Conclusions
The Gigabyte EX58-UD4P is my first LGA 1366 motherboard, so to be honest I really don’t have other X58 motherboard experience to compare it with. It was a little hard to separate it from the i7 in this review, considering the great improvements that Intel built into the i7, and the X58 chipset.
But this isn’t the first motherboard I have looked at, and I have plenty of experience in that realm. The EX58-UD4P is well laid out, everything is where it should be for cable management. The EX58-UD4P is a full-featured board, there are few differences between it and the GA-X58 Extreme, Gigabyte’s top X58 motherboard. If closely compared, many may not find the extra $75 for the top-end board is worth it.
To me, maybe the most impressive thing about this board is the BIOS, which appears to be the same BIOS on the GA-X58 Extreme. I found the layout very nice, nearly all relevant overclocking settings were in one place, and the other couple were in submenus on that same page, which actually helped in keeping things a little less confusing. The BIOS had all of the needed displays for overclocking, and did relevant calculations.
Something I didn’t mention earlier, I found pretty amazing. As with all Gigabyte boards I’ve had, you can’t clock the memory totally separate from the CPU. When I set the memory to DDR3-2000 by the XMP setting, the BIOS did the necessary adjustments to the CPU, it changed the BCLK and multiplier to keep the CPU near the stock clock frequency automatically.
The bundle isn’t huge, but keep in mind, this is a mainstream board, and costs have to be cut somewhere. Everything you need is there, and a few extras too.
And the overclocking! Not only was overclocking easy with this board, I was able to get a 50.4% overclock. I still can’t quite find the words to describe how impressive I find that.
I found nothing not to like about the EX58-UD4P. Some may desire the extra pair of SATA ports, a second LAN port, or the nicer cooling found on the two more expensive Gigabyte X58 boards. Pay the extra cash and you can have them.
The EX58-UD4P runs $259.99 at my favorite online retailer. Prices on X58 boards currently run from $200 to $400, and this one is in the lower 1/4th of them in price. I found several more expensive boards not as nice as this one. I’d definitely consider this board a value. ThinkComputers.org gives the Gigabyte EX58-UD4P X58 motherboard a 9 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Mainstream priced but full-featured
– Easy to use BIOS
– Awesome overclocker
Cons:
– None that I found