Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6: An early look at X38
by Gary Key on September 4, 2007 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
First Thoughts
It is hard to find any faults with the X38 chipset at this time. Even though we are working with an engineering sample that has been around the block a few times and an early engineering BIOS that is designed more for debugging the chipset than providing top performance, it still manages to outperform a fairly mature P35 equipped motherboard that offers excellent performance in its own right.
We are generally impressed with the Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 motherboard and look forward to providing updated results with our retail board once the release BIOS arrives in the lab. Even in its early state, the performance is very good and stability has been excellent throughout several days of 24/7 benchmark testing. In fact, we found the stability, performance, and compatibility of this early engineering sample to be better than several retail boards we are currently testing.
Although in early testing it appears the power consumption of this board is up to 18W higher than a similarly equipped GA-P35-DQ6 board, we did not find the increased thermal loads creating any issues during testing. With the added number of PCI-E lanes and the same process technology, we didn't really expect a decrease in power requirements, though it would have been nice to get that as well. We will provide full thermal and power consumption numbers shortly, but we can say without a doubt that the X38 MCH will bring a new meaning to the word "heat" when overclocking.
Speaking of overclocking, in testing to date with the engineering sample, we were able to match or exceed the levels reached with our best P35 motherboards when utilizing the quad core processors. We even managed several benchmark runs at 510FSB with our Q6600 set at an 8x multiplier and additional cooling. Also of note, at least with this particular board setup, we generally could run our CPU and memory voltages slightly lower at the same settings as our P35 boards. Dual core performance with a wide variety of chips was excellent also, but we will reserve final judgment of the capabilities of the chipset and board until we have a production release BIOS and additional retail boards. For now, we look forward to providing those results in the near future.
Despite being faster than the Intel P35 in our limited test suite, the percentages were minor to say the least. Expecting a large performance leap in stock performance is generally unrealistic with a new chipset release. The most promising results are in our Sandra unbuffered, MemTest, and SuperPI 1.5 results where we can see the strength of this chipset. It is still difficult to determine exactly what the performance improvements will be over the P35 chipset, but for now most of the motherboard suppliers think an average of 3% to 5% is the correct range and it should only improve as the BIOS matures. This does not take into account the projected improvements in overclocking or CrossFire performance, areas that the X38 is supposedly designed to excel in with the right components.
In the early stages, it certainly appears that Intel has another great enthusiast chipset on its hands and a worthy successor to the 975X. Of course, only time and retail boards will prove us right or wrong, but our early guesstimates indicate this chipset should have a long life... well, at least until Nehalem appears but that is a story for another time.
It is hard to find any faults with the X38 chipset at this time. Even though we are working with an engineering sample that has been around the block a few times and an early engineering BIOS that is designed more for debugging the chipset than providing top performance, it still manages to outperform a fairly mature P35 equipped motherboard that offers excellent performance in its own right.
We are generally impressed with the Gigabyte GA-X38-DQ6 motherboard and look forward to providing updated results with our retail board once the release BIOS arrives in the lab. Even in its early state, the performance is very good and stability has been excellent throughout several days of 24/7 benchmark testing. In fact, we found the stability, performance, and compatibility of this early engineering sample to be better than several retail boards we are currently testing.
Although in early testing it appears the power consumption of this board is up to 18W higher than a similarly equipped GA-P35-DQ6 board, we did not find the increased thermal loads creating any issues during testing. With the added number of PCI-E lanes and the same process technology, we didn't really expect a decrease in power requirements, though it would have been nice to get that as well. We will provide full thermal and power consumption numbers shortly, but we can say without a doubt that the X38 MCH will bring a new meaning to the word "heat" when overclocking.
Speaking of overclocking, in testing to date with the engineering sample, we were able to match or exceed the levels reached with our best P35 motherboards when utilizing the quad core processors. We even managed several benchmark runs at 510FSB with our Q6600 set at an 8x multiplier and additional cooling. Also of note, at least with this particular board setup, we generally could run our CPU and memory voltages slightly lower at the same settings as our P35 boards. Dual core performance with a wide variety of chips was excellent also, but we will reserve final judgment of the capabilities of the chipset and board until we have a production release BIOS and additional retail boards. For now, we look forward to providing those results in the near future.
