ASUS, EVGA, Gigabyte & MSI: Four Flagship X58 Motherboards Reviewed

by Rajinder Gill on 7/15/2010

Thus far, we’ve spent most of 2010 focusing on mainstream segments for our motherboard
reviews, there’s more of that to come over the next few months starting off with a long
overdue focus on AMD. Before we get to that though, there are a few loose ends to tie up on
Intel’s X58 chipset – today we’re going to take a look at four motherboards aimed at the
serious enthusiast.

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Gigabyte H55N-USB3 : Mini-ITX done the Gigabyte way...

by Rajinder Gill on 6/15/2010
We’ve been waiting for one of the major players to get their mitts into mini-ITX for Intel’s
chipsets and finally Gigabyte has delivered with the Intel H55 chipset based H55N-USB3.

mini-ITX goes USB 3

ECS did us all a favour by introducing their H55H-I at an incredible $79, forcing Intel and to
lower the price of the competing DH57JG down to $110. Following suit, Gigabyte’s H55N-
USB3 touches down around the $105 mark – a perfect fit if Gigabyte delivers the finesse
that’s missing on current mini-ITX products. Find out how Gigabyte’s latest offering fares on
our test bench…

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ASRock X58 Extreme3: An Enthusiast X58 Motherboard at a Budget Price?
by Ian Cutress on 6/2/2010
Today, we take a look at an X58 motherboard from ASRock, the Extreme3.  The Extreme3 is
the next iteration up from the ASRock X58 Extreme, with the notable additions being USB3
and SATA 6Gb/s functionality. The good news is that ASRock have managed to provide the
extra features whilst retaining a sub $200 price point, making it a difficult board to ignore...

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ECS H55H-I Review: Mini-ITX at a Sensible Price
by Rajinder Gill on 5/6/2010

So far we’ve looked at three different mini-ITX motherboards here at Anandtech over the
past 6 months. While each of the products we’ve reviewed have ticked a certain number of
boxes, when you look at the feature sets of similarly priced m-ATX boards one of the
irksome common denominators (among other things) with the mini-ITX offerings is that you
essentially pay more for less. Well, ECS may just have delivered the perfect cost to feature
ratio with the H55H-I, a $79 mini-ITX motherboard based on the Intel H55 chipset:
Ordinarily you might sneer at the mention of ECS, but in this instance basic functionality and
layout very much fits; especially when you consider what vendors like Intel and DFI are
offering on their boards for a price premium – those boards cost over $120.

No PS/2, but everything else you need is there...

All ECS need to do with the H55H-I is provide a workable BIOS and good plug-in
functionality to steal the show. Of course, those two things are often easier said than done...

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ASUS Maximus III Extreme - P55 for $349
by Rajinder Gill on 4/26/2010
Uncharacteristically late for ASUS, the P55 based Maximus III Extreme was rolled out to
retail a couple of weeks ago.

ASUS’s “M3E” follows in the footsteps of boards from EVGA and MSI, by teaming up
nVidia’s NF200 chipset to multiplex sixteen native PCIe lanes out to provide additional
front-end bandwidth for multiple graphics cards and other devices. Overall, it’s not a solution
that ends up high on most enthusiast shortlists because Intel’s X58 seems to be the logical
choice and offers superlative performance in almost every way over the “lesser” P55.

The truth is, we’re waiting on vendors to send us their second-gen X58 motherboards so that
we can provide you with a round-up of which makes the best buy. As we’ve probably got a
few weeks before things will be ready, a review of the M3E is the first of our time fillers, to
be followed by a test of the mini-ITX ECS H55H-I next week. On top of that, Richard will be
taking a look at Gigabyte's P55A-UD7 shortly, and we've also got AMD 890FX boards to
squeeze in somewhere. Put simply, lots to do but so little time.

Back to what's going down today, given the limited demand for $349 P55 boards, we’ll spare
you any further drivel and get down to the facts...

