BIOS Setup

Gigabyte Company designed highly functional and very convenient BIOS for their LGA1366 mainboards. They usually release BIOS updates simultaneously for the entire lineup, and the BIOS of Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard is barely different from the BIOSes of Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme, GA-EX58-UD5 and GA-EX58-UD4P, which we are already very well familiar with. That is why let’s take a quick look at all the features without going too deep into details here. Just in case I would like to remind you once again that you can only get access to all BIOS settings on Gigabyte mainboards by pressing Ctrl-F1 keys in the main menu window.

The first section that we see is “MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.)”, with almost all the settings that might be of interest to enthusiasts and overclocking fans.

This section is very informative and convenient to work with, it allows adjusting most of the critical system parameters. You can fine-tune the settings by using more extensive functionality of the corresponding sub-sections:

“Advanced BIOS Features” section contains a very interesting parameter called “Backup BIOS Image to HDD”. Besides the reserve BIOS microchip, you can also save the BIOS image on your hard drive so that you could use it for system restore in case of failure, but for some reason there is no mention of this feature anywhere in the user manual. How the saving is performed, what file systems are supported, and if it is performed automatically, then where will this image be saved?

“Integrated Peripherals” section offers standard functionality for management of peripheral devices and additional controllers. Among the definite advantages we can mention “Green LAN” function that disconnects the network controller if there is no connection detected. Among the drawbacks, we should point out that USB keyboard and mouse support are disabled by default.

“PC Health Status” section has very little info on the voltages, as usual. However, Gigabyte mainboards still allow adjust the rotation speed of three-pin processor fans, which is an advantage, of course.

I would like to give Gigabyte due credit once again for giving us the opportunity to save up to eight full BIOS settings profiles. Each profile can be given its own unique name, and when you are saving a new profile over the old one you will receive a warning message. You can even say profiles on external storage devices. The system automatically saves the current settings after every successful boot-up so you can use them, too. The only problem is that all profiles will be lost once you update the BIOS.

In conclusion I would like to check out not the most functional but still very well working Q-Flash utility for BIOS updating.

Despite several small drawbacks that any mainboard out there has we can conclude that the junior member of the family - Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R mainboard – boasts all the fine tuning options necessary for system optimization and performance improvement as well as for overclocking. Let’s see how the mainboard will behave during our practical performance tests.