EVGA X58 3X SLI Classified LGA1366 Motherboard Review

BIOS Rundown

For those familiar with the EVGA X58 3X SLI BIOS, the Classified will be very familiar to you. The Classified BIOS is essentially the same BIOS with a few small additions. Both boards seem to get their BIOS updated at the same time with the same changes which indicates that they aren't only similar in layout, but in fact, similar in design.

The Phoenix AwardBIOS comes equipped with a standard layout with the first screen we seen being the map for all of the other sections. The options available to us are identical to the original EVGA X58 motherboard and are pretty much the standard AwardBIOS options. The Standard CMOS Features section is home to the date and time as well as a rundown of storage connections to the system. The Advanced BIOS Features section alows us to set boot up options such as the boot order and whether or not to show the full screen logo we opened this section with.

In the Integrated Peripherals section, we have access to pretty much every piece of integrated hardware. From the PATA/SATA drives to the other onboard accessories to the USB drives attached to the system. We can enable/disable any individual component that we choose. The Onboard Devices section even lets us enable or disable the top PCI-E 1X slot in addition to the other devices. We also have the P80 Show CPU Temp. option in this section which lets us feed the CPU temperature reading to the onboard POST code LED. This is where we would love to see the option to send the NB temperature to the LED instead of the useless off die CPU temperature. More on this shortly.

The Power Management Setup and PnP/PCI Configurations sections are dead ringers for the same sections in the EVGA X58 3X SLI BIOS.

The PC Health Status section provides us with all of our important voltage and temperature readings from the motherboard. We will get into how well the voltage readings from here correspond to actual voltage readings in the Voltage Regulation Section as there are a couple discrepancies. Here we can obviously see a NB Temperature reading, but when in Windows, we don't have access to this reading. The reason is that it shares the sending sensor with the CPU temperature reading just above it. We can't stress enough how much we would like to see the option to choose which of these two readings are provided to us in Windows so we can monitor NB temperatures.

We also have the same fan control options on the Classified as we did the original EVGA X58 motherboard. We have access to control three fans either by manually adjusting their fan speed or linking their fan speed to a temperature. What we don't know is what temperature reading the fan speeds are linked to. The CPU fan speed would likely be linked to the CPU temperature but we have no idea what the other two would be linked to.

The Frequency/Voltage Control section is again home to all of our overclocking options. Being familiar with the EVGA X58 3X SLI layout, controlling the Classified came second nature to us. We still really like the way the options are laid out in this BIOS and really wouldn't change a thing. We wanted to add that we would have liked to see target CPU frequency and target memory frequency information in the BIOS making it easier to adjust BCLK and memory ratios to know what you were selecting without a calculator, but EVGA just updated the BIOS of both boards to add these features. So now you can see what you are setting without having to calculate it yourself. The BIOS was literally updated days before posting this review so we weren't able to include the updated BIOS images.

The main page of this section gives us direct access to the primary ratios and clocks of the system. EVGA has done good to label everything exactly the way it should be labeled. There is no deciphering of terminology here as long as you are familiar with i7 overclocking.

In the Memory Feature section, we have our complete run down of memory timings that we can adjust. We had to use two images to show them all there are so many. EVGA has added a lot of the available X58 memory timing options here but on the whole, we have found the board to automatically select quite tight secondary timings and adjustment is rarely ever needed. When really pushing memory, there are times when coming in here and manually loosening things up in certain areas can help with clocks.

The Voltage Control section is the heart of the overclocking beast that the Classified is. The voltage options on this board provide us with everything we could possibly need without compromise. Whether you are benching under LN2 or simply setting up your everyday overclock with basic air cooling, the Classified BIOS has the voltage options for you. We really like the fact that the right column in the image above shows the options that are currently selected so you know already what is set. Here is a list of the entire voltage selection range for all of the options listed above.

As mentioned, voltages won't be a problem regardless of your cooling, and the unique options found in this BIOS seem to really help in specific aspects. For instance, when running at sub-zero temperatures you might want to set the CPU Impedance to Less. When running for the ultra high BCLK's, you will want to set QPI Signal to Less as well as it may help there. Other general rules are that we could run CPU and IOH PLL's at 1.500v instead of the default 1.800v as they seemed more stable at those voltages. We also left NF200 at 1.200v the entire time we worked with this motherboard. Raising it never seemed to help anything, even at higher GTX 295 clocks.

The CPU Feature section is the last of the sub-sections in the Frequency/Voltage Control section. It just has the CPU Features that we can enable and disable such as Virtualization Technology and HT Technology. The very last image above shows that we also have eight slots available for saving BIOS settings. Like the X58 3X SLI, the slots aren't nameable but it is still nice to be able to save the entire BIOS settings in a number of different profiles for easy access to later. Just remember, any time you update the BIOS, do not use a profile that was saved on another BIOS.

So aside from the lack of ability to select whether we want CPU or NB temperatures in Windows and lack of naming the BIOS Profiles, the Classified has an extremely nice BIOS. Again, this is pretty much the second board we have used this BIOS layout with so our familiarity might influence how intuitively it comes to us, but we think the layout is great and the options are all one could ask for.