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7 Intel Core i7 X58 Motherboards Tested and Compared

Motherboards/Intel S1366 by massman @ 2009-02-25

We put seven feature rich X58 motherboards for Intel´s latest Core i7 CPU to the test. Comparing performance, overclocking scaling in a multitude of applications and games. Which one comes out on top? Read on to find out!

Asrock X58 Supercomputer - Pictures

ASRock Inc., established in 2002, is an energetic company with the combination of technology and humanity. Devoting efforts to bring customers the innovative and reliable motherboards with the design concept of 3C, "Creative, Considerate, Cost-effective", ASRock has successfully established a well-known leading brand of the best price-performance motherboard in the industry. Facing the constantly changing technologies of motherboard, ASRock will always keep the vision of the future and develop future-proof products upon our 3C design concept to our customers. It is the commitment to our customers and products, like the spirit presented in our 2004 maxim: "Fly to the Future with ASRock!"

Previous reviews containing Asrock motherboards:

Asrock Penryn1600SLIX3-WiFi S775 Motherboard Review

Tweaking the fastest AGP Based System - Part 1

ASRock 4Core1600 P35 WiFi+ S775 Motherboard Review

ASRock 4Core1333-eSATA2 R5.0 Intel P31 Motherboard Review

ASRock 4Core1333-Viiv and Intel E4400 Performance Review

ASRock ConRoe 1333-DVI/H & Intel E2140 Budget System Review

BOX AND ACCESSOIRES

(Click for bigger version)

Unlike the looks of the boxes of my previous Asrock motherboards, this one looks absolutely fantastic! The Supercomputer motherboard presents itself in, literally, glitter and glamour. For those who are wondering about the term supercomputer, it's actually quite simple: by using the four pci-express slots you can switch your desktop computer into a fully functional workstation with Nvidia's CUDA technology in combination with three dual core video cards and one Quattro, you can obtain the processing speed of, according to Asrock, 250 workstations. This may sound rather crazy, but have a look at the Fastra project of the University of Antwerp, Belgium:

How much computing power can you cram into a single desktop PC? In our research on image reconstruction we often have to perform large-scale scientific computations, which can easily take weeks on a normal PC. To tackle this problem, we have developed a special PC that is capable of performing our computations just as fast as a cluster consisting of hundreds of PCs. Using this superPC, which consists mainly of gaming hardware and costs less than 4000 euro, we can now perform our three-dimensional reconstructions within a few hours: over 100 times as fast.

Inside the box, you will find the following accessories:

6 x SATA Data Cables

2 x SATA 1 to 1 Power Cables

2 x ASRock XFire Bridge 3S Cards

1 x ASRock SLI Bridge

1 x ASRock SLI Bridge 3S Card

1 x ASRock 3-Way SLI Bridge Card

1 x Quick Installation Guide

1 x Support CD

1 x I/O Shield

1 x Floppy Cable

1 x ATA cable

MOTHERBOARD

(Click for bigger version)

The six memory banks have been placed as far as possible near the outside of the motherboard to provide more space around the socket, which is ideal for large air coolers. Next to that, we do notice the four pci-express slots of which only the two blue ones can run at native x16 mode. The two orange slots are limited to x8 speed, which can be a bottle neck when running Tri-way SLI or Crossfire-X, be it only theoretical. The 24-pin power connector is placed perfect, in the contrary to the 8-pin power connector which has been placed, as seems to be Asrock's trademark, in between the external IO connectors and the mosfet heatsink; a place which is in fact quite difficult to reach, especially when the setup is built in a case.

Underneath you find a list of the motherboard's features:

6 x Ready-to-Use USB 2.0 Ports

2 x RJ-45 LAN Ports with LED (ACT/LINK LED and SPEED LED)

1 x PS/2 Mouse Port

1 x PS/2 Keyboard Port

1 x Coaxial SPDIF Out Port

1 x Optical SPDIF Out Port

1 x Powered eSATAII/USB Connector

1 x IEEE 1394 Port

1 x HD Audio Jack: Side Speaker / Rear Speaker / Central / Bass / Line in / Front Speaker / Microphone

4 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots (blue @ x8 / x16 mode, orange @ x8 / N/A mode)

3 x PCI slots

Supports ATI™ CrossFireX™, Quad CrossFireX™

Supports NVIDIA® Quad SLI™, 3-Way SLI™ and SLI™

Supports NVIDIA® Tesla Personal Supercomputer with three Tesla and one Quadro graphics cards

6 x SATAII 3.0 Gb/s connectors, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10, RAID 5 and Intel® Matrix Storage), NCQ, AHCI and Hot Plug functions

3 x USB 2.0 headers (support 5 USB 2.0 ports)

1 x ATA133 IDE connector (supports 2 x IDE devices)

1 x Floppy connector

1 x IR header

1 x COM port header

1 x HDMI_SPDIF header

1 x IEEE 1394 header

1 x CPU/Chassis/NB/Power FAN connector

1 x 24 pin ATX power connector

1 x 8 pin 12V power connector

1 x CD in header

1 x Front panel audio connector

Madshrimps (c)

Comment from Kougar @ 2009/02/26

I think this thread was meant to be in the Articles section?

