Conclusions
I guess I’ve made the Gigabyte X58A-UD3R sound pretty much just like their earlier X58 boards with some new features added. That’s not a bad thing, out of all of the first run of X58 motherboards, I liked the Gigabyte X58-UD4P the best, and it was the one I continued to use to do other testing with. It was stable, laid out well, the BIOS was easy to use and the overclocking menu was the best of all.
The X58A-UD3R is one step below that board in the product line, but the only real differences are a single LAN port and smaller accessory bundle. This is a full featured motherboard that cuts nearly no corners for the price point, and no one should feel ashamed to own their bottom-of-the-line X58 board.
The BIOS is nearly the same as the earlier X58 BIOS, with the much appreciated addition of a CPU frequency display that changes as you tweak settings. It is set up well and very easy to use, and has all of the settings necessary for the Core i7 900 series, unlike some of the other boards I’ve had in the past.
In addition to a few new Gigabyte unique features, the X58A-UD3R sports USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s, preparing the owner for the future of data transfer. There are already a few devices on the market now, by the middle of the summer there should be lots of them. This board is also ready to accept Intel’s new 6-core Core i9, which should be out in the near future.
This board has the capability of running pretty much every SLI and CrossfireX combination known to man, though most configurations require single slot cooling on the video cards.
I found nothing not to like about the X58A-UD3R.
The X58A-UD3R runs $206 at my favorite online retailer. It is $80 less than the next Gigabyte X58 model, the X58A-UD5, which has only a nicer cooling system, a couple more USB ports, and an extra LAN port. No boards cheaper than the UD3R, and no boards between the two have USB 3.0 or SATA 6GB/s.
ThinkComputers.org gives the Gigabyte X58A-UD3R Intel X58 motherboard a 10 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Ready for the future with support for Core i9, USB 3.0, and SATA 6GB/s
– Full featured, you give up very little for significant savings over the next Gigabyte model
– Board and BIOS laid out well
– Good overclocker
Cons:
– None