Gigabyte has announced two new X58 motherboards designed for the Core i7 platform.
The new GA-EX58-EXTREME and GA-EX58-UD5 are Gigabyte’s latest X58 motherboards, offering three-channel DDR3 support, three-way SLI support and three-way CrossfireX support. Both motherboards come with a “cool blue” appearance, six DDR3 memory sockets for up to 24 GB of memory, three PCIe x16 slots (x16, x16, x8), a PCIe x4 slot, a PCIe x1 slot and two PCI slots. There are also ten SATA 3Gb/s connectors, a single PATA connector, RAID support (ICH10R+Gigabyte SATA2), 8-channel HD audio, three IEEE 1394a and twelve USB 2.0. There are no integrated graphics and both motherboards come in an ATX form-factor.
The main difference it seems between the two new motherboards is that the GA-EX58-EXTREME features Gigabyte’s Hybrid Silent-Pipe 2; a fusion thermal solution that combines a proprietary screen cooling technology, external heat sink and liquid cooling with chipset water block. The Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 on the other hand features specially designed chipset heat sinks and a copper heat pipe. The GA-EX58-UD5 also offers LED on-board displays that alerts the user to the current overvoltage level, the level of CPU overclock and the temperatures of the CPU and North Bridge.
Both boards feature dual-gigabit LAN connections that can function as either two individual connections or they can be teamed together to act as a single connection, doubling available bandwidth. Other value-added features offered by both motherboards include Ultra Durable 3 technology, DualBIOS, Dynamic Energy Saver Advanced, Precision OV, Dynamic 6-Gear Switching, Debug LED, Dolby Home Theater and Blu-ray Support.
Gigabyte also offers a less full featured X58 motherboard, the GA-EX58-DS4, which lacks three-way SLI and dual-gigabit LAN. Intel is expected to release its new Core i7 processors on November 17th, which will target performance users, enthusiasts and overclockers.