Wind back the clock almost a year to November 14th 2011 and we find ourselves checking out the new Intel LGA2011 platform for the very first time using the Sandy Bridge-E based Core i7-3960X processor along with the then new X79 chipset.

This was an exciting time as we finally got to see how the hugely powerful six-core/twelve-thread Core i7 processors performed. On top of that we also got to find out what the new Intel X79 chipset had in store for us, though that turned out to be a lot less exciting.

Having heard rumors that the X79 would include more than a dozen SATA ports, and most would be 6GB/s capable and ready to accommodate SAS drives, had us excited. Unfortunately however what we were presented with was far less exciting. The X79 failed to differentiate itself from the older Z68 chipset as users still only got six SATA ports and shockingly just two of them were 6Gb/s capable. Additionally USB 3.0 support was nowhere to be found and users received the same 14 USB 2.0 ports as on the Z68.

All in all the chipsets were near enough to identical, which was very disappointing for Intel’s new flagship platform. If you compared the features of the X79 to the older X58/ICH10R chipset combination, it was hard to believe after 3 years so little had changed. Essentially users got two extra USB ports, two extra PCIe x1 lanes and a pair of SATA 6Gb/s ports, though the overall amount of SATA ports remained the same when compared to the X58.

However some X79 motherboards did include the rumored SAS ports, namely those from ECS, and on launch day we found this very confusing. On one hand we had Intel telling us the X79 chipset only supports 6 SATA ports with no SAS support, and on the other ECS were claiming that their ECS X79R-AX used the X79’s SAS support.

With the ECS X79R-AX sitting in front of me there was no evidence of a third party controller which could be responsible for these extra SATA 3Gb/s ports. ECS went on to say that Intel had removed (or merely hidden, as it seems) the X79's six extra SATA/SAS ports. Therefore it appeared that the Taiwanese motherboard manufacturer had managed to successfully enable them using some kind of hack.

So in short then, the X79 chipset supports SAS but Intel decided to remove it at a software level and instead made it an exclusive feature of the more expensive C606/608 server orientated chipsets. With ECS appearing to be the only motherboard manufacturer ballsy enough to re-enable SAS support, no other X79 board would feature more than six SATA ports without a third party controller.

That was until Gigabyte decided to take a different approach by adopting the C606 chipset in favor of the X79, creating the first certified LGA2011 motherboard to include the C606 chipset at X79 pricing. At $330 the X79S-UP5-WiFi supports a staggering 14 SATA ports matching the far more expensive Asrock X79 Extreme11 ($600) which we reviewed recently. The X79S-UP5-WiFi is also the cheapest C606 motherboard money can buy!

The X79S-UP5-WiFi has extensive multi-GPU support, including 3-way SLI and 3-way CrossfireX. There are four PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, though only three of them are really usable. The second and third slots are placed adjacent to each other, making the third slot too cramped for dual-slot cards. With three cards, the board provides full x16 bandwidth to the primary and secondary GPUs, while the third is limited to x8.

The board packs eight DIMM slots for a max memory configuration of 64GB. The board supports memory frequencies of 1866, 1600, 1333 and 1066MHz, while 2133MHz is possible via overclocking.

Gigabyte has network connectivity well covered with dual Gigabit Ethernet ports as well as a wireless solution. The wired jacks are powered by Realtek 8111F and Intel W82579LM controllers, both of which are 802.3az Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) rated.

Also included is a Bluetooth 4.0/WiFi expansion card that is designed to slot into a PCI Express x1 slot. Known as the GC-WB300D this dual band WiFi expansion card sells for $30 on its own and supports useful features such as Smart Ready technology. The expansion card features a Mini PCIe port which is loaded with an Atheros AR5B22 card, which is essentially the heart and soul of this product.

Like almost every X79 based motherboard we've seen to date the X79S-UP5-WiFi also gets its audio support from the 8-channel Realtek ALC898 codec which touts jack detection, multi-streaming, front panel jack-retasking, absolute pitch 192kHz/ 24-bit true BD lossless sound, Blu-ray audio layer content protection, DTS Ultra PC II and DTS Connect.

