Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 X58 Motherboard Review

System Benchmarks

When running the SuperPI 32MB benchmark, we are calculating Pi to 32 million digits and timing the process. Obviously more CPU power helps in this intense calculation, but the memory sub-system also plays an important role, as does the operating system.


An enthusiast mainstay, SuperPi excels at revealing how the processing and memory sub-systems are performing and it can demonstrate the slightest performance variances. The increased CPU clocks really have an opportunity to shine in SuperPI 32M, reducing the overall time by over 2 minutes. This represents an almost 24% performance improvement from a 25% CPU overclock, which nearly a perfect 1:1 scaling result. In a benchmark in which mere tenths of a second matter, this a massive gain.



The latest iteration of the popular system benchmark is PCMark Vantage from the Futuremark crew. The PCMark series has always been a great way to either test specific areas of a system or to get a general overview of how your system is performing. For our results, we simply run the basic benchmark suite which consists of a wide range of tests involving all the sub-systems of the computer.


Almost not quite as impressive, the roughly 9% performance gain that we see here is quite respectable since it theoretically represents an improvement in overall system performance. Despite the fact that PCMark Vantage tests all critical sub-systems, it is evident that nearly all the gains are isolated in the CPU-dependent Communication and Productivity sections.


Developed by MAXON, creators of Cinema 4D, Cinebench 10 is designed using the popular Cinema software and created to compare system performance in 3D Animation and Photo applications. There are two parts to the test; the first stresses only the primary CPU or Core, the second, makes use of up to 16 CPUs/Cores. Both are done rendering a realistic photo while utilizing various CPU-intensive features such as reflection, ambient occlusion, area lights and procedural shaders.


Cinebench is a phenomenal CPU benchmark, and it is perfectly suited for the sheer multi-threading processing power of the Intel Core i7 series. In this test, we see a roughly 22% to 24% performance improvements, which is a quite linear to the 25% increase in CPU clock.



Now that we have ran some of the more 'synthetic' benchmarks, it is time for a real-life VOB to DivX encoding task. We will take a 1.08GB VOB rip of the cult-classic movie Full Metal Jacket and convert it into DivX using the default multi-media setting of DivX converter v6. DivX fully utilizes all cores of the processor and will rely heavily on all aspects of the system for performance.


Although NVIDIA have demonstrated the remarkable video conversion capabilities of its CUDA-enabled GPUs, most people still utilize their processors to undertake this very time consuming task. Thankfully, the Core i7 series remarkable multi-threading performance has helped accelerate this activity and make it a little bit less tedious. The overclocked configuration was able to shave 3 minutes off of an otherwise 24 minute task, a very worthwhile improvement.



Tech Arp's recent development of the x264 HD Benchmark takes a 30 second HD video clip and encodes it into the x264 codec with the intention of little to no quality loss. The test is measured using the average frames per second achieved during encoding, which scales with processor speed and efficiency. The benchmark also allows the use of multi-core processors so it gives a very accurate depiction of what to expect when using encoding application on a typical full length video.


Displaying similar improvements as the above DiVX test, the x264 HD Benchmark demonstrates a 25% performance gain, which in this case equates to a vital 7 frames per second speed boost.



Unlike the DivX conversion program we just looked at, Lame Front End is not multi-threaded and only utilizes a single processor core. This will obviously limit performance but we should still achieve significant time savings going from the stock to the overclocked settings. We will be encoding a WAV rip of Santana’s Supernatural album and converting it to MP3 using the VBR 0 quality preset.


Although LFE is a single-threaded application, modern systems can easily rip through a CD in a matter of minutes, no pun intended. As a result, it should come as no surprise that our overclocked Core i7 configuration can convert an entire CD album to high-quality MP3s in just over 2 minutes, which is almost 21% faster than the stock configuration.



For the image editing portion of this review, we will use Photoshop CS3 in coordination with our very own HWC Speed Test, which is an excellent measure of CPU power and memory bandwidth. This is a scripted benchmark that individually applies 12 different actions and filters to a 3.72MB JPEG, and uses Photoshop’s built-in timing feature to provide a result at each test stage. Then it’s simply a matter of adding up the 12 results to reach a final figure.


Continuing the trend seen thoughout our real-life tests, our 4.0Ghz Core i7-965 XE crunched through our image-editing benchmark 9 seconds faster than at default clocks, a roughly 22% performance improvement.



The last of our real-life tests will be with the highly popular & multi-threaded WinRAR 3.71 tool, in which we take a 1GB batch of assorted files and archive them, timing the task until completion.


Along with being the first application that we install on a fresh Windows installation, WinRAR is a tool that we use countless times per day, so any performance improvement can provide some welcome time savings. Our overclocked Core i7 system finished the compression task a solid 22 seconds faster than at stock, which is a worthwhile 18% performance improvement.