GIGABYTE GA-X58-USB3 Motherboard Review

Overclocking the GIGABYTE GA-X58-USB3 Motherboard

Overclocking greatly varies due to what hardware is being used and who is doing the overclocking. Always remember that no two pieces of hardware will perform the same, so our results will differ from what you might be able to get.

With stock BIOS settings, the Intel Core I7 950 processor runs with a 133MHz bus speed (base clock) and an x23.0 multiplier and x24 multiplier with turbo enabled that is used to reach the final core clock of 3.2GHz when all the cores are at full load. We have had the Intel Core I7 950 to 4.2GHz+ previously, unfortunately we were limited by heat. Now that we have remedied that issue, let’s see how far this “budget” $179.99 motherboard will be able to push this processor!

The first way that we decided to try and overclock the GIGABYTE GA-X58-USB3 was using GIGABYTE’s own Easy Tune 6 software. I was able to fire the system up with the “Level 1” settings and it was plenty stable. “Level 2” however failed to be anywhere near stable.

Software has never been my preferred way to overclock, I know it works for some people out there, and more power to you if that is your preferred method. It’s just not my cup of tea.

Four Thousand Three Hundred and Thirty Four Megahertz! After a little bit of work, a little bit of time, some great cooling from the Thermalright Venomous X we were able to break past the 4.3GHz mark for a final overclock of 4334MHz. I dropped the multiplier back to 22 brought the Bus speed to 197MHz, voltage was sitting at a comfortable 1.325 Volts and we were golden! That is a great little overclock from what many consider a “budget board” because it retails for a measly $179.99!

Now that we have a couple of stable overclock settings, we can see what kind of improvement we can expect.

Once all is said and done, we were able to knock off 26.3% of the time in wPrime!