Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard Review

The BIOS
When we powered the system on the first thing we did was go into the BIOS and poke around.  Gigabyte uses a Phoenix Award BIOS for the X58A-UD5.  Before we get into the advanced stuff let’s start with the normal features.  The advanced BIOS features include your typical options and boot devices.  Once thing that I noticed was the Backup BIOS Image to HDD option.

Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard

Integrated Peripherals is where you will find all of the options for USB, SATA, LAN, eSATA, etc.  The USB keyboard function was disabled at first so make sure you turn it on.  Power Management shows you all of the different power options.

Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard

The PC Health Status shows you all of your current voltages, temperatures, and fan speeds.  There are also a few different options in there.  This BIOS has a Q-Flash utility that will allow you to update and save your BIOS from a USB flash drive.

Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard

Ok so now onto the fun stuff, the MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.).  Here you will find all of your frequency, voltage, and all the other tweaking and overclocking settings.  When you get into the M.I.T. you have 5 different menus and it lists the BIOS version, BCLK, CPU and Memory frequency, memory size, CPU temperature and the Vcore and DRAM voltages.  The M.I.T. status shows you all of the information about your CPU cores and memory, it even shows you your current memory timings.

Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard

In the Advanced Frequency Settings menu you will find everything for overclocking your CPU.  The CPU clock ration can be changed between 12 and 64x.  The BCLK frequency can be changed between 100 and 600.  If we go even deeper into the Advanced CPU Core features we can enable or disable Intel Turbo Boost and other CPU features.

Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard

Going into the Advanced Memory Settings you can change the SPD, it can be changed from 6 all the way up to 18.  Here you can also change the timings for each stick of memory in the system.  Makes it very easy to set the correct timings.

Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard

Finally in the Advanced Voltage Settings you can change all of the voltages.  Most of the them are set at auto, but they all can be changed.  In the misc. settings menu you can turn on Isochronous support and virtualization technology.

Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard Gigabyte X58A-UD5 Intel X58 Motherboard

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