X58A-UD7 Layout/BIOS

Another big difference between Gigabyte’s X58-Extreme and the X58A-UD7 is that the UD7 adds a fourth PCI Express graphics slot. The Extreme board shipped with just 3 PEG slots. Two of the PEG slots get full 16-lane connectivity, while the third and fourth PEG slots are limited to x8 speeds. The x16 slots are separated by at least one expansion slot, leaving plenty of room to run two dual-slot GPUs in these slots.

In theory with the fourth PEG slot you could run 4-Way CrossFire without having to purchase two 4870 X2 cards (or dual Radeon 5970s), although finding a high-end Radeon board that’s single-slot is becoming increasingly difficult to do. All of the 5750, 5770, and 5800 series cards on the market today are dual-slot.

This could prove useful for someone looking to build a high-end graphics workstation to drive lots of displays though.


In order to get that fourth PEG slot to fit on the board, Gigabyte dropped one of the two PCI slots that was originally included on the X58-Extreme. The UD7 board also ships with two x1 PCIe slots, but as we mentioned on the previous page the uppermost PCIe slot could prove unusable, as its located close to the cooling on the chipset’s North Bridge.

Other than this issue, the board’s layout is pretty good considering the number of features that have been included on the board. Gigabyte even managed to find room for IDE and floppy connectors.

BIOS Interface

The X58-UD7 uses a similar interface/layout to its P55 cousin. In fact, many of the BIOS options are identical to each other, including the lack of a 1.65V DDR3 voltage setting. You can see the BIOS options available on the board in the following table:

Gigabyte X58A-UD7 BIOS Features
Base Clock Speeds:	100-600MHz
PCIe Speeds:	90-150MHz
Memory Multipliers:	6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18
CPU Voltages:	0.5V-1.9V in 0.00125V and 0.00625V increments
QPI/Vtt Voltages:	1.075V-2.015V typically in 0.02V increments
CPU PLL Voltages:	1.3V-2.52V typically in 0.02V increments
PCIe Voltages:	1.0V-2.14V typically in 0.02V increments
QPI PLL Voltages:	0.8V-1.6V typically in 0.02V increments
IOH Core Voltages:	1.0V-2.0V in 0.02V increments
ICH I/O Voltages:	1.05V-2.3V in 0.02V increments
ICH Core Voltages:	0.92V-2.38V in 0.02V increments
DRAM Voltages:	1.3V-2.6V in 0.02V increments