I'm not sure if you were aware of this... but their is a BIOS for the Platinum SLI that can be flashed to this board should you desire SLI support.

For the record I decided to go with the P6T. However, if that does not work well, I'll resort to the MSI X58 Platinum SLI.

I'd like to see how much power each board used at its maximum overclock. That piece of information would be very helpful in choosing an optimally sized power supply for overclocking.

So I have a question, looking at this pic of the ASUS:
http://techreport.com/image.x/cheaper-x58-mobos/big_asus-slots.jpg

Why does the PCIe x1 slot and the third (and only the third) x16 slot have that angled lip on the side, but neither of the first two x16 slots do?

On the Gigabyte board, all the PCIe slots have that; on the MSI, only the x1 slots do.

Thanks, great review!

Page 4, table: Are the specs for X58 Eclipse or for X58 Platinum?

Will you correct me, is P6T the only board that will accept a LGA775 cooler?

Intel really misjudged the market. Wasn't Core i7 suppose to stay high in price. At the rate that prices are falling Core i7 is eating into Intel's performance segment and Core i5 is looking to be pushed towards the lower end of performance?

I remember originally Intel claimed i7 would only be 2% of 2009 processor shipments or something around there, sure $300 for mobo $200 for ram and $350 for processor is 2%, but at $200 for a mobo $90 for ram and $290 for processor that sounds like 5-10% of the market.

Has Core i5s market changed?

LOL @ Corei7 and the word "affordable" in the same sentence. Surely that notion is ridiculous?

200$ mobo affordable?
Either INTEL fans love to be milked or they spend their fathers' money. He he!

I don't really need a new system, as my e3750 system running at 3.6GHz gives me pretty much what I want for my PC needs. But I've been itching to try a quad and have been impressed with the Phenom II performance and price ratio. But I absolutely crave speed, and with the i7 920 being reasonably affordable, ddr3 more price-reasonable, and now these boards, especially the gigabyte, I'm reconsidering an i7 build. Plus, will the actual prices be lower from places like newegg et al?

All that said, I really don't want AMD to go out of business, so I may have to consider their newest Phenom II (not that their financial future is dependent solely on my purchasing decisions). But that borders on a pathetic reason for buying a product.

Watch out for that realtek ACL1200 asus uses, it's a custom version of the ACL888 but because it's custom and ASUS is secretive about it it means linux users are looking at issues, and the rest of the people either have to use asus drivers, which are never that good/up-to-date as most people familiar with asus know, or use the regular realtek ACL888 ones, but in that case you don't know if future one will work and if it gets the most out of it, I read they do actually work so far without issues though.
And I won't even mention the long history of realtek not doing occlusion correctly in 3D (EAX) games in their drivers.

On the other hand ASUS did make their own soundcard and it's pretty good, so perhaps their custom realtek chip is in actual fact much better than the normal one, but still propriety and thus a bit too apple-eque in that case I feel.

But in the end it's just a soundchip, if need be you can buy a cheap or expensive soundcard to fit your needs so it's not too critical.

Corei7 up to 4ghz? Man was not meant for such power...

Not to mention the fact that zotac had their pcie16 slots named... go to the pic if you don't believe me... it was odd and slightly disturbing.

Something this review should look into by asking Gigabyte (I already know the answer) is how long SLI support will be kept to a seperate model.

The answer is, not long. SLI support is on it's way to vanilla UD3R owners very soon according to Brandon at Firingsquad. In fact, you can flash the non-SLI board to the SLI version using the SLI bios. The boards are identical, so no technical problems will arise. It is warranty voiding right now since it's not officially supported yet, but patience will pay off on this one.

This is the first time I'd choose a Gigabyte over an Asus.

Excatly. "Affordable" is something I associate with a sub $120 motherboard. Not twice that price. Then, of cource, everything depends on perspective - and from the target market's point of view, $240 might be a bargain. It's just that today more than ever we do not all live in the same world...

This is a good article and all (of course), but if I spend $200 or more on a mobo I'd expect that mobo to be very high end, not "affordable". The price move is in the right direction though.

Page 10, "MSI X58 Eclipse (JMB322)" read burst speed: are you serious?

Will cards larger then 4x clear the battery in that orange slot?

I'm really looking forward to the Core i5 dual cores coming this summer.
DDR3 memory seems to be hitting its stride now and prices are looking better every week.
Good article TR.