Is X38 really that hot?

Well, no, surprisingly not. We checked the temperature when the system idled on the desktop, during the 2D and 3D testing expecting to see some large temperature differences as the memory controller, front side bus and PCI-Express slots loaded, yet, it sat at a rock solid 52ºC.

That's not even particularly hot, it's mildly toasty at best - the Nvidia nForce 680i SLI SPP typically sits at around 60-65ºC and we'll always remember the DFI ICFX3200T2R/G and the RD600 running at 116ºC. Or could it be just a testament to Gigabyte's heatpipe engineering?

The northbridge heatsink isn't even that big and there are just a couple of heatpipes to the PWM heatsinks so it might be a combination of both. We'll have to wait until other boards come out for a comparison.

Power Consumption

That's... that's surprisingly very low. It's currently lower than most P35 boards and the load value is (just about) the least we've tested to date. It certainly looks the the anticipations about the X38 chipset were quite unfounded. The use of Ultra Durable 2 features certainly seem to work effectively together.

Initial Thoughts

Gigabyte's GA-X38T-DQ6 is a board we've found great favour in. We've found it very hard to fault the layout if you choose a heatsink that doesn't need to be bolted to the motherboard and even as an engineering sample it's worked flawlessly throughout our testing. There has been some niggles with the Ethernet adapters but the retail boards are working as expected and should be shipping very soon.

It's been a fantastic board to work with even in this early stage, but from the looks of pre-orders, it will be expensive at around £190. Therefore only time will tell if the bundle, stability and extra features due from Intel make it worth the while. Nvidia could command a price premium on the nForce 680i SLI because it had EPP and SLI, but is CrossFire and Intel's Extreme Memory held in the same regard? At least the X38 chipset should provide a diverse range of motherboard options, unlike the nForce 680i SLI, and being an Intel chipset we'd expect it to be far more reliable as well.

The current performance isn't outstandingly ground breaking compared to a P35 board with DDR3 memory, however it is a bit faster on many accounts and the P35 boards have had mature BIOSes for a little while now. In comparison, I would expect at least a few months wait on X38 to really get the best out of it, at least before anything from Nvidia arrives in Q4.

What will be interesting in the near future is CrossFire on PCI-Express 2.0 when comparing platforms: RD790 and a Phenom X4 versus X38 and an Intel Kentsfield or Yorkfield chip.

For an enthusiast upgrade it looks like the Gigabyte GA-X38T-DQ6 has a ton of potential, and even if you go for the non-T DDR2 version it has a decent starting block to work with. We'll be interested to see if the final product maintains or exceeds the high expectations this early look at the board has set.

We'll be back with more X38 coverage later in the month.