Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WIFI (with Intel Xeon E5 2660) Review

There is no doubt that the Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WIFI is a fully featured, high performance motherboard. With additional support for the latest Xeon processors it will undoubtedly target a niche audience who wish to focus on 3D rendering, digital content creation and video editing.

We focused today on pairing up the Gigabyte motherboard with the Xeon E5 2660 processor and the results were impressive. The 8 HT capable cores are very efficient and deliver solid performance results with all the benchmarks we used today. When we factor in the modest system power consumption of 160 watts when running the Cinema 4D rendering engine, we can see that this offers a tempting proposition of performance per watt.

The Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WIFI is supplied with a comprehensive bundle including class leading wireless support. It can handle both 3 way SLi and Crossfire configurations and ships with a very capable bios setup. On an interface level, we still prefer the ASUS bios configurations as Gigabyte are intent on splitting some of the overclocking settings into multiple menus, forcing unnecessary navigation. It is a minor point, however I would like to see it change in future.

Sadly we were unable to overclock the E5 2660 past 103mhz via the BCLK/PCIe setting, no matter the configurations we tried. To be fair, the main audience considering a Xeon E5 processor won't be interested in overclocking the chip anyway. A focus on power consumption, ultimate stability and a low thermal overhead are the primary goals for this audience.

Being a geek however, I would be interested to see the performance results from the eight physical cores when clocked to 4ghz, or more.

Thermal performance is fantastic. When paired up with the Corsair H100 liquid cooler, the processor peaked at 38c load. This would be indicative of a very long life, when used 24/7 in a workstation environment.

While we didn't focus on the Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition processor today, we were able to overclock this processor on the Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WIFI to 4.8ghz @ 1.45 volts, which is as good as any other high end board we have tested in the past.

If you are contemplating this motherboard for a standard Core i7 3960 or 3930 processor, then it assuredly makes a tempting proposition, especially considering the Intel C606 chipset support for SAS and SATA drives.

Native support for Quad channel ECC DDR3 memory is another selling point, especially if you are using the motherboard in a mission critical environment. The X79S-UP5-WIFI supports up to 64GB of DDR3, which wouldn't be that costly considering the low price of memory right now.

You can buy the motherboard from Overclockers for £274.99 inc vat. The Xeon E5 2660 is on pre-order from Scan right now for £1,034.96 inc vat.

Pros:

• Fantastic build quality from Gigabyte.
• Wireless support up to 300 Mbps.
• up to 64GB of ECC DDR3 memory
• Dual GB lan ports.
• 3 Way Sli and Crossfire Support
• Supports both Xeon and Core i7
• High level of overclocking with the right processor.
• incredible level of hard drive support via SAS/SATA connectors.
• dual bios.
• reset CMOS on back panel.
• capable bios.
• memory support up to 2,400mhz
• stable under load.
• quick charge USB ports for media players.

Cons:

• Its expensive.

Kitguru says: Gigabyte haven't missed a trick with this motherboard.

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