Gigabyte X58A-UD9: A Massive Board for a Massive Score

Author

Oik Yusuf Araya

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Features Motherboard

July 30, 2010

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What are the first things that would likely come across your mind when we tell you to think about a US$ 600+ , super high-end/ enthusiast motherboard? Incredible overclocking ability? Dozens of nifty features? Well, it could be anything, but to help you with the imagination, we have here just the sample of such motherboard, the Gigabyte X58A-UD9. This peculiarly large motherboard has every bit of high-quality components hardwired onto its PCB to help feed your crave for more performance.

Powered by the Intel X58 chipset along with the ICH10R southbridge, the motherboard provides support for today’s fastest desktop processors as well as the latest, cutting-edge hardwares. But this thing here is by no means your average X58 board. As you will soon see in our discussion, it comes equipped with more than enough muscle to push your dearest LGA 1366 processor into its absolute limit. Gentlemen, meet the Gigabyte X58A-UD9.

Gigabyte X58A-UD9

Specification

Processor Support	Intel LGA1366 Processors
Chipset	North Bridge : Intel X58
	South Bridge : Intel ICH10R 2x nForce NF200
Memory	6x DIMM, DDR3-800/1066/1333/2200+ MHz
Expansion Slots	4x PCIe 2.0 x16 (Speed @x16)
	3x PCIe 2.0 x16 (Speed @x8)
	Support for 2-Way/3-Way/4-Way ATI CrossFireX and NVIDIA SLI Technology
Storage	South Bridge : 6x SATA 3Gb/s
	Marvell 9128 chip : 2x SATA 6Gb/s
	GIGABYTE SATA2 chip: 1x IDE ; 2x SATA 3Gb/s
	JMicron JMB362 chip : 2x eSATA 3Gb/s
	iTE IT8720 chip : 1x floppy disk drive connector
LAN	2x Realtek RTL8111E chip (10/100/1000 Mbit)
Audio	Realtek ALC889 High Definition Audio (2/4/5.1/7.1-channel )
USB	South Bridge – 12x USB 2.0 ports (8x Rear, 4x Internal)
	NEC USB Controller – 2x External USB 3.0 ports
Firewire	3x IEEE 1394a ports (2x Rear, 1x Internal)
Form Factor	XL-ATX Form Factor; 34.5cm x 26.2cm

Feature

Unlocked Power
Dual Power Switching
Power Phase Boost
4 Way SLI / CrossFireX
Hybrid Silent-Pipe 2
USB 3.0 Support
3x USB Power Boost
SATA 3.0
24 Phase Power
Ultra Durable 3
Smart 6
Dynamic Energy Saver 2
Smart Dual LAN
eSATA / USB combo connectors
Precision OV
Debug LED
Real-time LED Display onboard
On/Off Charge Support
DualBIOS

There are enough features crammed onto the X58A-UD9 PCB fabric to give you enough confusion trying to find out which ones are truly useful for you (they all are, supposedly). The motherboard also supports most of today’s latest hardware interfaces. You can find some of the features in Gigabytes’s other boards as well, but there are some more that are exclusively reserved for this one only, such as the 24-phase power VRM and Quad-SLI/ CrossfireX capabilities. These two features alone are already more than enough to set it (far) apart from any other ordinary motherboards.