Hardware First Look: Gigabyte GA-X38T-DQ6

he's on a flight back from Shanghai at the moment - I'll drop it in his email.

Tim

 

i guess fully loaded with x38 boards for a roundup? *sneaks up behind him....*

 

Cheers Tim. I'm sure Bindi will enjoy another one of my difficult questions

 

I'd tell him on Monday, but I'm flying the other way tomorrow morning

 

FFS why do you ALWAYS bring up HDCP discussions!! ARGH!! I had another last week with Nvidia's "pre versus post" 8600 HDCPing and whether its DVI can be HDMI'd etc which took several journalists a good half hour to hammer out an answer.

Well he'll need Power DVD 7 Ultra for a start, plus he should try it with the actual movies from disk. It might be that PowerDVD are limited by the content creators and HDCP to NOT allow any HD audio over anything but from disk playback itself. It could also be the fact that the disk has been ripped exactly - so the 48/16bit is still present in a stream so Cyberlink switches to it rather than actively downsamples, however, it's probably part of AACS spec to have the function of downsampling since Cyberlink are so protective of it.

Here's the problem:

If there's no internal security as Cyberlink claim - then it's not fault it has to conform to the AACS protocol. It's an OS issue - he doesn't specify if he's using Vista or XP or whatever. So whether the Gigabyte chipset is capable or not, given a HDCP signal it will continue to output a HDCP signal. But if they are applying or maintaining HDCP at the chip - something Creative can't do, then it might be beneficial. I'll have to investigate it to be sure, but I don't have a capable 8 channel decoder in the office

The lass I usually chat to at Cyberlink is off on her Honeymoon for 2 weeks, but when she gets back I'll have a word to find out. I suspect it isn't unique to Cyberlink though - any BD/HD official player will be subject to the same restrictions because of AACS.

From page 6:

So he REQUIES Vista.

and the hardware - of which the Creative isn't capable of.

 

hmmm, this seems very promising. I'm on the verge of building a new pc and still contemplating whether to wait and get a x38 board or just to get a p35. Will the x38's be super expensive when they're released? Will the p35's drop in price even more when the x38's are released? Would be looking to get a DDR2 version anyway as ram is super cheap atm. Cheers to anyone that can help me on this.

 

Gigabyte is the best! Can't wait to see the X38 Asus, in this GB the SLI is great! the best thing they did not it is the dual X16! The DDR3 IS great.. But Expansive right now.. I think waiting is better The x38 Chip is So Sexy and hot! I love it too much!

Thanks BT for this review

 

Well goddamn... 8 sata ports.

wewt

 

Yes same as the P35 variants of the board

 

It's about the only other one that does

Others feature 6 sata and 2 esata.

Go Go Gigabyte!

 

tweaktown has a full review of a retail DDR2 DQ6 mobo http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1185/.
It's not particularly exciting from a performance/oc pov.

 

Thanks good link -

The more I read about this board the more disappointed I get, seems Gigabyte has not made much of the X38 capabilities. I really like being able to choose how I use the SATA connectors; only allocating what I want to eSATA but besides that not much going for this implementation, and I am a Gigabyte fan. This review of the Asus implementation looks more interesting apart from allocating 2 SATA ports as eSATA. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3098

 

No that's the usual JMicron chipset eSATA.

We're waiting for all the X38s to go final retail before reviewing now. Asus are meant to be getting us something asap, MSI are start of Oct at the latest and we'll be revisiting the Giga X38 too. Given time, I'm also going to do a 16x4, 8x8 and 16x16 CrossFire comparison if possible.

 

Thanks for clarifying that, will read it all again and pay more attention to the additional chipset used.

 

np.

 

This board looks great But like the others said before the crazy cool back plate is just annoying!!!! If I do get this board later I might just try to mod the back plate (cut off the parts under the CPU and leave the NB part). Hope my dremel will be strong enough XD

 

Not sure what part of the thread mentions the "from disc vs ripped to HD" issue but Cyberlink have confirmed that they downsample everything higher than 16/48 whether AACS protected or not. Surely downsampling stuff not AACS protected is laziness on their part?

It does indeed appear to be an issue of AACS. It was posted in the thread that microsoft are currently working with Cyberlink to develop/utilise a secure pipeline so as to allow unmolested high res audio through (prob only vista).

If you could find out anymore from cyberlink then it'd be much appreciated Also any comments on how the realtek chip would deal with HDCP Audio over HDMI given the fact that the HDMI spec apparently requires video to be output alongside audio i.e. spec supports video only but audio has to be accompanied by a video stream?

 

I don't think it's Cyberlinks fault though - it'll be a combination of overzealous black and white AACS, Microsoft not providing a feasible path for a secure internal link, Audio drivers not offering a secure link and Cyberlink having to use both of these and/or their current release just simply doesn't feature it because it isn't there.

The "ripped from disk" part - it might be a software "feature" to only downsample it from disk drives. Media played from the harddrive might not be subject to such restrictions?

Dunno about the Realtek chip - got nothing to test a HDCP audio stream with here, same with PowerDVD. I'd need a high end receiver and we just don't get them in for review. I'll fire off an email to the lass I know at Cyberlink though and ask.

PCs can't output HDMI audio at the full bitrate anyway - the limitation for a PC is HDMI 1.2 because it can't use 36bit Deep Colour - blame Microsoft for that foresight when developing Vista. So without 1.3 you don't have enough bandwidth for True/Master HD, and no one is going to offer a higher bandwidth for HD audio without the "1.3 stamp" and I'm assuming for such a stamp it needs to offer EVERYTHING 1.3 is capable of. Also, because you're playing from a PC, the AACS is likely to be stricter, so trying to output via analogue connections might work on a dedicated decoder (who's lobbying and business it is to offer cutting edge hardware for industries including Hollywood) but on a PC I'd suggest you'd get a no-no

 

I apologise if it appeared I was placing the blame on Cyberlink as my intention was merely to state the fact that they currently downsample, nothing more. The one exception is the downsampling of "unprotected" content which is unnecessary and should be allowed (hence my laziness comment).

In the thread concerned it was shown that cyberlink have confirmed that they downsample all high res audio to no more than 16/48 regardless of if it's from optical or hard drive.

Shame about that. Would be interesting to see if the chip puts a spanner in the works or if it's merely marketing.

HDMI 1.3 is not required to get the full benefit of True/Master HD. You merely need to decode the stream in software to LPCM and then send that as multi channel high res pcm over HDMI 1.1. Whether the bitstream is decoded in software or later down the pipe in the receiver doesn't matter too much but doing it in software means far more receivers would be able to get the full benefit of the high res audio due to there being more 1.1 receivers on the market. This method is also available in many current standalone players.

 

So they downsample simply out of laziness, not because they have a method to check whether it's AACS encrypted or not? If Cyberlink downsample EVERYTHING regardless - then an audio codec going "helloooooo I can do HDCP/HBSC" isn't going to make any difference.

She isn't gonna be pleased about that

But LPCM is unsecure = OMFG NOES MAFIAA are after you Mr. Pirate consumer? If there's not enough bandwidth for COMPRESSED TrueHD/MasterHD then there will be even less bandwidth for multichannel HD uncompressed PCM?! I've only ever seen it output via six/eight RCA separate analogue outputs. Even DTS themselves had to do it this way... In fact, I should email the lass at DTS to see how she demonstrated MasterHD here. They used an Acer machine but I stupidly didn't ask the system specs But she definitely used PowerDVD Ultra to play back her demo disk.