Board Software

The first included piece of software we are going to look at is aptly named "Dynamic Energy Saver", or D.E.S. for short. As we mentioned earlier, this is the software interface for the VRM phase controller, and it allows for several different settings that should meet the needs for every situation. You can separate the "Dual Engines", or join them together so they work as one, and with the software running, you can see them dynamically turn on and off based on how much load the CPU is under. The ability to separate each "engine" allows for just one active phase when the system is idle, enabling maximum power savings, and the options aren't just for show either... our inline CPU 8-pin meter proved to show the differences between the several modes available. We did notice, however, that while full load numbers matched what our meter's display showed, under idle we noticed some discrepancies between the real-world and software-reported figures, that we were left without any explanation for. This may lead to false reporting of power saved at idle, but because the difference was only a watt or so, this is a very minor issue, to say the least.


Second up is EasyTune6, a software interface for real-time clock changes and system monitoring. We were left a bit nonplussed by the functionality of EasyTune6, as actual settings that we could adjust were few, and the QuickBoost page actually seems to offer more with automatic settings than there is for manual settings in EasyTune6. We also found there to be a significant time delay between the changes in voltage and frequency and the actual reporting, so while this tool may be useful to some users, we much prefer to tweak from within the BIOS.


The last tool, interestingly enough, is called Smart6, which merely provides an interface to launch six different included utilities. Gigabyte seems to have covered every angle from the software side of things, and admittedly, alot of the software, D.E.S. and EasyTune6 included, seems very limited, and in such a way that we were left wondering why there was so many different tools rather than one big one that ties them all together. Yet, as we mentioned earlier, the BIOS is so fully featured that none of this is any real concern, but it's definitely an area we would like to see change in the future, to offer a bit more for the end user. And with that said, let's put this board through the paces, and see just how fast this stealthy racer really is.