Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WIFI (with Intel Xeon E5 2660) Review

Rating: 9.0.

Today we are looking at the Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WIFI, an X79 motherboard based on the Intel C606 chipset. On paper this looks to be perfect as the foundation for a high end workstation system. Intel have also supplied an Xeon E5 2660 processor, an 8 core chip with hyperthreading support. How does this system handle a variety of tasks, including Studio Max 2011, Cinema 4D, video encoding and even some high definition gaming when paired up with a flagship 6GB discrete graphics card?

Building a system such as this, is not for the faint-hearted. This is a different sector to the mainstream enthusiast gaming systems we normally focus on. Xeon E5 prices are generally set between the £800-£2,000 mark and with a dual processor motherboard you could easily budget more than £5,000 for a high end workstation system.

The Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WIFI is a competitively priced single CPU motherboard which supports Core i7 processors such as the 3960 and 3630 which we normally use in our high end reviews. It also supports Xeon E5 processors such as the 2660 which we are using today.

Today we will build a luxury, yet (reasonably) affordable 16 thread processing powerhouse, then put it through its paces when editing images, working with high definition video and rendering 3D scenes. Is it any good when you have some downtime? Good enough for playing games at 5760×1080, across three monitors?

The Intel Xeon E5 2660 sample arrived in a plain black box. No air cooler for us today anyway – it has to be liquid cooling, to keep temperatures and noise levels to a minimum.

The Xeon E5 is one of the most complex processors that Intel have designed to date. There are 8 physical cores, each of which have hyperthreading support to give a total of 16 threads. The E5 2660 has a massive 20MB Level 3 cache onboard, even more than the Core i7 3960K Extreme Edition. Officially it has support for memory rated to 1,600mhz in a Quad Channel configuration. There are 40 PCIe plus 4 V2 lanes and two high speed QPI links.

The Xeon E7 range of processors are designed for use in 4 socket and higher servers, so the E5 has to cover a wider gamut of deployment situations.

The E5 2660 slots into the middle of the E5 range – clocked at 2.2ghz and with a TDP rating of 95W. The Xeon E5 2600 is the first CPU to truly integrate the IOH functionality for 40 lanes of PCIe Gen3. The E5-2687W is the fastest clocked E5 – an 8 core 16 thread design running at 3.1ghz with a power consumption rating of 150W.

The Quad channel IMC in the Xeon E5 also supports DDR3 LRDIMM to allow for densities up to 768GB – 24 x 32GB modules.. Intel Turbo Boost 2.0 is incorporated which helps improve performance while maintaining a dynamic, efficient power curve.

The Gigabyte X79S-UP5 WIFI arrives in a predominately white box, which is covered in information on all sides.

The bundle is extensive and contains SATA cables, a backplate, two wireless transmitters, SLI (2 and 3 way) and Crossfire connectors, wireless card, software discs and user manuals. There is also a 3.5 inch USB 3.0 drive bay and a Gigabyte sticker for a chassis.

The X79S-UP5-WIFI is built around a black PCB with blue accenting on the heatsinks. It is a well designed E-ATX board measuring 30.5 cm x 26.4 cm.

The board comprises some large heatsinks to help cool the chipset, these are all colour coordinated around the CPU socket and close to the SATA ports at the bottom of the board.

There is a manual power switch set close to the memory slots. There are eight 1.5v DDR3 DIMM sockets on the board, which support up to 64GB of system memory.

Obviously we don't advise you install a 32 bit OS as this will be limited. As an X79 board, this is obviously a QUAD channel architecture and it supports 1066mhz, 1333mhz, 1600 mhz, 1866 mhz, and 2133 mhz memory out of the box. It also supports ECC memory modules. As we would expect Extreme Memory Profiles (XMP) are supported.

There are several fan headers close to the CPU socket, and an 8 pin power connector close to the upper most heatsink (image above).

The X79S-UP5-WIFI supports 3 way SLI and 3 way Crossfire.  2 of the slot run at x16 bandwidth (PCIEX16_1 and PCIEX 16_2). For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16_1 slot; if you are installing two PCI Express graphics cards, it is recommended that you install them in the PCIEX16_1 and PCIEX16_2 slots.