Good review, nice to see almost all of the major boards together in one thorough review.

I like how the OC tests were split up and the specific areas focused upon.

I know it would have lengthened the time with testing/overclocking but I would have much preferred to see 5-10 minutes of IntelBurn for stability testing... SuperPi 4M or even 32M only proves the system won't BSOD at desktop randomly. As overclocking is one of my top factors in deciding which board to chose to buy, this is important to me as a future X58 buyer.

Testing all the boards with the same processor in a single review (after plenty of BIOS revisions have already been released) means this review is one of the best comparisons for showing which board overclocks the best... but SuperPi 4M means nothing in terms of stability so I can't really draw definitive conclusions from the OC tests.

The only other thing I could ask was maybe throwing some UD3 or UD4 and either vanilla or deluxe P6T results in to show how they compare with the flagship boards in the OC tests. Just wishing, anyway...

Comment from geoffrey @ 2009/02/26

Huge!!!

Comment from Massman @ 2009/02/26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kougar

I know it would have lengthened the time with testing/overclocking but I would have much preferred to see 5-10 minutes of IntelBurn for stability testing... SuperPi 4M or even 32M only proves the system won't BSOD at desktop randomly. As overclocking is one of my top factors in deciding which board to chose to buy, this is important to me as a future X58 buyer.

Testing all the boards with the same processor in a single review (after plenty of BIOS revisions have already been released) means this review is one of the best comparisons for showing which board overclocks the best... but SuperPi 4M means nothing in terms of stability so I can't really draw definitive conclusions from the OC tests.

I can't disagree: 4M is not really a good estimate for 24/7 overclocks, but for me it was the better choice in terms of stability testing and available time. Testing one motherboard's overclocking capabilities took me 1 full day, and that's only if everything went alright. Take into account the troubleshooting and you're off for a long journey :-).

The conclusions you draw are not supposed to be conlcusive in terms of absolute overclocking capabilities, but should be comparison ONLY. The overclocking process is being affected by more than just the motherboard (as you know): for instance, the memory overclocking results can be slightly better or worse depending on the quality of your memory chips. That's what the comments under the graphs are for, btw :-).

Next time, I'm going to change some things, though. I now already know that the maximum CPU-Z BCLK frequency will be replaced by maximum boot BCLK frequency. Actual stability tests are not an issue, as long as I have the time to do propper testing; with 7 motherboards on the testbed, that was kinda impossible. In stand-alone reviews, it shouldn't be a problem, though

Comment from Kougar @ 2009/02/27

Quote:

The conclusions you draw are not supposed to be conlcusive in terms of absolute overclocking capabilities, but should be comparison ONLY.

I just think having done this much, it would be worth doing that extra bit more to make it a comprehensive OC article. For all intents and purposes, I think I can safely say most X58 users will be overclockers.

Even 5 minutes of IntelBurn is not much longer than SuperPi 4M, and more simple to use than 4x1 instances of SuperPi. If time is that critical, perhaps you could set arbitrary CPU, VTT, QPI (etc) voltages/BCLK settings and just see what boards pass or fail at given settings? Just a thought, not sure if it was a good one.

Quote:

The overclocking process is being affected by more than just the motherboard (as you know): for instance, the memory overclocking results can be slightly better or worse depending on the quality of your memory chips.

Yes, of course. But for your review you used the same kit of memory. Just as everything else except the motherboard was kept identical. Which is why your overclocking results have the potential to be the most useful to readers than any other single-board review. Same CPU, memory, tests, OS, and same date that takes into account revised BIOS's. This review is as close to apples-to-apples OC comparisons as one can get.

Quote:

In stand-alone reviews, it shouldn't be a problem, though

That is partly my point. In a stand alone review often memory/CPUs and other hardware gets changed, more time elapses so BIOS's get updated and further refined, general OC knowledge for a new platform is improved, etc. All of those make it less of a direct comparison if doing ~ 7 individual reviews verses 1 large roundup. I know "ideal" is very often different from "practical", but still it would be "ideal" to have.

Comment from jmke @ 2009/03/01

those prefab voltage read out points are just awesome for the overclockers and testers out there, too cool

Comment from Massman @ 2009/03/01

Foxconn Bloodrage has them too.

There's quite an interesting story to tell about who 'invented' those pre-fab voltage read-outs, by the way

Comment from jmke @ 2009/03/01

where are they located on this board? Can't spot them in the pics at first sight

Comment from Massman @ 2009/03/01

Next to the DIMM sockets. In the article, they're not visible (at least, not if you don't know where they are). I only noticed them when I prepared the board for this OC session :-)

Comment from jmke @ 2009/03/01

pics!

Comment from Massman @ 2009/03/01

Comment from jmke @ 2009/03/01

thanks

added to article. Not as fancy as the Asus board it seems.

Comment from Massman @ 2009/03/01

No, but it does the job

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