X58A-UD9 vs. Rampage III Extreme, powered by i7 980X - whose crown?

We don't even deal with the chipset in connection with the Gigabyte card, as we have done so before. But don’t worry about this, because we found so many other interesting details during the investigation that you’re going to open your mouth!

Before taking the motherboard, let's take a look at the packaging! The first thing that comes to mind about the box is that a cardboard of this size would fit a complete shoe cabinet at IKEA. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but the box has really become a bitang big piece, and judging by its weight, it also has content in it, not just a promise. Content, as we know, comes with form, although it is not an amphora. I report the advertising quotes fortunately ran out!

I’ve indicated several times that I really like Gigabyte boxes because they’re extremely informative. The one-time shopper, if he hasn’t looked it up yet, can find out all the essentials by browsing the packaging, except maybe the price, but that’s not a problem either, as he gets plenty of heart attacks at the checkout.

There are two compartments in the box of the X58A-UD9. At the top is the motherboard - it’s a great pleasure to be able to drip our saliva a drop right away - and below it is a line of accessories. There are plenty of these, as Gigabyte engineers didn’t skimp on the motherboard connectors, and thankfully the cables either. Needless to list them, I don’t even steal time with it. I would like to draw attention to one interesting thing, and that is nothing more than a rather large heat sink that looks like a VGA cooler at first glance, but we can be sure it isn’t. Anyone who hasn't seen the HOC TV broadcast in which we peeked into the motherboard box should be surprised by the identity of the rib!

Let's see the card itself, the king, the cream on the cake! At first glance, it is noticeable that the motherboard is not the usual size, but even larger than larger pieces. We could hang up the oversized shipment sign if we wanted to take it somewhere, but we don't want to, we'll try it instead. Due to the size, it is no coincidence that on Gigabyte's website we see this when marking the size standard of the motherboard: XL-ATX, which is 34,5 cm x 26,2 cm. Let's guess when the first XXL-ATX board will arrive! 😉

There are several reasons for the large size, and these reasons follow from each other. There are no fewer than seven full-size, or X16, PCI Express connectors on the board. Here we can think that this is enough for us, when the X58 chipset offers 36 PCIe lanes, and we can't even assign all of them to the VGA rails. Luckily for us, Gigabyte doesn't have idiots working there, they know very well that seven rails that could use 2-4 lanes each would not have much advertising value on a card of this category.

Here comes the related reason why the page is so big. Not only did the connectors have to be placed, but also two nF200 chips to gain additional channels. True, even so, not enough for all seven connectors to know x16 at the same time, but enough to make four-way SLI, or Quad CrossFireX, feasible. Here’s another little twist, as you can see that the rails are very close together, so it’s guaranteed that the double-width cards won’t fit. For this reason, in x16 mode, the first, third, fifth, and seventh rails work, the remaining two connectors can do 8x. I think it's so much good.
Of course, this solution also has its drawbacks, as the nF200 costs money, makes the motherboard more expensive, and also heats up, which means that the board requires more serious cooling, which again only increases the cost.

Perhaps this is precisely why cooling is the second pivotal point of the X58A-UD9. As you can see in the pictures, the chipset has got a pretty big rib, on which we can even let water, of course, only through a pipe, if there is water cooling in our machine. Anyone who doesn’t have one doesn’t have to grieve either, as there’s that big rib in the motherboard box that’s been mentioned. This can be screwed onto the system board rib using four screws. The solution can transfer heat outside the house through the heat pipes. The solution has some setbacks, however. It’s very close to the top video card, plus we need to take a good look at what kind of CPU cooler we’re choosing because it may not fit next to each other.

After the curiosities, here is a “small” list of connectors on the page and of course the available services!