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.
First off is the successor to the popular G1. Assassin first introduced at CES in January.
Next you can see the biggest of three brothers, the X79 UD7
Which is followed by the middle child, the X79 UD5
And last but not least in any test is the X79 UD3
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
I also posted this on their
I also posted this on their Facebook, but these layouts are terrible.
The UD7, which we will assume is the highest-spec, has only 4 DIMM Slots, as compared to the UD5, the board that is one step down, which has 8 DIMM Slots. However, the UD5 only supports 3-Way SLI/CrossfireX, but the UD7 AND UD3 both support 4-way. The UD3 also only has 4 DIMM Slots, and is a near-direct clone to the UD7 except the color scheme and the heatpipe linking the south bridge and the power regulators. Gigabyte has done a terrible job with their motherboard layouts this time around. Compare these boards to ASUS, and you see an instant change. ASUS includes 8 DIMMS on every motherboard, and they SLI support increases as the boards become higher-spec. ASUS’s layouts make much more sense than Gigabytes. I’m not an ASUS fanboy either. I have a Gigabyte Motherboard, and an ASUS video card and monitor. I’ve never had a problem with any of them. However, unless Gigabyte changes their motherboards, I am not going to purchase my Socket 2011 motherboard from them.
I just wish they would make
I just wish they would make one really high end board with a gazillion PCIe 16x slots, and on the other boards they should concentrate on giving us just two PCIe 16x slots that are spaced a little further appart to improve air circulation in case of a dual video card setup (2xSLI/CF). And at the bottom or the top, one extra slot, it can be 4x-8x so we can dream about having a really fast PCIe SSD, like a RevoDrive 3 X2, and one PCI or PCIe 1x for a good quality sound card.
I do want 8 DIMM slots on all the X79 boards. 4GB DIMMs are much cheaper then 8GB ones, and I want 32GB.
Actually, i am quite amazed
Actually, i am quite amazed that there are lots of boards with 8 dimm slots. Some year ago it was specualated that intel will support one dimm per channel, and it made total sense. In most cases those extra slots will be empty, because putting 2 dimms per channel affects overclockability.
I hear this all the time,
I hear this all the time, with the X58 boards, and it’s simply not true. I was using 3x2GB, then 3x4GB, then 6x4GB and my overclocking results were consistent.
Perhaps you’re referring to the actual memory OC, but on boards like this, where memory bandwidth is already more then the CPU actually needs, overclocking your RAM is not necessary. Good quality (and cheap) 1600MHz RAM is just as good as 2000MHz RAM (differences in performance are 0%-3%, and that’s just in not-real-life-synthetic tests).
What affects the OC potential is simply a not so great board design and a not so great power supply.
Yes, i was reffering strictly
Yes, i was reffering strictly for ram OC : ). Its true that cpu overclocks are unaffected.