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FRONTPAGE EVGA X79 Dark Motherboard Review

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Excellent review - actually made me want to go out and get one. Does look good too - even the BIOS screenshots. Too bad about the fan controls - Maybe EVGA is thinking that people will be using hardware fan controllers?

The price seems about right too. Mircocenter even has it $380.00 when bundled.
 
There is an item I completely forgot to mention in the review. It probably won't affect many of the people reading our site, but it is an important omission by EVGA none-the-less.

At bone stock, this board is not capable of running the Intel specified turbo multipliers on a per-core basis. When you leave everything at auto, with C-state reporting, EIST and Turbo all enabled, the Dark will stick you with a 37x multiplier, or 3700 MHz, on all cores. It doesn't boost to 38x, 39x or 40x for more lightly threaded loads. Thus, your single threaded performance from a completely stock perspective is going to take a 300 MHz hit.

Most people won't buy a $400 motherboard & $600 CPU to leave it at stock, but it's a definite deficiency that EVGA hasn't been able to fix this issue with multiple BIOS releases so far. The BIOS stability from an overclocker's perspective is so much better than it used to be I just forgot about this problem.

Thus, if you're buying an Ivy Bridge-E platform and are concerned about stock turbo operation, you probably want to look for a different board than the X79 Dark at this juncture. Hopefully they'll introduce proper stock operation later. Then again, if you're going to operate at bone stock, why on earth are you looking at spending a minimum $1,000 on an enthusiast platform to begin with?

HUGE thanks to Ian Cutress over at Anandtech for pointing this error out. If he hadn't asked about it, I never would have remembered I had this problem testing at stock. Kudos for the backup!

EDIT - I'm told this will be fixed in the next BIOS release. I'll be sure to test it out and report back. :thup:

UPDATE 10/5/2013

I'm happy to report the new BIOS fixes the stock turbo issue, so that's all set. :thup:

The beta is uploaded to our servers and you can download it here. Remember, it's a BETA and you use it at your own risk.
 
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Good review. I am curious to know if you will keep this or your rive, though.
 
Both. RIVE is my 24/7 machine. This one I'm using with the 4960X to temp test a water loop, then whenever time allows to torture it under cold. :)
 
Have you tested the RIVE and Dark head to head with Ivy-E? I'd like to see same Ivy-E chips tested on both boards to compare max clocks on air/water to see if the Dark's BIOS has matured enough yet to give it an edge or if it holds back the chip.

Also, I'd like to see power consumption tested between the two boards under load when overclocked to 4.5-4.6Ghz. This review here showed a 36w difference at stock load in favor of the Dark, as much as the difference between SB-E and Ivy-E chips:

http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?page=7&itemid=622
 
Sorry, the RIVE is in my 24/7 machine and isn't easily interchangeable, so I haven't been able to test them against each other (nor do I want to update to an IVB-E BIOS since it runs the 3960X). However, fear not - I am working diligently to ensure we get a Rampage IV Black when they launch and we'll definitely have head-to-head testing. We don't typically do power consumption tests for motherboards, but I'll try to remember to run that in addition to the benchmarking gamut. :thup:
 
<3 my EVGA board.

Can you name which boards have been buggy? Why EVGA has to fix it's "image?"
 
Several of them, but there were a lot of complaints about the X79 Classified - so much so EVGA offered to 'upgrade' people to the Dark for a fee.

The Z77 Stinger I have still won't run memory north of 2133 and it's pulling teeth to get it to even run that. There has been exactly one BIOS update since its review published (despite assurances to the contrary, which is why I gave it a pass, being told it would be resolved) that didn't do a thing for it.

The P55 FTW was also pretty well known for killing CPUs, anecdotally speaking.
 
Z77 FTW still has the USB3 port dropping issue and no update, of the few released since, has helped.
 
Be sure to let us know what you think DevilDog!

CORRECTION

I had to correct the Probeit diagram and have done so. Since this board has multiple VDIMM voltages, things were switched around a bit. Here is the corrected diagram, which has also been fixed in the review:

x79dark-probeit-diagram-correct.jpg
 
FYI, I was just emailed a fixed BIOS that's supposed to have stock operation working as it should. I'll update after I get the chance to test, hopefully this week.
 
Can we get some performance numbers for the marvell sata6 ports vs the intel built in?
 
Regrettably, every SSD I own has an OS on it so I can't test except with old platter drives, which wouldn't do much.
 
Well, got to play with it a bit today. Good to see EVGA is heading back in the right direction. The one thing that I do see and they have been able to replicate is that XMP is borked. Can't run anthing so far when an XMP profile is selected. Not a biggie for me as I like to set mine manually.

I'm liking the 4820k as well. The force seems strong with this one. I'll have more time this weekend to play with it and will update.

Let is know how that bios turns out Hokie.
 
I'm happy to report the new BIOS fixes the stock turbo issue, so that's all set. :thup:

The beta is uploaded to our servers and you can download it here. Remember, it's a BETA and you use it at your own risk.
 
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