Gigabyte EX58-Extreme

INTRODUCTION

It is a common practice among many motherboard manufacturers to have a line of motherboards with different part numbers to indicate different features, performance and price point. Motherboard manufacturers often start with a top of the line board design and stripe or tweak a few components here and there to produce a cheaper derivative. It is a way to save some bucks when it comes to product design.

Core i7 is currently the most expensive platform one can purchase and along it is expensive motherboard that ranges from $150 to insanely $570. It raises some interesting question's that just how much more "performance" would these more expensive boards offer. Does it makes sense to buy the more expensive board while the more budget or mainstream board that can offer similar performance. This is what we set to investigate today as we compare the top of the line Gigabyte EX58-Extreme to their mainstream board, the EX58-UD4P.

The UD4P is currently selling at Newegg for $259.99. It is no mean a cheap board but it's Gigabyte's third high-end motherboard for the Core i7 platform. The Extreme, on the other hand, represents the most expensive board at retail price of 328.99 from Gigabyte. The extra 70 dollars offers customer a pre-installed waterblock for those who wish to watercool their system, an enlarged NB cooler, and couple extra SATA ports. In addition, a very useful LED debug code is included. Other than these, two boards are virtually identical to each other, making them a prime candidate for doing a performance comparison.