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EVGA debuts final version of its X58 motherboard

Theo Valich — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:25:51 +0000

Today is Monday, November 17, 2008, the official launch and availability date for the Intel Core i7 platform. The whole platform is officially on sale, just in time for Black Friday/Cyber Monday madness.
As revealed weeks ago, the motherboard itself is designed by ex-EPoX/now-EVGA design team, hand-tuned by K|ngP|n and Shamino, and manufactured by Jetway. This combo is responsible for (probably) the world’s first motherboard with limited lifetime warranty, and 90 Day Step-up program should be available for this motherboard as well (upgrading from, probably not upgrading to ).
In Europe, customers will not get lifetime warranty, as that is impossible by EU laws (in case you’ve been asking yourself why EUropeans can’t get same warranty as US counterparts), but EVGA Europe will offer 10 year limited warranty, (maximum allowed by the same EU law) joining the ranks of Corsair, OCZ Technology and few other companies that go “beyond industry standards and practices”.

X58 motherboard in its final production form...

Official packaging... hope there is one 8-pin power extender inside.

The motherboard, as far as several engineers is concerned, has only one design flaw: placement of 8-pin 12V rail. If your PSU comes with rigid cabling, you’ll have hellish time trying to get that cable connected to the motherboard without cutting the cabling insulation or bending the dual heat-pipe cooler for Digital PWM. On a second note, the reason for this placement is exact reason why this motherboard overclocks like there’s no tomorrow – since EVGA board supplies that whole rail into the CPU with no questions asked, the power transfer is as direct as possible.
Now, there is just one thing I am really hissy about. In product description on Tiger Direct, it states that EVGA motherboard allows customers to “Take advantage of the most significant architectural change in the x86 architecture in 13 years, the Intel Core i7.”
What kind of marketing BS is that? Core i7 is to Intel platform what Athlon 64 was to AMD’s one (even though first reviews of Bloomfield don’t show same performance jump), it is a majestic overclocking monster, but 13 years? C’mon, grow the heck up.
13 years ago, Intel introduced Pentium Pro architecture, and no, Core i7 cannot compare with the Pentium Pro (even though, there are some similarities between Pentium/Pentium Pro and Core 2/i7). In the halls of fame in IT industry, 8086, 80386, P6 (PPro), Athlon, Athlon 64 and Core 2 are the only CPUs that can be hailed as “great ones”. When Intel or AMD release a 128-bit CPU, we can talk about next “the greatest…” that came to the world of CPU architecture. Sorry.

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EVGA’s X58 motherboard is $299, not $399!

Theo Valich — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:00:14 +0000

EVGA’s first non-Nvidia chipset motherboard brought a lot of attention and is currently #1 story on my blog with 836 souls that came to this site and read the piece.
As the time of the launch approaches (Nov 17th), some e-tailers began to list the motherboard for 400 dollars. That would be all nice and dandy, but it is untrue. According to our sources, the motherboard is set to retail for 299 USD in North America, or around 280 Euro in EUrope. The $400 board will probably carry the name Black Pearl, and will come later.
Hopefully this clears the confusion.

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Intel Core i7 965 Gallery – from Silicon to Benchmarks!

Theo Valich — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:00:48 +0000

Following my yesterday’s article, I received news that GTX280 kicked the bucket so my friend decided to install the ATI Radeon HD 4870X2 as a replacement, and the machine is now working like a clockwork.

I won’t go into fashion decisions, as I am not a big fan of acrylic cases, but I wish my friend all the best when it comes to cleaning up.

When it comes to the CPU itself, Intel Core i7 965 (codename: Bloomfield) works at 1.6 GHz in SpeedStep mode, and works at 3.4 GHz by default. E.g. it works in ASUS motherboard at 3.4 GHz by default, since the board came with Turbo mode on.

Intel Core i7 965 works at 1.2 Volts, the board was feeding the CPU with 1.208V, bus speed was supposed to be 133 MHz, the board was giving out 135.9 MHz (which means QPI is clocked at 3.23 GHz instead of 3.2 GHz), but if you want, you can turn the Turbo mode off. Since Core i7 Extreme is made for overclocking anyways, expect that this system will undergo a nice air cooling upgrade and then target 4 GHz on air.

One thing is certain: somebody is really, really lucky

You are free to use images from the gallery, just please link to this post. If there are interested, resolution is 2048×1536, since all pics were taken with a Sony Ericsson phone. And yes, my Nokia N93i would make way better ones

P.S. If you wonder why Intel chose the name 965 for its Core i7 series, reason is very simple: company wanted to revisit its failed NetBust marchitecture and relive the glory days. Pentium EE 965 was a 150W consuming (that was advertised, reality was a bit different… for the worse) monster that failed to beat AMD processors that worked at much less clocks… now, Intel is challenging AMD with the new 965.

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