As noted, the C606 chipset just like the X79 doesn't carry USB 3.0 support, but Gigabyte has rectified the situation providing the X79S-UP5-WiFi with half a dozen USB 3.0 ports. There are four USB 3.0 ports on the motherboards I/O panel which are provided by the VIA VL800 controller while another two can be installed via an onboard header which is powered by the Fresco FL1009 chip.

Along with the VL800 another VIA chip has been included on the X79S-UP5-WiFi. The VIA VT6308 chip has been used to provide a pair of IEEE1394a ports (One port on the back panel and one port available through the internal IEEE 1394a header).

Of course the key strength of the X79S-UP5-WiFi is its storage capabilities which unlike most X79 motherboards rely almost entirely on the chipset, which in this case is the C606. There are the standard two SATA 6Gb/s ports along with the four SATA 3Gb/s ports.

However there are also eight more SAS 3Gb/s ports which support RAID0, RAID1 and RAID10. It should be pointed out that the SAS SATA ports do not support optical devices. So in total there are fourteen onboard SATA ports, the same number as the mighty Asrock X79 Extreme11.

Like the Asrock X79 Extreme11 there are also two eSATA ports on the boards I/O panel and these are powered by the Marvell 88SE9172 chip. The great thing about these ports is that they support SATA 6Gb/s, making them ideal for high-speed external storage devices.

However there are a few larger boards, such as the massive Extended ATX (EATX) boards which measure 305 × 330mm. Then there are a few XL-ATX boards measuring 345 x 262mm and finally two SSI CEB boards which are 305 × 267mm in size, and one of them happens to be the recently reviewed Asrock X79 Extreme11 while another is the new Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi.

The SSI CEB form factor was designed by the Server System Infrastructure (SSI) forum and derived from the larger SSI EEB form factor. The good news is that SSI CEB motherboards have the same mounting holes and the same IO connector area as ATX motherboards, meaning the X79S-UP5-WiFi is fully compatible with ATX computer cases.

Gigabyte has made the most of the extra room by employing their new 3D Power technology. 3D Power is an all new hardware and software-based Digital Power Engine for both the PWM and memory that delivers extraordinary power delivery control.

This new power delivery system utilizes a brand new digital PWM controller which features precise Auto Voltage Compensation to deliver a steady flow of power to the CPU and memory no matter the loading. This means that Gigabyte is the first in the industry to utilize digital memory controllers for not only the memory, but VTT and VSA, for real-time monitoring and adjusting.

The digital memory control allows users to monitor and record DDR power and current in real-time while gaming, overclocking or at idle. Users can also set OVP (Over Voltage Protection) to safeguard their memory, adjust memory Load-line Calibration to fix memory vdrooping for a quicker response time and adjust memory PWM frequency on-the-fly.

Cooling the power phase along with the C606 chip is an elaborate system of heatsinks and heatpipes. The C606 chip itself is cooled using a massive heatsink which is passively cooled. This is important as most users shy away from actively cooled motherboards and this was something we disliked about the Asrock X79 Extreme11.

When it comes to aesthetics, the X79S-UP5-WiFi is a seriously impressive looking motherboard that wears the UD5 theme proudly. The distinctive black, gray and blue color scheme helps make this motherboard very aggressive and stylish at the same time.

Complementing the boards striking good looks are a number of excellent design features such as the 3D BIOS, UEFI DualBIOS, Clear CMOS Button, On/Off Charge and a large onboard power button.

The boards I/O panel features five USB 2.0 ports along with four USB 3.0 ports. There is also a single Firewire port, two eSATA ports, two Ethernet ports, a single PS/2 port, CMOS reset switch + DualBIOS switch, S/PDIF connector and five 3.5mm audio jacks.

Above is an example of how the 3D menu works. We selected the System Tuning aspect of the board which includes the DIMM slots and CPU socket.

Here's the M.I.T. section of the BIOS that lets you change frequency settings as well as memory and voltage settings. It's also possible to monitor the system health.

