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A new processor needs a new home; meet the X79 chipset

Subject: Motherboards | November 14, 2011 - 04:02 PM |
Tagged: X79A-GD65 (8D), X79-UD5, x79, P8X79 PRO, msi, lga2011, Intel, gigabyte, DX79SI, asus

If you want to run a Sandy Bridge E chip, you are going to need a new motherboard as they use a brand new socket.  The upgrade isn't just about the socket though, as there is a noticeable increase in PCIe 3.0 lanes possible on the X79 chipset as well quad channel memory.  At The Tech Report is a look at motherboards from four major vendors, the Asus P8X79 PRO, Gigabyte X79-UD5, Intel DX79SI, and the MSI X79A-GD65 (8D).  Unfortunately Intel is plagued by issues with storage, while not the same as we saw in their previous chipset the port count is still lower than we expected and the RAID software is still labelled as a beta product.  Indeed by the end of the review it seems that each board did at least one thing to disappoint The Tech Report, though they hold hope for future revisions.

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"If you want to get in on Intel's new Sandy Bridge-E CPU, you'll need an LGA2011 motherboard. We've gathered four examples from Asus, Gigabyte, Intel, and MSI to see which one makes the best foundation for an Extreme Sandy build."

Here are some more Motherboard articles from around the web:

Motherboards

 

Source: The Tech Report

X79 Motherboard Roundup Video Preview

Subject: Motherboards | November 14, 2011 - 02:51 AM |
Tagged: x79, video, msi, Intel, gigabyte, asus

I am sure by now you have been reading our review of the new Sandy Bridge-E processors, in particular the Core i7-3960X, but we only had a brief mention of the various X79 motherboards we had in-house in that article.  (Which if you haven't read yet, you definitely should!)

Over the course of the last 14 days or so, we have seen and played with:

  • ASUS Rampage IV Extreme
  • ASUS Sabertooth X79
  • ASUS P9X79 Pro
  • MSI X79A-GD65 8D
  • Gigabyte X79-UD3
  • Intel DX79SI

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We will have reviews of all of these boards in the coming days, but I wanted to at least make sure you saw each of these motherboards in our video roundup and preview.

Stay tuned to PC Perspective for more on the X79 platform and Sandy Bridge-E!!

Source: PC Perspective

More industry fallout from the flooding in Thailand

Subject: General Tech | November 9, 2011 - 12:43 PM |
Tagged: asus, gigabyte, ECS, asrock, msi, market share

With HDD shortages come a reduced demand for most PC components as shipping a system without a hard drive tends to be frowned upon.  This will be hitting motherboard makers fairly hard over the last quarter of 2011.  DigiTimes reports an estimated 20% drop for Gigabyte; MSI, ECS and ASRock are expecting around a 10% decrease and ASUS projects somewhere in the neighbourhood of 5-10%.  We can certainly hope that there will be discounts offered in the attempt to focus on upgraders.  A nice price on some of the new motherboards that have just come onto the market might draw the attention of those who already have a fully functional PC but are considering a possible hardware refresh.

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"Motherboard makers have been impacted by HDD shortages arising from flooding in Thailand since mid-October, and are expected to see their fourth-quarter shipments decrease 10-15% on quarter, according to industry sources.

Gigabyte Technology may see shipments falling 20-25% from five million in the third quarter to below four million in the fourth."

Here is some more Tech News from around the web:

Tech Talk

 

Source: DigiTimes

Gigabyte Infusing X79 Motherboards With 3D UEFI BIOS

Subject: Motherboards | November 6, 2011 - 04:11 PM |
Tagged: gigabyte, x79, pattsburg, Intel, SB-E, sandy bridge-e, uefi

Many motherboard manufacturers have phased out the old school BIOS in favor of a shiny graphical user interface (GUI) UEFI BIOS that adds support for booting from larger capacity hard drives and presenting configuration screens that are able to be navigated with mouse or touch controls. Gigabyte has been somewhat quiet on the UEFI BIOS front, until now that is. Starting with Intel’s new X79 chipset based motherboards, the company will begin using a new “3D BIOS.”

