Layout

At a first glance the Gigabyte X99 Ultra Gaming leaves a very good impression, thanks to it's design. The manufacturer decided to go for a combination of black, white, red and silver, which suites nicely and in the end you get an aesthetic looking product. The layout itself is well thought and there is for example plenty of space around the CPU socket to install large CPU coolers. The fact that there are SATA connectors which have been angled by 90 degrees allows for an easy installation of oversized graphics cards. Especially the metal frames around the PCIe as well as DIMM slots are eye-catchers and apart form that there is even extensive RGB lighting.

Gigabyte equips their X99 Ultra Gaming with a digital 8 phase power design for the CPU. Each phase received a separate power stage as well as Coiltronics inductors from Copper Bussman. Usually these inductors are only used on server motherboards. Apart from that there are polymer capacitors from Nippon Chemi Con specified at 10’000 operating hours. The PWM controller is from International Rectifier and goes by the name IR3580. In the case of the Power Stages there are IR3556’s and according to the datasheet they are capable 50A maximum current. As usual on X99 motherboards there are two times four DIMM slots, while four are on one and four on the other side of the CPU socket. The power design regarding the two groups is identical. Therefore there are two IR3570 PWM controllers, which feature 3+2 phases and they have been combined with IR3553 Power Stages offering a maximum output current of 40A.

There are eight DIMM-slots on the Gigabyte X99 Ultra Gaming. Officially supported is DDR4 with up to 3600 MHz. There is enough space between the DIMM-slots and the CPU socket which means that you won't run into any compatibility problems with large coolers even when you choose to install RAM with big heatspreaders. Also supported are Xtreme Memory Profiles (XMP) in version 2.0.


On the X99 Ultra Gaming PCH as well as current converters have been equipped with separate cooling blocks. The two heatsinks covering the power design and the PCH haven been connected by a heatpipe in order to improve heat transfer. Overall this board is heavy which allow for the conclusion that this board has been equipped will high-quality heatsinks.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 15 - UC Bench
Page 2 - Specs and Delivery	Page 16 - Super Pi 1M / 32M
Page 3 - Features	Page 17 - wPrime 1024M Multi Core
Page 4 - Layout	Page 18 - Cinebench
Page 5 - Connectors and I/O	Page 19 - Tomb Raider
Page 6 - BIOS	Page 20 - Metro Last Light
Page 7 - Test setup	Page 21 - Thief
Page 8 - Preview / Gallery	Page 22 - Right Mark Audio Analyzer
Page 9 - 3DMark	Page 23 - BCLK Overclocking
Page 10 - 3DMark 11	Page 24 - Power Consumption
Page 11 - 3DMark Vantage	Page 25 - Performance Rating
Page 12 - PC Mark 8	Page 26 - Price Comparison
Page 13 - SiSoft Sandra 1	Page 27 - Conclusion
Page 14 - SiSoft Sandra 2