Above is the M.I.T. system status information, which gives detailed readouts concerning processor and memory specifications.

Within the M.I.T. section is the Advanced Memory Settings sub-menu for loading X.M.P profiles or manually configuring memory.

The last M.I.T. menu we're looking at houses the 3D Power Control options for adjusting the PWM Phase Control as well as other voltage-related options.

Hardware - Intel Core i7 3960X (3.30GHz) - x4 4GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-14900 (CAS 8-9-8-24) - Kingston HyperX 240GB (SATA 6Gb/s) - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 SOC (1.5GB) - Gigabyte X79S-UP5 WiFi (Intel C606) - Asrock Extreme4 (Intel X79) - Asrock Extreme11 (Intel X79) - Asrock Fatal1ty X79 Champion (Intel X79) - Asus P9X79 Deluxe (Intel X79) - Intel DX79SI (Intel X79) Software - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (64-bit) - Nvidia Forceware 301.42

Hardware - Intel Core i7 3770K (3.50GHz) - Intel Core i7 2600K (3.40GHz) - x2 4GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-14900 (CAS 8-9-8-24) - Kingston HyperX 240GB (SATA 6Gb/s) - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 SOC (1.5GB) - Asrock Z77 Extreme9 (Intel Z77) Software - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (64-bit) - Nvidia Forceware 301.42

Hardware - AMD FX-8150 (3.6GHz) - x2 4GB G.Skill DDR3 PC3-14900 (CAS 8-9-8-24) - Kingston HyperX 240GB (SATA 6Gb/s) - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 580 SOC (1.5GB) - Asus Crosshair IV Extreme (AMD 890FX) Software - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (64-bit) - Nvidia Forceware 301.42

The memory bandwidth performance of the Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi was strong, delivering the kind of performance we have come to expect from the LGA2011 platform. The X79S-UP5-WiFi provided our strongest read performance, though it was a fraction slower than some of the other X79 boards when measuring write performance.

The L2 cache performance of the Core i7-3960X processor reached its full potential when using the Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi providing similar performance to that of the Asrock Fatal1ty X79 Champion.

The SPECviewperf v11 SolidWorks test shows that the Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi performs much like any other X79 motherboard out there.

Again the SPECviewperf v11 benchmark shows almost no difference in performance between the various LGA2011 motherboards. That said the Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi ended up in the middle of the pack just 0.08fps behind the leaders. It is interesting to note that in this test the Core i7-3770K processor was much faster than the Core i7-3960X.

When measuring the CPU performance in CINEBENCH R11.5 we found that although the Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi recorded the lowest score it was still just 0.07pts behind the leader which in this case was the Intel DX79SI.

The Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi performed well in our Excel 2010 benchmark taking just 3.67 seconds to complete the workload when coupled with the Core i7-3960X processor. This made it one of the faster LGA2011 boards tested and much faster than the Core i7-3770K and AMD FX-8150 processors.

Here in our custom WinRAR compression test we see that there is no difference in performance between any of the LGA2011 boards, they all completed the 700MB test in 93 seconds and the 400MB test in 20 seconds.

The Photoshop CS5 test saw most of the LGA2011 motherboards complete the workload in 16.5 seconds while the Asus P9X79 Deluxe was slightly faster taking 16.3 seconds and the Asrock X79 Extreme4 slower taking 16.8 seconds.

The Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi scored 19308pts in the Fritz Chess 13 benchmark which was slightly less than what the Asus P9X79 Deluxe managed, of course we are talking 2pts here which is a rather insignificant margin.

The Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi averaged 157.2fps in the HandBrake test and in comparison every X79 board tested also managed to deliver 157fps.

When testing with the x264 HD Benchmark the Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi delivered 174.5fps in the first pass test making it one of the faster boards tested. In the second pass test the X79S-UP5-WiFi managed 54.5fps and all X79 boards delivered 54fps.

The last encoding benchmark is TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress and here the Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi provided our best result beating the Asus P9X79 Deluxe by 1 second, taking a total of 5 minutes and 31 seconds to complete the workload.