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Fortunately, red and cyan glasses won’t be required for Gigabyte’s new UEFI BIOS. Instead, the BIOS is only “3D” in the same sense that a computer game is 3D -- meaning a 3D perspective viewed through a 2D window of sorts (the monitor) and this is a good thing.

The way Gigabyte’s 3D BIOS works involves displaying a photo of the user’s motherboard with various hot-spots that display content sensitive information and configuration options when hovered over and clicked on respectively. For example, when hovering over and clicking on the SATA ports in the rotate-able photo of the board, users are presented with options to set the SATA controller mode to IDE, AHCI, or RAID mode. Also, when clicking on the CPU area, the user is able to adjust frequency, voltage, and timing settings for the CPU and RAM. Further, context sensitive help is available for all the various options in each dialog.

For those that prefer a more traditional text based approach, Gigabyte is also including an advanced mode for enthusiasts who like to dig into every setting possible. The advanced mode looks like one would expect a BIOS to - a text based UI with minimal distractions. The ability to use the mouse for navigation is still present, however.

The 3D motherboard will reflect the actual physical motherboard and can be easily rotated to admire the shiny interface. It is certainly an interesting angle and should help new users navigate and find the settings they need. Whether it will be enough to help differentiate the product or not remains to be seen. A video showing off the new 3D BIOS is available below, and more photos can be found here.

Source: Anandtech

Gigabyte brings Bluetooth 4.0 and WiFi to their X79 boards

Subject: Motherboards | November 2, 2011 - 03:42 PM |
Tagged: x79, gigabyte, bluetooth 4.0, G1-Assassin 2, X79-UD7, X79-UD5, bluetooth

Gigabyte is going crazy with the wireless options available to you in their X79 series of motherboards.

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With Bluetooth 4.0 available your iPhone 4S will be able to connect seamlessly to your Gigabyte motherboard.  The biggest improvement in the new standard is the power savings which it enables, something that iPhone 4S users are desperate for.  In fact if the attempt to standardize 3D glasses over Bluetooth 4.0 succeeds then one of these motherboards will be perfect for building a system connected to a 120Hz 3D monitor.

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As well, Gigabyte has extended their WiFi support to a dedicated card which sports dual antennas, one for WiFi and one for Bluetooth.  They also support the new Bluetooth Smart which is designed to work with a large variety of single use devices.   Your blood sugar monitor, house thermostat, security systems and smart watch could all connect to these motherboards as easily as your phone, headset or other Bluetooth devices.

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Source: Gigabyte

A best of three HD 6950 battle royal

Subject: Graphics Cards | October 26, 2011 - 05:36 PM |
Tagged: hd 6950, amd, gigabyte, msi, xfx, factory overclocked

Heading to The Tech Report will bring you to a round up of HD6950's including Gigabyte's GV-R695OC-1GD, the MSI R6950 Twin Frozr III 1G/OC and the XFX HD-695X-ZDDC.  The GPU clocks range from 830MHz to 870MHz and RAM ranging from the stock 1250MHz to 1350MHz, with the MSI and XFX offering their own overclocking tools and Gigabyte relying on the Catalyst Control Center for further overclocking.  MSI's offering came out looking very good, with the best performance and the best power efficiency and thanks to a mail in rebate it picks up the best ratings in the round up.  It is a close race though with the cards performing very similarly, as you can see in the review.

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"We've gathered three souped-up Radeon HD 6950 graphics cards from Gigabyte, MSI, and XFX. Which one delivers the most bang for your buck?"

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Graphics Cards

 

Source: The Tech Report

First Look! GIGABYTE X79 Motherboard revealed

Subject: Motherboards | October 25, 2011 - 04:18 PM |
Tagged: x79, gigabyte, G1-Assassin 2, X79-UD7, X79-UD5, X79-UD3

While we don't have much in the way of information about the capabilities of Gigabyte's new X79 boards we sure do have a lot of pictures. 

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First off is the successor to the popular G1. Assassin first introduced at CES in January.