There are two other PCI Express x16 slots, one running at x8 bandwidth, the other x4 bandwidth. The PCIEX8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16_2 slot. When the PCIEX8 slot is populated, the PCIEX16_2 slot will operate at up to x8 mode. There is also a PCI Express x1 slot and a single PCI Slot.

The grey ports on the left of the image above are SAS2 connectors. The black ports are SATA 2 – 3Gbps rated. The two white ports at the far right at SATA 3 – 6Gbps rated.

The SAS connectors are controlled by the Intel C606 chipset, each SAS connector supports a single SAS or SATA drive. The Intel C606 chipset supports Raid 0, 1 and 10. The SATA 3Gbps and 6Gbps connectors are also controlled by the Intel C606 chipset and can be configured into Raid 0, 1, 5 and 10.

Along the bottom of the board, is an audio connector, close to an 1394 connector and fan header. There are several USB headers before we come to the front panel header, right next to an emergency reset switch.

It would have made more sense to position the reset switch at to the top of the board, next to the power switch. Graphics cards and other slot based components can partially cover the lower section of the board.

Another fan header is positioned beside the SATA and SAS headers.

The back Panel connectors are:

• 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port
• 1 x CPU overclocking button
• 1 x BIOS switch button
• 1 x Clear CMOS button
• 1 x IEEE 1394a port
• 4 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports
• 5 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
• 1 x eSATA/USB Combo connector
• 1 x eSATA 6Gb/s connector
• 2 x RJ-45 ports
• 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector
• 5 x audio jacks (Center/Subwoofer Speaker Out, Rear Speaker Out, Line In, Line Out, Mic In)

We appreciate the inclusion of a BIOS switch, clear CMOS and overclocking button.

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.

The Gigabyte Bios is an American Megatrends implementation. There is a 3D bios options, but we usually bypass this to get into the traditional style interface.

The System interface details the processor installed, the clock speed, base frequency and bios revision.

The Bios Features panel allows for adjustment over boot options and optical/hard drive priorities. Some intel settings can also be enabled/disabled here.

The Peripherals menu can be used to enable and disable various onboard controllers, such as the LAN, SAS and Audio chips.

Power management and Save & Exit menus are self explanatory, with the option to save and load pre-configured bios options.

An overview of the Intel E5 2660 processor, with the eight physical cores, clocked at 2.2ghz in non turbo. This processor isn't unlocked, after all Intel want the business customers to spend more money if they need a higher clocked chip.

The M.I.T. section of the bios is fully featured, ideal when overclocking an unlocked chip such as the Core i7 3960 Extreme Edition. Sadly we could only push the motherboard to 103mhz via the BCLK/PCIe setting, for a 100mhz increase. The motherboard defaulted to 1,600mhz so we had to manually select the XMP profile of the G.Skill ARES memory to get the correct speeds (2,133mhz 9-11-10-28).

To be fair, a Xeon chip is not sold to run in an overclocked state, as the target business audience require complete stability and cool running temperatures 24/7/365. Still, we had to try.

System validation is available over here.

To test today we are using the reference XEON clock speed. In various sections of the review we will compare against a variety of systems and processors we have tested in the past, listed below.

Main Test System:

Processor: Intel E5 2660
Motherboard: Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WIFI
Cooler: Corsair H100
Memory: 16GB G.Skill ARES 2,133mhz @ 9-11-10-28

Graphics Card: Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition (1,200mhz core 1,600mhz memory).
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Lian Li X2000a
Monitors: Dell U3011, 3x Ilyama ProLite E2472HDD
Boot Drive: Intel 510 120GB
Secondary Drive: Patriot 240GB WildFire

Comparison Systems:

Intel i7 3960X EE
Motherboard: Asus P9X79 WS WorkStation
Cooler: Corsair H100
Memory: 8GB Corsair Dominator GT8 2400mhz memory
Graphics Card: AMD HD7770 CrossfireX
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Cooler Master Cosmos 2
Monitors: Dell U3011, 3x Ilyama ProLite E2472HDD
Boot Drive: Crucial C300 128GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Patriot 240GB Pyro SE

