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

The Gigabyte Bios is an American Megatrends implementation. There is a 3D bios options, but we usually bypass this to get into the traditional style interface.

The System interface details the processor installed, the clock speed, base frequency and bios revision.

The Bios Features panel allows for adjustment over boot options and optical/hard drive priorities. Some intel settings can also be enabled/disabled here.

The Peripherals menu can be used to enable and disable various onboard controllers, such as the LAN, SAS and Audio chips.

Power management and Save & Exit menus are self explanatory, with the option to save and load pre-configured bios options.

An overview of the Intel E5 2660 processor, with the eight physical cores, clocked at 2.2ghz in non turbo. This processor isn't unlocked, after all Intel want the business customers to spend more money if they need a higher clocked chip.

The M.I.T. section of the bios is fully featured, ideal when overclocking an unlocked chip such as the Core i7 3960 Extreme Edition. Sadly we could only push the motherboard to 103mhz via the BCLK/PCIe setting, for a 100mhz increase. The motherboard defaulted to 1,600mhz so we had to manually select the XMP profile of the G.Skill ARES memory to get the correct speeds (2,133mhz 9-11-10-28).

To be fair, a Xeon chip is not sold to run in an overclocked state, as the target business audience require complete stability and cool running temperatures 24/7/365. Still, we had to try.

System validation is available over here.

Become a Patron!