Gigabyte X58A-UD3R preview

The Gigabyte X58A-UD3R, as the 'A' in X58A allready indicates, is a new X58 mainboard with USB3 and SATA3 support. Again we see the '333' logo on the box, it tells us that next to the USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/second support we have extra power for USB3 devices. Up till now these devices without a power adapter have not been spotted yet, there is the buffalo USB3 drive, but that still needs en AC adapter.



The UD3R can be considered a relatively cheap X58 socket 1366 mainbord since retail prices are around $200.- , but CrossfrireX and SLi bridges are still included in the bundle. It has an 8 phase (probably 4 + 2 + 2) power supply, which is less than most other X58 mobos, the UD5 from the '333' series has a 12 +2 +2 and the UD7 is even equipped with a 24 +2 +2 phase power supply.

With four PCIe sockets this mobo can be considered a real gaming monster, the X58 chipset takes care of enough lanes four all graphics cards.


There is a dedicated page for the the disassembled heatsink(s), which look a bit 'traditional'. Thermal management seems to form a substantial part of the total production costs so this has probably been done to keep the retail price low(er).

You can find the full preview here with more detailed images and specs.

SATA3 test: Gigabyte P55a-UD6 and Barracuda XT 2TB

With an Intel Core i7 870 and a Gigabyte P55a-UD6 mainboard hardcoreware.net tested the Barracuda XT 2 TeraByte (SATA3) internal harddisk.


In the benchmarks the 2TB Barracuda XT was compared to the 1TB Seagate 7200.12 (SATA2).

The windows 7 FileCopy benchmarks were performed by the Intel P55 chipset as well as the onboard Marvell SE9128 SATA3 controller chip for both drives. In most cases the 7200.12 also had a faster performance when the operations were carried out by the Marvell chip, allthough the 7200.12 is a 3GB/s disk.

To give you an Idea we give you the results of the windows 7 x64 File copy test were 2.08GB misc. files (many small files and some large ones).

1. With the P55 the results for the 7200.12 were 34.84MB/second and the Barracuda XT 39.68MB/second.

2. With the Marvell SATA3 controller the results for the 7200.12 were 42.24MB/second and the Barracuda XT 50.66MB/second.

In the 'real world' Windows FileCopy Benchmarks the XT outperforms the rest, and the 7200.12 is (a somewhat) faster when connected to the Marvell. The HDTach benches for average read/write show a different result, it doesn't matter if the P55 or the Marvell is uesed the results are roughly the same.


The overall conclusion for this drive is that there is a hardly a performance gain compared to a SATA2.0 drive. The 2TB Barracuda XT ranges from “pretty much identical” to “a little bit faster” than the SATA2 drive it was compared with in the tests.

Jetway NC63-330-LF review

Jetway NC63-330-LF unboxed and reviewed

Unlike the NC63P-LF the NC63-LF doesn't have an onboard power supply.



The review that covers the NC63-LF mobo with an atom N330 based on the NVidia MCP7A-ION chipset, this test has lots of images from the package and detailed photographs of the onboard chips.

The benchmarks tested are focused on the 3d and pc benchmark suites by futuremark, and even a few games like Devil May Cry 4 are tested. NVIDIA ION Graphics are not suited for (modern) games the FPS rate is usually below 10.

When compared to a desktop PC the power usage is less than half with full load.

A peculiar thing is that when having several tabs opened in a browser the overall speed of the system is slowing down, be adviced not to have to many tabs open.

The unboxing page is originally in German but with this link we used the Google translation. Lots of photographs here, and there will be a test in the near future on this site.

New Phenom II X2 555 and Athlon Athlon II X4 635 were tested with an Asus M4A79T Deluxe.

AMD has launched a new line of processors for Q1 2010, the AMD Phenom II X2 555(3.2GHz Dual-Core) and an AMD Athlon II X4 635(2.9GHz Quad-Core), were tested with an Asus M4A79T Deluxe.

Compared to the core i5 661 with 8089 PCmarks in the synthethic bechmark suite PCmark Vantage the Phenom II X2 555 and the Athlon II X4 635 are way behind with 5535 and 6154 PCmarks, on the other hand the XII 555 is priced just below the $100.- barrier while the core i5 661 is above $ 200.- retail price.

In real world benchmarks like Cinebench the Athlon II X4 635 takes the lead with 10777 Cinebench points, while the core i5 661 has the second place with 10731 cinebench points.

The Athlon II X4 635 and Phenom II X2 555 are good performers, but Intel's Core i5 661 is better in all the benchmarks, the Intel however is (almost) double the price.



In single-threaded tasks, the Phenom II X2 555 is faster than the Athlon II X4 635. In single thread operations, in multi-threaded benchmarks however it beats the XII 555.

Biostar launches the TH55B HD

Biostar TH55B HD was launched on januari 18 2010.




The TH55B HD has a 5 phase power supply, presumably 3 for the CPU, one for the integrated graphics and one for the memory, each phase supplies 3 MOSFETS for a steady power supply, this pure electric current will probably be great for overclocking.

Internal Graphics Processer overclocked to 1200MHz:

Intel's Clarkdale Core i3/i5 and Pentium G6950 (32nm) have a built-in (45nm) IGP, that will run @ 733MHz, except for the Core i5 661 that is clocked @ 900MHz.

Biostar's BIOS settings have a Game Boost technology for overclocking the integrated GPU. With this tool it's easy to overclock the IGP of the Intel Clarkdale to 1200MHz (stock speed 733MHz), the 3DMark 06 results were about sixty percent higher.

Zotac IONITX-F-E Review

Atom 330 and Zotac IONITX-F-E Review

Equipped with an 1.6GHz Atom 330 CPU new Mini-ITX motherboard with nVidia ION Chipset can handle up to 4 GB of DDR2 RAM and has integrated graphics with HDMI output.

In the Performance Options of the BIOS it's even possible to overclock the Atom CPU you can set the cpu BCLK, vCore voltage, memory timings and memory voltage.


Below are the benchmark results for Cinebench.

Singlcore results
656

Multicore results
1849

The multicore results for a desktop processor like the Phenom II X3 710 would be around 6500, this will give you an indication how ´fast´ the Atom 330 is.

The Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD7 to be launched in februari 2010

The GA-P55A-UD7 is a P55 motherboard that can compete with X58 boards.

The GA-P55A-UD7 will of course have USB3 and SATA3 connecters and together with an NVIDIA nForce 200 chip there will be sufficient PCI-express lanes for gaming and USB3.

Very interesting is the 24+3 phase circuit, which will be great for overclocking.

The PCI-Express x16 slots can be arranged into x16 - x16 or x16 - x8 - x8 lanes. There are six SATA 3Gb/s ports and two white ports for the Marvell SATA 6Gb/s controller.

Unique is perhaps the waterblock that cools the two PCI-Express bridge chips.

The X58 chipset has plenty of PCIe lanes, this board might have an advantage if it'll be cheaper than an X58 mobo, but that remains to be seen. This board will probably in the shops in februari 2010.