![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Friday , December 26, 2008
- Author:
- Morry Teitelman
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Google +1
Gigabyte EX58-Extreme
GIGABYTE’s flagship X58 motherboard looks to be a champion. Its more than adequate chipset cooler, capable of both air and water operation, as well as the other bundled goodies, make it seem that this is one of the new X58 boards to beat.
Subsystem Testing
NOTE: For all Subsystem Testing, an Intel LGA 1366 Core i7 920 CPU with a 133MHz BCLK and 3 x 1GB Corsair XM3-1600 memory modules running at 1066MHz were used.
Audio – Subjective Listening
One of the easiest ways to determine the quality of the audio subsystem is via a subjective sound test. Ideally, a sound test requires audio covering the entire spectrum, from subtle to intense. For this test, I chose to listen to the self titled Avenged Sevenfold album.
Playback of the audio tracks was flawless, with no detectable audio distortion encountered during the listening session.
Audio – Microphone Port Testing
The MIC-IN input was tested using our standard Labtec Desk Mic 524 testing microphone. Spoken words were recorded and played back using Microsoft Sound Recorder, with the Microphone Boost option disabled and enabled. The Microphone Boost option is found within the Advanced menu under the Microphone section within the Volume Control menu.
While the test clip was distortion free with and without Microphone Boost enabled, overall audibility was much better with Microphone Boost enabled. Overall, the microphone port should be more than suitable for all but the audiophile.
Drive Performance
To adequately test the capabilities of the on board USB 2.0 and IEEE 1394 connections, we chose to use an ACOMDATA HD060U2FE-72-USB 2.0/FireWire HDD connected to both ports. SATA and IDE drive tests were performed using Maxtor 40Gb ATA 133 model 6E040L0 hard drives on the IDE headers and Samsung 40GB SATA II hard drives on the SATA headers. The SATA drives were used for testing in a RAID 0 16k block size configuration and in standalone mode on both the Intel ICH10R Southbridge and GIGABYTE controllers. Testing was also conducted using an IDE drive in a primary slave configuration on the GIGABYTE controller. All drive benchmarks were done using the open source Iometer program
The Intel based RAID 0 array hands down performed best overall, with the 2 standalone SATA devices coming in at a close second and third place. The GIGABYTE based RAID 0 array performed poorly when compared with the Intel based array and the standalone SATA devices, mainly due to the lack of configuration settings available when setting up that array type through the BIOS. As for the external devices, both the USB and IEEE 1394 devices performed as expected, with neither device really outperforming the other. In all cases, the measured CPU utilization remained well below 1% throughout.
Network Utilization Tests
Hagel Technologies’ DU Meter software was used in conjunction with Windows Task Manager to measure the performance of the Realtek GigE NICs. Note that both Realtek based GigE NICs performed on par with one another. DU meter was used to measure bandwidth, with Windows Task Manager to monitor the CPU utilization on the test system. For the test itself, a 750MB archive file containing various sized .WMA audio files for the large file transfer test and a 750MB worth of various sized .WMA audio files for the small files transfer test were used in conjunction with an integrated Gigabit NIC on the host system and a crossover cable to connect the host system to the test system. A crossover cable was used to rule out any possible bandwidth losses due to hub or switch passage.
Realtek GigE controller
Both the large file download and upload results were stellar, with the download besting that of upload by a mere 8 MB/s. Don’t let that number fool you however, the download speed averaged over 40 MB/s with upload averaging a cool 32 MB/s. In both cases, CPU utilization remained close to 0% throughout both tests.
The small file transfer results were equally impressive, with the average upload speed almost doubling that of download coming in at just under 30 MB/s. Again, the CPU utilization measured at close to 0% throughout the tests.
Test Systems
The following system configurations were used for the system benchmark graphs, as well as all graphs listed under the Application and Gaming Benchmarks sections:
Graphs are labeled as follows: Motherboard - CPU Clock - Memory Type
Sisoft Sandra 2009
Note that all results above were obtained running the installed memory in either Dual Channel or Triple Channel mode.
The EX58-Extreme matches performance with the other i7 based systems, with no clear performance differences between the boards. This is a good sign that the board’s bus implementation is not adversely affecting the performance of the i7 CPUs integrated memory controller.
Again, the EX58-Extreme performs on par with the other boards, which is what we want to see. Any major performance differences in this benchmark would indicate the board’s bus interconnects having an adverse impact on the base CPU functioning.
Hiper Pi
Again, the EX58-Extreme comes in with matching performance to the other boards in this multi-core aware CPU test, indicating that the CPU is functioning properly and without board related performance impacts.
wPrime
The EX58-Extreme again matches the performance of the other boards, showing that the board is operating optimally with the CPU. These results are extremely telling with this benchmark, given the fact that the wPrime application places stress on all physical and virtual cores while running.