Intel X58 Motherboard Roundup - What does $300 Get You?
by Gary Key on December 5, 2008 3:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Power Consumption
We measured "system" power consumption at the wall outlet using a Watts Up Pro power meter. We do not include the power numbers for a monitor or external speakers; however, we do install a set of headphones to the audio out jack. We also turn on all peripherals in the BIOS along with enabling all power saving features. Power consumption was measured at idle after a 15 minute period and under a load while measuring the average power consumption of the Ambush level in Crysis Warhead. Windows Vista is set to balanced performance mode and the prefetch folder is cleared for each test. Our two tests consist of the standard BIOS power savings mode and a second test using the energy saving applications provided by each supplier. Today the latter consists of the MSI, ASUS, and Gigabyte boards.
At idle with the BIOS only setup, the Intel DX58SO has the lowest power usage and is followed by the MSI, Gigabyte, ASUS, and EVGA boards. The load numbers favor the Gigabyte board with the EVGA once again utilizing the most power. Our power numbers have fluctuated greatly as the BIOS designs have improved for each board. EVGA just delivered a new BIOS that we are testing now that addresses S3 resume problems and should improve power consumption numbers also. The latest Gigabyte BIOS also provided a significant decrease in idle power consumption as it originally matched the EVGA board.
The MSI Greenpower system provides the greatest power savings compared to the ASUS EPU-6 and Gigabyte DES designs at present. The MSI board has an idle power reduction of 9W with the ASUS and Gigabyte boards dropping 5W. We noticed that even under gaming, each design managed to save a few watts during our load testing. We utilized a beta version of Gigabyte's DES software that has preliminary support for the X58. All three suppliers indicated we should see slightly better results in the next round of BIOS and software updates.
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mvrx - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link
I know these motherboards are months away, but please include dual socket i7 reviews as soon as they become available for testing. My next system will be a dual i7 quad for sure and I'm anxiously awaiting these MB's to come out and mature.I didn't go with current dual socket architectures because of FB-DIMMs limiting the performance and costing so much more. Really hoping to see a resurgance of the dual+ socket enthusiast systems.
And if anyone replies "What can you be using that even takes up a single socket quad core" - well.. then you probably don't know enough about enthusiast computing to reply here. ;-)
strikeback03 - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link
I'd think that last line shows why we are unlikely to see a resurgence of multi-socket enthusiast systems. There are very few that have applications which would take advantage of more than 4 physical cores/8 logical cores.mvrx - Thursday, December 11, 2008 - link
Well, I approach it with this logic..... and I get this alot from people.. "few applications that take advantage of more than 4 cores". I'm not running one or two applications....
MS OneCare (or your chosen security suite), seems to zap 15%-20% of overall system performance depending on what it's doing.
Even my old LOTR BFME2 ROTWK game spans 4 cores.. Not very well, but it does.
I run a skype conference server for gamers (an upcoming competitor to Ventrilo) with 20 or so callers on the line at once. Skype (especially skype 4.0) spans many cores reasonably well. (s4pg.us - website's not up yet)
I like to leave my email, web browsers, etc - open when I play my games.. and unfortunately I probably have another 10 active programs sitting in the background in some way. According to resource manager I have about 1100 active threads running, I think the average enthusiast only would have 500-700.
Now, I may be the upper-end of the catagory of heavy resource users, but thats mostly because people don't have the horsepower to do more so they don't. Chicken and Egg issue. If I can get a i7 for $300, and maybe the dual socket MB costs me a $150 premium, I'm sure as heck going to go dual socket.
I know one of my biggest issues is HD performance, but I hope to fix that with one of Micron Tech's new PCIe SSD cards... At that point, I'll probably be easily slamming two i7's. And I do like to run x264 mp4 compression jobs overnight. Even if it only liked using 4 cores, I can run several instances at once.
