Gigabyte X870E Aorus Xtreme X3D AI Top motherboard review: The latest and greatest Xtreme

Firmware

Gigabyte’s updated “UC BIOS 2.0” starts in Easy Mode, is laid out logically, and displays a wealth of information about the system, including processor, RAM, fan speeds, and several selectable options, such as XMP profiles, RAM tweaks, Re-Size BAR support, Smart Fan 6 access, and more. The Aorus Xtreme X3D AI Top uses a black background with light-blue accents and white writing, providing a high-contrast screen that’s easy to read. The background is similar to the Aorus Stealth, but with a mountain lit up by the moon instead of the Aorus branding.

All headings are still displayed across the top in advanced mode; they are now larger ‘buttons’ and can be easily selected with a mouse. The highlight bar (where you are on the page) is a light blue here and easy to see. Every option you need and want is at your fingertips, and you don’t have to drill down several layers to reach the most commonly used functions – especially if you populate your selections in the Favorites section.

Another feature is that the new 64MB BIOS includes a “DriverBIOS” function that preinstalls your Wi-Fi driver, so you can get online easily when you first boot. It’s a beneficial feature for Windows 11 25H2 users who need an internet connection to use their Microsoft account to install the OS.

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Software

Gigabyte Control Center (GCC) is a one-stop solution for controlling various functions, including RGB and Fan control, hardware monitoring, and overclocking. It’s also helpful in finding, downloading, and installing driver updates for your system. It’s a simple application that does its job. It’s also a much cleaner tool than the previous App Center. It earns our approval for the breadth of functionality it offers users.

If you’re into local AI development, Gigabyte’s AI Top utility is a specialized, no-code software platform that enables users to train, fine-tune, and run AI models directly on their desktops without programming expertise. It leverages system memory and SSDs, making it ideal (according to Gigabyte) for running large language models (LLMs/LMMs with 685B parameters) and Stable Diffusion locally. It’s a unique piece of software to include with motherboards and is useful if you want to play around with your own local AI.

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Test System / Comparison Products

We’ve updated our test system to Windows 11 (23H2) 64-bit OS with all updates applied as of late September 2024 (this includes the Branch Prediction Optimizations for AMD). Hardware-wise, we’ve updated the RAM kits (matching our Intel test system), cooling, storage, and video card. Unless otherwise noted, we use the latest publicly available non-beta motherboard BIOS. The hardware we used is as follows:

TEST SYSTEM COMPONENTS

• CPU - AMD Ryzen 9 9900X
• Cooling - Arctic Liquid Freezer II 420
• Storage - Crucial 2TB T705 M.2 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD
• RAM - Kingston Fury Beast DDR5-6000 CL36 (KF560C36BBEAK2-32)
• RAM - Teamgroup T-Froce Delta DDR5-7200 CL34 (FF3D518G7200HC34ABK)
• RAM - Klevv Cras XR5 RGB DDR5-8000 (KD5AGUA80-80R380S)
• GPU - Asus TUF RTX 4080 16G
• PSU - EVGA Supernova 850W P6
• Windows 11 64-bit (24H2)
• NVIDIA Driver 561.09

Benchmark Settings

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