Final thoughts and rating
Wrapping it up, XFX's X58 board is a somewhat hit-and-miss affair when compared to the crème de la crème that the X58 chipset offers.The good centres around the price, at £200, making it one of the cheaper X58s around, yet still very expensive for a motherboard. Default- and over-clocked performance is also pretty hot, matching a Foxconn Bloodrage's, and you should be able to hit around 200MHz BCLK with a bit more attention paid to voltages. Six DIMM slots, three-card graphics setup, a reasonable bundle, and the X-Profile 'CPU-upgrade' options are nice, too.
However, the overall layout could do with a tweak, moving the 8-pin power-connector across, and the BIOS, whilst decent in isolation, falls short of the voluminous settings offered by the likes of Gigabyte and Foxconn, especially with respect to out-of-the-box memory support. XFX, it appears, doesn't have the BIOS expertise developed by the larger manufacturers, and it shows.
Thinking about where XFX is aiming this board, at the consumer who wants Core i7 goodness for as little money as possible, the X58 XT isn't bad. Just a touch rough around the edges compared to some of the established competition, it still is stable and good enough to be put on a shortlist of ~£200 X58 boards.
Bottom line: a reference-like X58 that does most things competently, XFX's effort is squarely positioned on price. Drop the £200 etail by around £25 and it'll worthy of very serious consideration.
HEXUS Rating
HEXUS.net scores products out of 100%, taking into account technology, implementation, stability, performance, value, customer care and desirability. A score for an average-rated product is a meaningful ‘50%’, and not ‘90%’, which is common practice for a great many other publications.We consider any product score above '50%' as a safe buy. The higher the score, the higher the recommendation from HEXUS to buy. Simple, straightforward buying advice.
XFX X58 XT (MB-X58i-CH19)
HEXUS Where2Buy
The XFX X58 XT (MB-X58i-CH19) is currently available for £210.65 from Scan.co.uk.As always, UK-based HEXUS.community discussion forum members will benefit from the SCAN2HEXUS Free Shipping initiative, which will save you a further few pounds plus also top-notch, priority customer service and technical support backed up by the SCANcare@HEXUS forum.
The board is also available from Dabs.co.uk for £197.51, or £203.07 including delivery.