According to the roadmaps, the X58 is dual socket ready.. So I doubt it will be long until we see at least a few boards.
anindrew - Wednesday, December 10, 2008 - link
I had already ordered and received most of my parts for my new X58/i7 920 based system before this article went up. I was anxiously waiting for it to see what Anand and crew thought. Like so many commented here, I had no idea Anandtech's crew helped sort out issues with motherboards and BIOSes. I think it would be interesting to hear more about that and specifically why you did that (by choice or to help everyone).I built my system yesterday using the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5, i7 920, and 6GB of G.Skill DDR3-1600 8-8-8-21 memory (those are the actual specs of it). I have had no problems at all setting the system up. Everything works as it should. I have not tried to overclock yet, but I will since I have the Noctua SE1366.
The Asus P6T does look great, and I am happy to hear that it worked as it should right away. I had to debate between the Asus and Gigabyte boards. In the end, I chose the Gigabyte because I got a $30 discount in a combo with the Geforce GTX260 core 216. Time will tell if I made the right choice. :-)
chuckbam - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
I member of ABXZone.com pointed out to me that the ASUS P6T Deluxe has a memory range conflict on the device I/O APIC controller. Does anyone have more information on this?http://chuckbam.com/Posts/IOAPIC.PNG">http://chuckbam.com/Posts/IOAPIC.PNG
chrhon - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
Thank you for bringing up those comments at the begging of the article. Pretty much everyone I talk to is fed up with motherboard problems and even considering something such as buying from Dell. These mobo manufacturers are shooting themselves in the foot. Sadly the reviews seem to help them.My last build I started with a Gigabyte board and it was good to me but there were complaints on all the reviews on the memory overclocking. Then that board stopped working for me and I bought a DFI board that was universally praised by the reviews and it was the biggest pain in the ass - almost every time I would add or remove a card or flash the BIOS I would go through non-POST hell. I don't see myself EVER buying a DFI board again based on that experience.
If a motherboard company comes out bragging about its quality components and stability THAT is where I am going to put my money. Believe it or not its things like chipset fans being cheap and going out that make more difference in long term satisfaction of a board than one more (when there are already 50) way to tweak some voltages.
Kroneborge - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
Reliability is definitely key. Fast doesn’t matter if your computer won’t run. I do music production, along with my games, and I want a system that is going to run all the time with no problems. If that means I can’t overclock, then I would rather do that. I definitely suggest adding a reliability chart so those of us who need computers for production purposes can factor that in.Also for music production having 12gb or even 24 is perfectly reasonable for large sample libraries. Manufacturers that think supporting those sizes (as advertised) isn’t a priority are wrong.
Thanks for the great review, and please continue to put an emphasis on things working. And keep updating stuff so we know where they stand. I for one won’t be purchasing my new computer till I’m sure I can get it working with little fuss right out of the box.
SiliconDoc - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
That was very kind of you Anand - to point out how the monster that was created is out of control...rofl - I couldn't help thinking - imagining - it's just like the bankers/loan officers/fannie n freddie freaks that fried the economy with wild eyed speculation and housing bubbling... just crazed wackos doing "what must be done" in the name of ... well profits or chest thumping or bonuses or bragging rights or all the above in all cases...
Now the crash and burn of simple motherboard features not even working is splaying out in the public - I've seen the posted reports by the end users...
"We don't have to do it right - or even ethically *advertised features actually work* - seems to be the call of the day everywhere.
So anyway - good job actually EXPERIENCING THE LAST STRAW AND TRYING TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT .
Hopefully the pendulum will swing back toward center without anyone getting fragged... (although I'm sure purchasers in some cases wish otherwise).
SiliconDoc - Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - link
PS - Yes, so that I'm not missing something either - it DOES sound like they owe Anand and the staff about a million bucks (each).I can see how a good review here and there has now ballooned into "lab support" ....
A million bucks each ought to do - the manufacturers can take up an R&D collective - if they threaten to cut off boards just do a maniacal laugh - they will crumble and pay up.
;-)
araczynski - Monday, December 8, 2008 - link
mildly interesting, but personally i'd like to see this in comparison to something from the 'normal' lineup, you know, like what most people currently have.throw a C2D/3ghz/4gb in there and then we have something interesting.
compare apples to apples, not just apples to themselves.