EVGA X58 SLI LGA 1366 Motherboard Review

BIOS Rundown

An initial scan of the BIOS provides a very promising look at a compact yet feature filled framework for this motherboard. The layout is very nicely done in this BIOS and EVGA has managed to pack everything we would expect from a premium motherboard in a nice neat little package. Let's take a look and see what we have to work with.

The EVGA X58 SLI uses a Phoenix AwardBIOS and comes equipped with the standard layout. The BIOS is broken up into seven familiar separate sections with headings that are pretty self explanatory. Starting at the top left and working our way down, the Standard CMOS Features section is just that, basic information about the hard drive channels in use as well as the date & time. Advanced BIOS Features gives us access to drive boot order, and a couple other options. So far, these sections of the AwardBIOS are standard in their options. Let's move on to the Integrated Peripherals section.

This is home to all hardware devices offered onboard of the EVGA X58 SLI. EVGA has broken this section down into four sub-headings, Legacy Devices which simply allows us to enable or disable the onboard serial header. Onboard PATA/SATA Devices provides us the ability to set the operation modes for all of the SATA and IDE channels on the motherboard. We are provided the liberty of individual control over both the JMicron 362 and 363 controllers. As we can see from the inset image above, we can run the 362/363 controllers either as IDE, RAID, AHCI, or multiple combinations of the three. Moving on to the Onboard Devices section we find our usual suspects here allowing us to disable devices as we please.

There is, however, a single option that caught us by a bit of a surprise. At the bottom of the Onboard Device list is the P80 Show CPU Temp option. This will actually display the BIOS CPU temp on the diagnostic display after POST has finished. Now it is not a core reading of temperature, but appears to be similar to what a temp diode on the IHS would provide for a reading. It is quite a handy feature being able to look over at the display and get an idea of how hot the processor is, even if it isn't as accurate as a core reading, it is always the same offset from the core readings. The last screenshot of this group is the USB Device Setting showing the different options we have for USB thumb drives giving us the option for floppy disk or hard drive modes.

The Power Management Setup and PnP/PCI Configurations sections are pretty self explanatory and usually hold little interest to readers so we will let the images do the talking and will move on to the next set of screen shots.

The last couple of sections we are going to look at before heading over to overclock central are the PC Health Status and SmartFan Function sections. EVGA doesn't skimp on information provided by the BIOS which means Everest Ultimate in Windows will be able to display quite a bit of information for us. Having a plethora of voltage readouts, temperature sensors, and fan speed read outs is something we take for granted recently; but when they are lacking it leaves a big black hole when trying to monitor things within Windows. This won't be the case with the EVGA X58 SLI. The BIOS boys over at EVGA have also been kind enough to provide full SmartFan control from within the BIOS for three different fan headers on the motherboard. This gives us the option to control fan speeds through temperatures without the need of software. This is again, a nice feature that is almost expected on a premium motherboard, but shouldn't be dismissed. Now for the most important part of the BIOS, overclocking controls.

The Frequency/Voltage Control is a one stop shop for all of our system and overclocking settings. At the very top we find a couple unique features including Dummy O.C and Extreme Cooling. The Dummy O.C option is self explanatory offering us a single option to enable a basic overclock of the system, while the Extreme Cooling option is a bit more obscure. There are three options for Extreme Cooling, Disabled, -50C, and -80C. These options apparently disable some internal temperature features on the i7 processor to allow for easier operation at these temperatures.

The Frequency/Voltage Control section is then broken down into three different sections including Memory Feature, Voltage Control, and CPU Feature. The second image above gives us a look at the Memory Feature section which houses not only an abundance of memory timing options, but the various memory ratios available as well. Early BIOS releases had limited memory ratios but EVGA has since included access to all memory ratios available on the X58 chipset and i7 CPUs. In addition to the complete assortment of memory timings, EVGA has provided users the ability to fine tune all necessary voltages in the Voltage Control section.

The labels for each voltage are descriptive enough that experienced overclockers will know immediately what they are working with...assuming you are familiar with i7 overclocking that is. The one unique feature of the Voltage Control section is the PWM Frequency option at the bottom. We actually have the option to increase the PWM switching frequency from 800 KHz, to 933KHz, or 1066KHz. Setting a lower switching frequency saves power and heat, while higher switching frequency relinquishes some of those savings in favor of more stable power delivery to the CPU. It is recommend to use the higher frequencies when clocking i7 CPUs up around 4GHz or higher. As far as we know, this is the only motherboard with this feature available on it. Let's now go over the chart of available voltage options for each component offered by the EVGA X58 SLI BIOS:

And yes, we think a few of the voltage options are obscenely high too. This is never a bad thing though, with the commitment by EVGA to cater to extreme overclockers with adjustable PWM frequency and Extreme Cooling options, it is nice to see they didn't go half way and force those pushing hardware to volt mod the boards. The EVGA X58 SLI definitely has all the voltage options anyone should need, and we mean ANYONE, including the all so important - and much discussed - vDROOP control. A little bit later on we will see how close BIOS selected voltages relate to actual voltages supplied in the Voltage Regulation section.

The last couple images we have above are of the CPU Features screen where we can adjust the various CPU features including the Turbo Mode Function, and Hyper-Threading options of i7 CPUs in addition to the QPI link settings. The last image returns us to the Frequency/Voltage Control section showing the Save Profile options. We have a number of profiles we can save, but no way to rename or label them. It would have been nice to put a label on saved profiles, but at least the profile for the entire BIOS is saved, and not just the frequency/voltage options. Too often the profile saving feature of motherboards seems to only store a few options so it is nice to see EVGA's profile storage save every single option in the BIOS.

Overall there isn't a whole lot to complain about with the X58 SLI BIOS. EVGA has put together a very well constructed and easy to manipulate BIOS with all the options right where they should be. The ability to label profiles and manually punch in voltages would be nice little touches but we won't hold it against EVGA and is getting pretty picky in our needs/wants. One thing we will mention is that the keen BIOS observers will note a lack of options to disable the current and/or wattage limits that the i7 processorors have built into them. This is because EVGA has coded the BIOS to automatically set those limits to the highest they have registers for. So all you low temperature overclockers, you don't have to worry about hitting the limits on this board, despite the lack of BIOS options for it.