Intel i7 3960X EE
Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV Extreme
Cooler: Antec H20 920
Memory: 8GB Corsair Dominator GT 2400mhz memory
Power Supply: Enermax Platimax 1200W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Lian Li PC-A77FR Aluminium Red Full Tower Case
Monitors: Dell U3011, 3x Ilyama ProLite E2472HDD
Boot Drive: Patriot WildFire 120GB
Secondary Drive: 1TB Samsung

Intel i7 3820
Motherboard: ASRock Extreme4-M
Cooler: Intel reference cooler
Memory: 8GB Corsair GTX8 @ 2133mhz
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Chassis: Lian Li PC60
Monitors: Dell U3011/La Cie 730
Boot Drive: Crucial C300
Secondary Drive: Patriot Pyro SE 240GB

AMD FX 8150 Black Edition
Processor: AMD FX 8150 Black Edition
Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7
Cooler: Noctua NH D14
Memory: G-SKill Ripjaws 1600mhz 8GB (2x 4GB)
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Chassis: SilverStone Raven 3
Boot Drive: Intel 40GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Patriot 120GB WildFire

Intel Core i7 990X
Processor: Intel Core i7 990x
Cooler: Corsair H100
Motherboard: Gigabyte G1 Assassin
Memory: Kingston HyperX 6GB
Drives: Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Chassis: Antec Twelve Hundred

Core i7 970 @ 4.6ghz
Graphics: SAPPHIRE HD 7970 6GB TOXIC Edition
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Memory: 6GB ADATA @ 2133mhz 9-10-9-32
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)
Monitor: Dell U3011.

Intel Core i7 2700k
Processor: Intel Core i7 2700k
Cooling: ThermalTake Frio OCK
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 Z68 Motherboard
Chassis: Silverstone Raven 3.
Power Supply: Corsair 850W.
Memory: Corsair 1600mhz memory
Storage: Intel 80GB SSD (boot) / Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD.

Intel Core i7 2600k
Processor: Intel Core i7 2600k
Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen 3
Cooler: Intel XTS-100H
Memory: ADATA 1600mhz DDR3 8GB (2x4GB)
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower 850W
Boot Drive: Intel 510 SSD 250GB

Intel Core i5 2500k
Processor: Intel Core i7 2500k
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 Z68 Motherboard
Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme Rev.2 CPU Cooler
Memory: Corsair 1600mhz memory 8GB (2x4GB)
Power Supply: Corsair 850W.
Boot Drive: Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD.

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T
Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1100T
Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7
Cooler: Noctua NH D14
Memory: G-SKill Ripjaws 1600mhz 8GB (2x 4GB)
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Chassis: SilverStone Raven 3
Boot Drive: Intel 40GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Patriot 120GB WildFire

PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use.

Not a particularly wonderful score from the system, scoring 4,252 points at the default settings.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

We compare against Kitguru's main GPU test system, comprising a Core i7 970 clocked to 4.6ghz (full system listed on Testing Methodology page).

Slightly disappointing scores for the E5 2660 system, highlighting the clock speed differences between the physical cores, even though the E5 has two extra.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

When we first tested the Sapphire HD7960 6GB Toxic Edition, it didn't break the 10,000 point barrier in 3dmark 11. With the Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WIFI and Intel Xeon E5 2660, it does … scoring 10,002 points. A reverse positioning from the 3DMark Vantage test on the previous page.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11.

The extra physical cores don't make a difference in this benchmark, falling a little behind the overclocked Core i7 970 processor and 3960x.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

Performance is very strong, falling in behind the Intel Core i7 3960k at reference clock speeds. The two additional physical scores can't completely negate the large clock speed deficit.

CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

The eight cores turbo to 2.7ghz when fully loaded, delivering a final score of 10.47 points. Performance is close to the Intel Core i7 3930k with 6 cores clocked at 3.2ghz.

wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions, with f(x)=x2-k, where k is the number we're sqrting, until Sgn(f(x)/f'(x)) does not equal that of the previous iteration, starting with an estimation of k/2. It then uses an iterative calling of the estimation method a set amount of times to increase the accuracy of the results. It then confirms that n(k)2=k to ensure the calculation was correct. It repeats this for all numbers from 1 to the requested maximum.

