Stephen

Gigabyte EX58-UD4P @ Think Computers

“Everyone knows about Gigabyte, and their fine motherboards, so no introduction is necessary. They are the first company to provide a platform for our spankin’ new i7 920, and I suspect that it will be the standard for all others to meet. Today I am looking at the Gigabyte X58-UD4P, Gigabyte’s mainstream X58 motherboard. With 2 PCI-E x16 slots and an x8 slot supporting both SLI and CrossFire, support for 24 gigs of memory, and even a newly designed PCB, this board is impressive even at first glance.”

DFI LANParty UT X58-T3eH8 @ TweakTown

“Over the past 5 years, however, DFI has made some rather interesting purchases such as ex-ABIT engineers to help improve a lot of their motherboards and without a doubt, the team from ABIT that brought us some impressive boards helped DFI come into the retail channel with their own hardcore motherboards; these make up the LANParty series.”

EVGA X58 SLI @ Hardware Secrets

“EVGA, a traditional nVidia partner, decided to manufacture a motherboard based on Intel X58 chipset with ICH10R south bridge chip, simply called EVGA X58 SLI. This is a high-end motherboard for Core i7 processors, featuring three x16 PCI Express slots, support for SLI (finally), a good 10-phase voltage regulator circuit with ferrite chokes and solid caps, six memory sockets and more.”

MSI X58 Eclipse SLI @ TweakTown

“Core i7 is Intel’s first CPU to finally integrate a memory controller directly into the CPU and because of this a whole new socket and motherboard architecture needed to be designed. All previous Intel chipsets were now useless to run the brand new CPU since it now has an external FSB but communicates with the chipset through a whole new interface called Quick Path Interconnect (or QPI). Because of this Intel has released its X58 chipset aimed at the top end of the spectrum.”

XFX MB-X58I-CH19 @ Motherboards.org

“The XFX MB-X58I-CH19 motherboard is XFX’s second motherboard to use an Intel platform, with the first being the G31 based board we reviewed last year. XFX has diversified successfully with their two Intel boards and numerous ATI based video cards as of late. If you want a motherboard based upon the X58 chipset the XFX board has some good positives including a generous bundle, good support and a fully featured motherboard based upon the best chipset on the market today.”

Gigabyte GA-X48-DS5 @ PCStats

“Gigabyte’s high-end GA-X48-DS5 motherboard is, as you might have guessed, based on the Intel X48 Express and ICH9R chipsets. It’s core logic offers up 32 lanes of PCI Express 2.0 bandwidth which makes this platform great for running a pair of Crossfire’d ATI videocards at full tilt.”

MSI X58 Platinum @ ViperLair

“MSI has labeled the X58 Platinum as part of their “Gaming Series”, to prove out their point they have included several niceties that have come to be expected by the premier gaming Motherboard Manufacturers such as Asus, DFI, EVGA et all. Putting MSI clearly on the map of enthusiasts who want performance and stability for as little coin as possible.”

ASUS ENGTX285 TOP @ OC Club

“The Asus ENGTX285 did what it was supposed to do, become the fastest single GPU run through the OverclockersClub suite of gaming benchmarks. Other than an anomaly in BioShock, this card ran faster than the competition. It should have, it is after all an overclocked version of the GTX 285. The fan seemed to be not as loud as in the past but it could be just my old ears not hearing as well as they once did.”

AMD Phenom II X4 940 @ Digit-Life

“First of all, these tests show that the competition in the CPU market is growing interesting again. Phenom II is evidently a success. Moreover, in a number of tasks we can speak about it even without mentioning prices.”

Gigabyte EX58-UD5 @ Neoseeker

“It consistently took the top spot for stock speed results in the majority of tests; and it was almost always in second place – and several times in first place – for the overclocked tests, even though the MSI X58 Eclipse was running the Core i7 920 processor at a slightly higher overclocked speed (4.05GHz vs. 4.03GHz).”