Intel is in full swing with the X79 and their Sandy Bridge-E CPUs. We have watched as they have broken and re-broken records for performance and in some cases overclocking. Behind all of this we have the X79 chipset with its quad-channel DDR3 configuration and some impressive power specifications. Intel has also brought back BCLK overclocking which has made things very interesting. We have a few X79 boards in the lab and are working on finding out just what they can do and how they actually work in the real world. One of these is also our second Gigabyte motherboard; the X79-UD5. This will also be our first video preview where we show you and talk about the design and features. So let’s dive in and see what the GA-X79-UD5 has to offer…
Conclusion – The X79-UD5 is a nice looking board with some potential for performance on paper. We do have our concerns at this point in the review (heat and memory performance), but it is entirely possible that Gigabyte has accounted for these and we will not see an issue. On the other side, while the X79-UD5 has a lot to offer it is actually fairly light on real or compelling features. At $330 we hope the performance is amazing, as there is a lot to account for here. For now, we are looking forward to getting this up on our test bench and seeing what we can get it to do. Discuss this in our Forum