We set wPrime to 16 cores.

The Xeon E5 2660 turns in a strong result of around 160 seconds. The 3960X Extreme Edition when overclocked to 4.8ghz turns in a faster result of 120 seconds.

Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0 x64. The Patriot Wildfire 240GB Solid State drive is being tested on the Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WIFI today.

No performance concerns from the Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WIFI and the Intel C606 chipset here. All the results are exactly as we would expect.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

Solid performance results, scoring well over 500MB/s in both the sequential read and write tests.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here

A score of 196 points is class leading right now, the ideal solution for high definition media playback on a big screen.

V2011 is the first release of 3DStudio Max to fully support the Windows 7 operating system. This is a professional level tool that many people use for work purposes and our test will show any possible differences between board design today.

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software offers compelling new techniques to help bring designs to life by aggregating data, iterating ideas, and presenting the results.

Streamlined, more intelligent data exchange workflows and innovative new modeling and visualization tools help significantly increase designers’ creativity and productivity, enabling them to better explore, validate, and communicate the stories behind their designs.

Major new features:

• Slate: A node based material editor.
• Quicksilver: Hardware renderer with multithreaded rendering engine that utilizes both CPU and GPU.
• Extended Graphite Modeling Toolset
• 3ds Max Composite: A HDRI-capable compositor based on Autodesk Toxik.
• Viewport Canvas toolset for 3D and 2D texture painting directly in the viewport
• Object Painting: use 3D geometry as ‘brushes’ on other geometry
• Character Animation Toolkit (CAT): now integrated as part of the base package
• Autodesk Material Library: Over 1200 new photometrically accurate shaders
• Additional file format support: includes native support for Sketchup, Inventor
• FBX file linking
• Save to Previous Release (2010)

We created a new 8200×3200 scene and recorded the time for the hardware to finalise the render.

The Xeon E5 2660 completes the task in 5 minutes and 42 seconds, which is around 8 seconds slower than the 3930k. This is an ideal system for heavy 3D rendering tasks.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 3.3GB 720p MKV file (2h:12mins) to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power. We are using the newest version which has been optimised for Sandybridge processors.

We test first with hardware acceleration disabled, then turn it on to use the power of the Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition.

So why such a slow time when the Intel Xeon E5 2660 has 8 physical cores?

We can see from the image above that the Xeon E5 2660 is only tasked with 14 percent of total CPU time during this test. MediaEspresso is designed to leave plenty of CPU cycles free so that the end user can work perfectly within a heavy multitasking environment. Not ideal for a benchmark score, although it is a good indication of a ‘real world' result which many people would achieve. Individual core clock speed is much more important with this benchmark.

When enabling the hardware acceleration of the Sapphire HD7970 6GB Toxic Edition, the time is reduced by 3 minutes. This would translate to hours saved over the course of a day, if you used this program regularly.

Our good friends at Cyberlink kindly supplied the software for our BluRay and conversion tests.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 11 is one of the finest solutions for the BluRay experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the new Bluray Disc of ‘The Road’.

Not the most demanding test for such powerful hardware, only demanding 5-6 percent of the CPU time.

Many people using this system will be enjoying Flash related content so we feel it is important to test with some of the more demanding material available freely online.

No performance problems, at the same level as the Core i7 3930k and 3960k.

Handbrake is a fantastic free program which we wanted to include to confirm findings with Media Espresso, earlier in the review. HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.

We used the latest V 0.9.5 for testing today across all platforms. We encoded an DVD.MPG file.

Solid performance, just slightly behind the 3930k at reference clock speeds.

Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.

We enabled the game across three 24 inch screens at 5760×1080 resolution, with the settings shown above.

Excellent results, averaging 90 frames per second at these settings.

According to EA, Battlefield 3 garnered 3 million pre-orders by the day of its release. It is unknown at present whether these figures are worldwide or just for the US. The pre-order total makes it “the biggest first-person shooter launch in EA history”, according to the publisher. The engine is beautiful on the PC and very demanding of the partnering hardware.

We configured the game to run on three 24 inch monitors at 5760×1080. We also dropped the Texture quality from ultra to high.