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Intel DP55KG and DP55SB - Two P55s Reviewed
by Richard Pawley on 4/6/2010

It’s been a while since AnandTech featured a P55 board review, but while Intel is expanding
on their high-end with $1,100 Core i7 980X CPU’s, their low-to-mid-range P55 platform is
still the one on most people’s radars.  Today’s we’re looking at two Intel P55 boards that fall
under Intel’s “Extreme” series, the DP55KG and DP55SB.

The “Extreme” series has historically produced one board per chipset so that Intel has an
offering for those consumers with overclocking high on their agenda. This time round, Intel
has gone for a couple of boards, their separating feature being the form factor – one ATX and
one M-ATX...
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ASUS M4A89GTD Pro - A Core Unlocking 890GX for $140
by Rajinder Gill on 3/10/2010

With less than a week of public release mileage under its belt, how close have ASUS come to
hitting a home run with the M4A89GTD Pro?

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Intel DH57JG “Jet Geyser” - Intel's First Mini-ITX H57
by Rajinder Gill on 3/1/2010

Intel delivers mini-ITX without the frills and fuss...

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Zotac H55-ITX Review - The World's First mini-ITX H55 Motherboard
by Joshua Youngberg on 2/28/2010

Zotac unleashes the first H55 based mini-ITX board on the market, we take a look...

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Choosing the Best H55/H57 Motherboard, Part 2
by Rajinder Gill on 2/22/2010

As promised, we're back with part 2 of our H55/H57 coverage. Find out which boards come
out on top in our user experience based review.

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Choosing the Best H55/H57 Motherboard - Part 1
by Rajinder Gill on 1/31/2010
January 3, 2010 saw the lift of Intel's embargo on the Clarkdale family of processors and
supporting H55/H57 series chipsets. Boards featuring these chipsets have been in our labs for
a few weeks now, and we have been busy testing them to figure out which one makes the
most sense to buy. Join us in part 1 of our coverage.

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DFI P55 MI-T36: Little Cutie
by Rajinder Gill on 1/4/2010

DFI unveiled the P55 MI-T36 to the public a couple of months ago. It's an exciting little
board based upon the P55 chipset, cut back to the most desirable essentials in order to
facilitate a shrink down to the mini-ITX form factor.

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MSI Big Bang -Trinergy
by Rajinder Gill on 12/23/2009

MSI continues their quest to become one of the top high-end motherboard makers with the
P55 Trinergy, with a price to match.

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Biostar TPower i55 – Super Middle Weight Contender
by Rajinder Gill on 11/25/2009

We take a look at Biostar's top end P55 motherboard and find that it really is a heavyweight
contender with a middle range price tag.

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P55 Overclocking Showdown - ASUS, Gigabyte, and EVGA at the OC Corral (Page 6
Updated)
by Rajinder Gill on 11/6/2009

In our first P55 Overclocking showdown we take a look at the top boards from ASUS,
EVGA, and Gigabyte. One failed, the other three made it through our torture tests. Find out
which one deserves your attention if you are into serious overclocking on the P55 platform.

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P55 Extreme Overclockers: Check your sockets!
by Rajinder Gill on 10/15/2009

If you plan on overclocking your P55 past current 4.3GHz limits on air or water, you need to
be aware of potential problems with current socket designs.

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MSI P55-GD65 - Mid-Range P55 for the Masses
by Gary Key on 10/10/2009

We provide an in-depth review of MSI's midrange P55 offering and find a great board in
need of a few adjustments.
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Budget Micro-ATX P55 Faceoff: Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2 and ASRock P55M Pro
by Gary Key on 10/5/2009

We take our first look at two of the budget micro-ATX P55 offerings from Gigabyte and
ASRock. Who wins, who loses, does it really matter if both boards are great buys?

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ATI HD 5870 Scaling Performance: X58 vs P55 Showdown
by Gary Key on 9/29/2009

We compare the performance of AMD's latest HD 5870 GPU on Intel's latest Core i7/P55
platform to see if it can keep up with the Core i7/X58 platform.

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i5 / P55 Lab Update - Now with more numbers
by Gary Key on 9/15/2009

We take a quick look at clock for clock comparisons against the Core i7/920 and Phenom II
x4 965 BE when overclocked.