Despite being faster than the Intel P35 in our limited test suite, the percentages were minor to say the least. Expecting a large performance leap in stock performance is generally unrealistic with a new chipset release. The most promising results are in our Sandra unbuffered, MemTest, and SuperPI 1.5 results where we can see the strength of this chipset. It is still difficult to determine exactly what the performance improvements will be over the P35 chipset, but for now most of the motherboard suppliers think an average of 3% to 5% is the correct range and it should only improve as the BIOS matures. This does not take into account the projected improvements in overclocking or CrossFire performance, areas that the X38 is supposedly designed to excel in with the right components.
In the early stages, it certainly appears that Intel has another great enthusiast chipset on its hands and a worthy successor to the 975X. Of course, only time and retail boards will prove us right or wrong, but our early guesstimates indicate this chipset should have a long life... well, at least until Nehalem appears but that is a story for another time.
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jay401 - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
How does it compare to the previous gen motherboards almost everyone is running?Is it really worth an upgrade from 650i/680i/P965/975X?
That's really what matters.
TA152H - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
The chart "Media encoding - Sony Vegas" makes no sense. I think you got the stock performances twisted.Also three to five percent over the P35 sounds incredible, as in not credible. Especially with the Penryn (with it's bigger cache). When the motherboard makers talk this, you should try to find out what processor they are talking about. Maybe on a 512K processor it can reach it, but on a 4 MB processor, on most benchmarks, it doesn't sound realistic at all. Well, it also depends what they are comparing it to. It says the P35, but maybe they meant the 975X, which is much more likely. Crossfire, of course, will be much higher, but how many people are actually using this? It's a very, very low percentage. So, I think people are going to be disappointed again, like they were with the Penryn, because of misguided expectations. Penryn, like x38, is a great product, it's a shame people lose that because of these unrealistic expectations. Still, anything is possible, but if it averages 4% on most applications against the P35, on a Penryn (will enthusiasists buy the Conroe when it comes out?), I'd be very surprised.
One suggestion, when you do the final review, run it with a Conroe-L as well. Why would an enthusiast site run this as well? Well, if I needed a machine, right now (as in I had one computer and it died), I would buy it for $40 and then buy a Penryn when it became available, or cheap, and then use it in a low power computer. You might see the 3-5% claim have a chance on a small cache processor. That's probably what they were talking about, without actually wanting to say it.
phusg - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
Sounds an interesting upgrade path. But aren't Conroe-L's the Celeron 4xx's which are socket 478? Do we even know what socket Penryn will be?
TA152H - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
Conroe-L is LGA 775, same as Penryn will be. I suspect almost any motherboard being made now will work with the Penryn, or whatever the desktop version is called, really. I can't keep up with these stupid names AMD and Intel come up with for their processors. The ass that thought of Barcelona should be sterilized. What an absurd name. If they had any brains they might make code names and add something like -L for light, -M for mobile, -S for server, -QM for Quad Mobile, etc...Instead, they have these horrendous code names, which are suitably replaced by horrendous model numbers. I really can't keep track. Pentium III 1 GHz was so much easier to remember.
Guuts - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
Gary,Page 2: Third paragraph from the bottom, should have (DDR2-1066) and not (DDR-1066).
Page 3: Missing graphic at the top of the page, text starting off with "memory-lg.png memory-sm.png" is probably the cause?
Page 5: Chart 2 (Sony Vegas) either has the stock speed bars' labels reversed, or your text summary is incorrect, as the chart doesn't show the Gigabyte board ahead in both stock and overclocked speeds.
Page 7: Second paragraph, last sentence, "...better than several retails boards" should just be "retail".
Good article overall, though I was expecting a bit more of an improvement over the P35. I bet there will be a nice boost over the 975X when we see the full review, however. Thanks for the early look, Gary.
Now...where is the P35 board roundup? :-p
JarredWalton - Tuesday, September 4, 2007 - link
Hi - sorry about the graph missing... that was my mistake. You can blame me for a few other missed typos as well if you'd like. I'm not sure on the Sony Vegas chart if there's some sort of labeling error or if we need to correct the text, so I'm leaving it alone.--Jarred