Introduction

Unless you have been under a rock, you have probably noticed that GIGABYTE has been ramping things up lately. Their latest round of products (from motherboards to add-in GPUs) have been very well put together and designed with performance in mind.

We have taken a look at all of the UD7 line-up and now have managed to get our hands on GIGABYTE's flagship board, the X58A-UD9. This colossal motherboard is designed with one thought in mind; getting the most out of your system. From the advanced "unlocked" 24-phase power design (with Dual Phase Switching) to the two extra NF200 chips making 4-way x16 SLI or Crossfire a reality, it is clear you are going to get a lot from this motherboard.

Of course, as this product is so obviously designed with overclocking and benchmarking in mind, we wonder if it can perform well under normal demands and some low grade simple water cooled overclocking. Well, that is what we are going to find out over the next few pages. Once we know what it can do here, then we will dive in and see what else we can find out about the massive beast that is the X58A-UD9.