As was the case with the other benchmarks we again find that the motherboard has little impact on performance. When it comes to gaming the primary component here which dictates performance is the GPU followed by the CPU. As a result the Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi performed much like the other LGA2011 boards tested.

Unfortunately we were unable match this overclock with the X79S-UP5-WiFi as we were limited to a 46x clock multiplier for a clock speed of 4.60GHz. Although this is still a decent air-cooled overclock with the Core i7-3960X, we couldn’t help but be disappointed that the X79S-UP5-WiFi was unable to match the Fatal1ty X79 Champion.

Of course our overclocking results do not reflect how all Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi motherboards will behave and this is also not to say that it does not overclock as well as the Fatal1ty X79 Champion, this was simply the case with the two boards we had on hand.

The Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi consumed very little power at idle, much less than most of the high-end X79 boards we have tested which was surprising. The only other board to consume less than 100 watts at idle was the Intel DX79SI, though this board included very few third-party controllers.

The load consumption was also quite low at 276 watts, though not nearly as low as the 223 watts of the Intel DX79SI. Still when compared to the Asus and Asrock boards that were all around the 290 – 300 watt mark the X79S-UP5-WiFi did appear much more efficient.

In many ways the X79S-UP5-WiFi and X79 Extreme11 are very much alike, and then in other ways not so much. Although they appear quite similar on paper, featuring the same amount of SATA ports, same amount of USB 3.0 ports, same eSATA configuration and same Firewire support, the way the employ many of these features is quite different.

By using the C606 chipset the X79S-UP5-WiFi features eight SAS SATA 3Gb/s ports whereas the X79 Extreme11 uses a third party controller to deliver its extra eight ports. That said, the LSI SAS2308 PCIe 3.0 controller used by Asrock is a better solution in our opinion as it supports 6Gb/s throughput, though it is also a more expensive option at the same time.

The Asrock X79 Extreme11 also offers better support for multi-GPU setups as it utilizes a pair of dual PLX chips for x16/16/16/16 bandwidth supporting 4-Way SLI or 4-way CrossfireX. The X79S-UP5-WiFi is limited to x16/16/8 bandwidth for 3-way SLI or 3-way CrossfireX.

When it comes to networking we prefer how Asrock went with a pair of Broadcom BCM57781 controllers making it possible to support features such as Teaming. This is not possible with the Intel/Realtek combination of the X79S-UP5-WiFi and we feel that is an unfortunate scenario for this workstation orientated motherboard.

Where the X79S-UP5-WiFi does score a few extra points is in its WiFi/Bluetooth support, though we have to admit we are not thrilled with Gigabytes implementation here. While the expansion card does provide a degree of flexibility we would have preferred these features to be integrated onboard, much like what ECS did with the X79R-AX.

Speaking of the X79R-AX, that board does include the extra SAS ports at no extra cost thanks to the ‘hack’ ECS seem to have gotten away with. At just $310 the ECS X79R-AX offers many of the features found on the Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi, but if I am honest there is no way I would take the X79R-AX over the X79S-UP5-WiFi for my system. Even if the price difference was way more than the $20 that stands between them, you simply cannot compare the two in terms of quality.

Additionally, picking between the Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi and Asrock X79 Extreme11 is also very easy, though there is no outright winner here. The right choice depends on your needs and budget as the X79 Extreme11 is a whole lot more extreme than the X79S-UP5-WiFi.

Should you want to install four graphics cards and require SATA 6Gb/s RAID support across eight drives then the Asrock X79 Extreme11 is the obvious choice, even at $600. However those seeking a more affordable high-end solution, and let’s be realistic most are only going to require 3Gb/s RAID support for eight drives while three graphics cards should have you covered, then the Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi should be the board of choice.

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The Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi really is the ultimate all-rounder, offering a wealth of features at a very reasonable price. Perhaps the only thing that could help make this motherboard more attractive is a non-WiFi edition which should cost smack bang on $300, making it one of the more affordable LGA2011 motherboards available.

That said, even as things are if I were looking at spending around $300 on a motherboard to suit a shiny new Core i7-3930K processor, the Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi would certainly be it!