Another great experience, averaging 85 frames per second at these high settings across three screens.

On the last page we tested Max Payne 3 while running in Direct X 10.1. We have been unable to get this game playable across three screens in Direct X 11 with high image quality settings enabled.

We set anti aliasing to 2x and Tessellation to High. At these settings, the game demanded 1813MB of memory.

The game was perfectly playable, averaging 45 frames per second, and never dropping below the sweet spot of 30 frames per second.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by running a looped Cinebench R11.5 64 test for 15 minutes.

The Corsair H100 is a fantastic ‘all in one' liquid cooler, and can maintain the Xeon E5 2660 at under 40c when loaded to 100%.

Power consumption is very important today, especially if you are running a room full of workstation/server systems. Adopting a series of more efficient machines could save a business thousands a year.

We used a calibrated meter to measure the power at the wall. No monitors were factored into the readings. All systems included the same graphics card, memory configuration and hard drive population.

We measured wattage at the socket when running Cinebench R11.5 64 bit which loads all cores to 100% utilisation. The graphics card was inactive during the reading.

The Intel Xeon E5 2660 system consumes up to 160 watts when loaded, which is a fantastic result, this drops to around 80-90W when idle.

There is no doubt that the Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WIFI is a fully featured, high performance motherboard. With additional support for the latest Xeon processors it will undoubtedly target a niche audience who wish to focus on 3D rendering, digital content creation and video editing.

We focused today on pairing up the Gigabyte motherboard with the Xeon E5 2660 processor and the results were impressive. The 8 HT capable cores are very efficient and deliver solid performance results with all the benchmarks we used today. When we factor in the modest system power consumption of 160 watts when running the Cinema 4D rendering engine, we can see that this offers a tempting proposition of performance per watt.

The Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WIFI is supplied with a comprehensive bundle including class leading wireless support. It can handle both 3 way SLi and Crossfire configurations and ships with a very capable bios setup. On an interface level, we still prefer the ASUS bios configurations as Gigabyte are intent on splitting some of the overclocking settings into multiple menus, forcing unnecessary navigation. It is a minor point, however I would like to see it change in future.

Sadly we were unable to overclock the E5 2660 past 103mhz via the BCLK/PCIe setting, no matter the configurations we tried. To be fair, the main audience considering a Xeon E5 processor won't be interested in overclocking the chip anyway. A focus on power consumption, ultimate stability and a low thermal overhead are the primary goals for this audience.

Being a geek however, I would be interested to see the performance results from the eight physical cores when clocked to 4ghz, or more.

Thermal performance is fantastic. When paired up with the Corsair H100 liquid cooler, the processor peaked at 38c load. This would be indicative of a very long life, when used 24/7 in a workstation environment.

While we didn't focus on the Core i7 3960X Extreme Edition processor today, we were able to overclock this processor on the Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WIFI to 4.8ghz @ 1.45 volts, which is as good as any other high end board we have tested in the past.

If you are contemplating this motherboard for a standard Core i7 3960 or 3930 processor, then it assuredly makes a tempting proposition, especially considering the Intel C606 chipset support for SAS and SATA drives.

Native support for Quad channel ECC DDR3 memory is another selling point, especially if you are using the motherboard in a mission critical environment. The X79S-UP5-WIFI supports up to 64GB of DDR3, which wouldn't be that costly considering the low price of memory right now.

You can buy the motherboard from Overclockers for £274.99 inc vat. The Xeon E5 2660 is on pre-order from Scan right now for £1,034.96 inc vat.

Pros:

• Fantastic build quality from Gigabyte.
• Wireless support up to 300 Mbps.
• up to 64GB of ECC DDR3 memory
• Dual GB lan ports.
• 3 Way Sli and Crossfire Support
• Supports both Xeon and Core i7
• High level of overclocking with the right processor.
• incredible level of hard drive support via SAS/SATA connectors.
• dual bios.
• reset CMOS on back panel.
• capable bios.
• memory support up to 2,400mhz
• stable under load.
• quick charge USB ports for media players.

Cons:

• Its expensive.

Kitguru says: Gigabyte haven't missed a trick with this motherboard.

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