All about Motherboards
 Latest Motherboards articles
All Motherboards articles

Newsletters


  • Ask your question about IT issues
  • Post

Partners

The Games selection

action : Yoyo the Star Yoyo is a young girl who recently graduated and dreams to become a movie star (don't we all). You'll have to guide her on the path to stardom,...
crazy : Xiao Xiao 7 A great fight scene from the animation movies Xiao Xiao.
Ads

Sponsored links

Gigabyte M59SLI-S5

Previous Next
7:12 AM - 09/19/2006 by Don Woligroski

Gigabyte brings a quality board to the table with three PCIe x16 graphics card sized slots.

slide show: Gigabyte M59SLI S5

Ports

For expandability, the board features three PCIe x16 slots for video accelerators. The third x16 slot actually runs at x8 speed maximum. In addition, there are two PCIe x1 slots, and two standard PCI slots. For USB and Firewire connectivity we have the four integrated USB ports, and three headers to support for six more USB ports. A single Firewire (IEEE1394) port is on the motherboard and a header for a second port is available on the board as well. Another two gigabit network ports on the panel utilize the nForce5 GbE controller. The SATA connectivity is taken care of with the nForce 590 MCP controlling six nForce ports for SATA/300 devices and a single standard UltraATA/100 connector.

Audio

The M59-SLI-S5 is the only board in the roundup to use the Realtek ALC888DD codec for 7.1-channel high definition audio. Six audio mini jacks, a single SPDIF coax and a single optical out are available for audio connectivity. Headers are available for 5x2 pin front audio, CD-in and SPDIF in and out.

Cooling

The M59SLI features some very impressive cooling. Similar to the Asus boards, a large heat pipe connects the Northbridge, Southbridge and power supply components. The number of available fan headers is typical, three in total, one of which is likely to be used with the CPU.

Bundle

The M59SLI-S5 is the only board in the roundup that did not arrive in a retail package, so we can only get an idea of the software bundle from the Gigabyte Website. The retail package should include: Easy-Tune 5 & M.I.T. (Motherboard Intelligent Tweaker), which is Gigabyte's signature CPU overclocking and voltage tweaking software, R.G.B. (Robust graphics Booter), which, I believe, is Gigabyte's graphics card overclocking software, but without trying it out I can't be certain.

Notes

It is certainly very interesting to see a board with three PCIe x16 slots. For some time now the idea of motherboards that would facilitate three graphics cards has been thrown around - two graphics cards for multi-GPU rendering and one for physics calculations. There are other uses for the third x16 port of course, but it's still nice to see the technology moving in that direction.

slide show: Gigabyte M59SLI S5

Talkback
autorotation 07/22/2009 9:59 PM
Hide
-0+

ive had a headache with this board =/ didnt do my homework and bought a phenom x4 9600 and then found out its not compatible with this board =/ i also bought a evga geforce gts 250 512 mb card and it wont post on this board and i get no display, im assuming its just not compatible because i posted it on another board with a psu that was weaker than mine and it had a display. if anyone can shed light on my situation with this video card not posting on this board, would be great. as far as recommending this board, im not even sure its still in production, but i would not reccomend it. spend the extra cash and get a board that can handle a quad core and a modern gfx card. also the cpu fan mounting bracket had one of the tabs break off on me, so i had to get a new psu fan mount, so that gives you an idea of what high quality this board is anyways =/ plus i think i heard that epox went out of business.....

Comments are closed on this page.

Sponsored links