Hardware Early Look: Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2008/10/10/early-look-gigabyte-ga-ex58-extreme/1

Gigabyte drops us the barebones of its new Extreme X58 motherboards with the, uh, EX58-Extreme. With ten SATA, six DIMMs, three PCI-Express x16 and the latest Ultra Durable technology, what do we think to Gigabyte's latest and greatest?

 

time to drop ide and ps2 across the board but especially on an "Extreme" mobo

 

i don't like the clear cmos button around the back. imagine your reaching back to unplug your audio jack cause you need your speakers and.... uuuuuuups....

 

I think they should actually keep the IDE connector, at least one. A lot of people still use IDE drives and will continue to because they do just a good a job than SATA drives for most people. But I do agree with you Denis on the PS2 connectors, they really should be gone by now.

 

we've had this discussion before methinks, but on a 300+ pounds board with a full TEN sata ports, is it really that strange to expect a user to toss in 15 pounds for an el cheapo SATA drive? Most of the people that use this will go the whole 9 yards and go for BR-drives anyway.

Typical price for a system like this:
300 mobo
600-1000 CPU
300 GPU (and that's without going SLI/CF)
200 storage
150 case
150 PSU

That makes at LEAST 2000. A simple SATA DVD drive would drive up cost by a grand total of 1%
Spring cleaning, dump the connector!

Otherwise, sexy sexy board!

 

The four J-Micron sata ports - would they be able to take a sata optical drive?

 

I'm pretty sure they can, as long as the SATA device supports ACHI mode compatibility I think. I'll check when I get it.

 

more i see of these X58s, the more i want one. Just want to see how the Memory overvolting thing pans out. Its realy quite worrying for such a high end chipset that the highest end memory wont work.

 

Greetings!

Anyone else thinks three RAM slots would be enough?
Why waste PCB with three other RAM slots that will be vacant in ~99,4% of the systems?

 

Is it just me that cant understand why they type "Clr CMOS" on the button? I mean there is clearly room to for "Clear CMOS". It allmost looks like the Memory gets a 3-Phase power unit though.

 

The color scheme makes pandas cry. Seriously PLEASE, Gigabyte...

 

Why should a motherboard like EX58 look better than my GA-p35-DS4?

hehehe...

an yeah, legacy connectors must go. And where is my Unified Extensible Firmware Interface?

 

Who will be the manufaturer supplying draft n as standard as an ethernet!??? WHOO!!!!!!??? and when you &*(^#%! eunuchs!!!!! what gen will be "next" enough???????

 

Will this have UD3? i skimmed over the article as it is late here in AUS, will read properly tommorrow.

 

never mind i looked at the picture of the mobo. this will be UD3....

 

I'm an asus boy but people over at extreme forums love gigabyte and rate them as the number 1 board manufacturer, esp. for overclockers and they put asus in third with someone like msi/abit taking 2nd place. As it is i'm more and more interested in gigabyte boards for my next upgrade from my current piece o crud, the 680i chipset. Despite the god awful looks on a gigabyte, are they really that good rich?

peace

fatman

 

Yea, but I've personally had a lot of success with Asus stuff. XS is excellent in their own way, but for the more mainstream to high end overclocker, without going extreme, either will suit. Gigabyte do do excellent BIOS' though.

MSI is a bit more hit and miss like DFI sometimes, but lacks heavy beta support from a community.

 

The board says it has "h/w RAID". I presume it is taking the piss?

edit: just found the bit where it talk about it. IS it the case you either have two drive raid 1, two drive raid 0 or a single drive per purple socket?

edit2: eeek! I have been rick-relixed!

 

Did anyone see the pics of the board with all the stock cooling on it?
I'm betting it weighs in over 5kg

 

Yes