Gigabyte’s LGA 1366 platform

I still remember LGA 775 architecture, which had a very long life and an expanded product line in Intel’s roadmap.

After Intel switched their Pentium 4 to S775 (and the successor Pentium D) their Core 2 series became a best selling product series, making the LGA775 platform very sought out and utilized by mainstream and enthusiasts alike.

It has now been little over two years since Intel officially introduced their Core 2 Duo series; their tick-tock strategy which has been in effect for several years now plans an new product cycle every 2 years. Core 2 started out on 65nm and in its second year was reduced to 45nm process. Now the successor Nehalem will be introduced at 65nm.

Earlier this year there were already some rumors and info leaked on the high end LGA1366 chipset and recently renamed Core i7 processor.

What we have in front of us today is the Intel reference chipset for LGA1366 tweaked by Gigabyte with a new overclocking series. We present the GA-X58-EXTREME




Up Close



Left-Down corner

2 X PCIe x16

2 X PCIe x8

2 X PCIe x4

1 X PCI

Intel chipsets natively support ATI Crossfire, this time around NVIDIA also has given options to provide Intel boards with SLI. Manufacturers can either submit their board for evaluation and certification with NVIDIA, if it passes the tests and the correct certification amount is paid, NVIDIA will provide an unlock code which will be programmed in the motherboard’s BIOS which will allow SLI through driver support.

A second approach is more expensive route as it requires the integration of NVIDIA’s SLI chipset on the mainboard, it does have the benefit of providing 4x PCIe x16 slots instead of 2x PCIe x16 currently on the X58 motherboards.