laod test dovrebbero bastare anche per nahalem...

guarda shamino...YouTube - EVGA X58 SLI MB 430w CPU Load Test

Vr Zone EVGA X58 Test on i7 965XE - VR-Zone IT & Lifestyle Forum!

e bravo shamino!!!! cpu selezionata.. ram e main selezionate... ln2... facile eeeee..... devono fare test per la maggior parte della gente cioe piu umani conviene aspettare i veri beta tester e cioe lo sfigato finale...