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Next you can see the biggest of three brothers, the X79 UD7

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Which is followed by the middle child, the X79 UD5

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And last but not least in any test is the X79 UD3

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GIGABYTE USA page
http://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/?set=a.10150364375938695.368866.28864403694&type=3

GIGABYTE Canada page
http://www.facebook.com/#!/media/set/?set=a.275394462500698.67641.189313774442101&type=3

Source: Gigabyte

The many faces of Sandybridge motherboards

Subject: Motherboards | October 18, 2011 - 06:21 PM |
Tagged: Z68XP-UD3, x68, sapphire, sandybridge, Pure Platinum Z68, p67, Maximus IV Extreme B3, Intel, gigabyte, G1.Sniper, asus

When building a SandyBridge system you have several types of motherboard chipset to choose from, some with more capabilities than others.  The ASUS Maximus IV Extreme B3 is the odd duck in this roundup, being the only P67 board in an Z68 round up which means that it loses out on Intel SRT, which is not a drawback for those planning on using an SSD with a high enough capacity to be used as a main drive.  The two Gigabyte boards and the Sapphire board are Z68 and therefore sport all of the bells and whistles that come with that chipset.  In terms of pure performance and overclocking ability it is not the feature set that matters, it is the ability of the board its self.  Check out which of these 4 boards reigns supreme in Neoseeker's benchmarks here.

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"A quartet of motherboards based the Intel P67 and Z68 chipsets arrives at Neoseeker's labs, covering both the value and enthusiast market spectrums. There just might be something for everyone with a Intel LGA 1155 socket CPU in our latest motherboard roundup."

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Source: Neoseeker

Gigabyte's new GTX 580 doesn't need SupaPipes, the whole card is Supa!

Subject: Graphics Cards | October 4, 2011 - 05:17 PM |
Tagged: nvidia, GTX580, gigabyte, Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 Super Overclock

Gigabyte's new GeForce GTX 580 Super Overclock card sports a custom cooler with three fans and frequencies that can be changed from 772MHz GPU and  f 1544 MHz RAM (1.5GB) to 855MHz and 1710 MHz at the flip of a switch. Those used to AMD cards might be disappointed by the outputs, two DVI ports and one mini-HDMI output seem sparse compared to a Radeon.  From X-bit Labs testing, the card proves faster than the HD6970 in all but one test by a range of 11% - 24%, however you are also looking at paying at least 30% more than an overclocked HD6970.  See how your favourite games performed on the Gigabyte board in the full review.

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"Today we are going to talk about features, functionality and performance of a very interesting and very fast graphics accelerator built on the most powerful GPU from Nvidia."

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Graphics Cards

 

Source: X-Bit Labs

A general purpose Llano powered HTPC

Subject: Systems | October 4, 2011 - 01:48 PM |
Tagged: A8-3800, gigabyte, A75M-UD2H, mATX

When you take an A8-3800 and pair it with a Gigabyte A75M-UD2H you end up with more than just an HTPC.  The flexibility built into the Llano series will give you far more than an Intel Atom or an AMD Neo could ever dream of.  The connectors range from new USB 3.0, DisplayPort, HDMI and DVI-D along with older style D-SUB, serial and parallel ports as well as audio, ensuring this system build will meet the needs of a variety of users.  Visit Missing Remote if you are looking to build an inexpensive AMD based PC.

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"New platforms are particularly interesting to us as home theater PC (HTPC) enthusiasts because it gives us a chance to clearly see how a generation of progress can be transformed into tangible benefits. Not long ago, integrated graphics processors (IGP) were strictly the choice of budget-minded consumers, but the recent relocation of the graphics processing unit (GPU) from the chipset to the processor made it a “first-class” citizen and brought new life to the solution while birthing a new concept – integrated processor graphics (IPG). AMD was not the first to release an IPG, or APU (accelerated processing unit) as they refer to it, but with the introduction of the Brazos/Zacate line earlier this year, a glimpse of Lynx/Llano’s promise became available."

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Systems

 

Source: Missing Remote

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