Thermal shots
Applied stand-by power. System not working.
Starting system at 5.15GHz 1.5Vcore in BIOS. There is little choke temperature gradient.
Same USB 3.0 heat generated even in stand-by.
CPU auxilary power convertor run at about +50°C
ITE PCI hub comforts at 50-55 C
Main VRM chokes topped at +45°C during tests.
Back side of PCB is more interesting.
Top row of DMOS was about +5-7 °C warmer than left side.
Looks like current not balanced equally, but can be also just less copper on plane in that area.
Left DMOS chips.
Max temperature registered for bottom non-cooled DMOS-es was about +55-57°C
Actual phase PWM1 captured signals, Intersil output (top signal), After divider 1 stage (middle, 1/2 of clockrate, with 60ns delay, and after two divider stages (bottom signal, 1/4 frequency, 100ns delay)
So each divider adds noticeable delays to phase control signals. This mean that situation when more than one phase per moment can be firing, possibly raising noise level.
This waveform was captured using logic analyzer sampling at 250MHz rate.
Youtube demo during Gigabyte UD7 VRM testing
Tier 4 : Extreme test
I didn't managed yet to gain any overclock increase with phase-change unit, with CPU evaporator temperature in range -40 to -20°C. But running Sandy on subzero allows overclockers to have sucessful benchmarking on heavyload tests, like Vantage CPU, 3D11, wPrime, etc. Most SB chips able to run 5.5+GHz SPI on water/air are overheating easily on heavy tests, so subzero helps to keep safe temperature, allowing to run test, no matter of no much scaling of freqencies themself. This is bit different approach on new platform, if you compare to LGA1366/1155/775 OC.
Test results
UD7 F7a bios VS MIVE 0088 bios
MIVE
UD7
Same rig, same cooling, same volts, same everything except mboard.
Full specs:
i7 2600K ES D1
Scythe HDT cooler
2x2G Kingston DDR3
Single EVGA GeForce GTX 285 2GB with ASUS cooler and EVGA Untouchable for Vmem.
Enermax Revolution 1250+
Same Windows XP 32bit for both tests.
Lod 1.9 for all tests except nature, 4.9 for nature.
I forgot to enable HT but it should be not an influence so much.
3DMARK03 (MIVE, 2600K D1 ES, 5167MHz air, EVGA GTX 285 2GB, 2x2G Kingston DDR3, Enermax 1250W)
3DMARK03 (UD7, 2600K D1 ES, 5167MHz air, EVGA GTX 285 2GB, 2x2G Kingston DDR3, Enermax 1250W)
Multi-GPU scaling on MIVE
3DMARK03 (MIVE, 2600K D2, 5518Hz LS, 2x2G Kingston DDR3, Enermax 1250W)
Single 8800GTX - 45686
Two 8800GTX SLI thru NF200 - 67908
Two 8800GTX SLI by native SB lane split x8+x8 - 68582
So if you run 2-way it's wise to try avoiding NF200 bridge to reduce latency and have little better performance. All three tests with MIVE, coz UD7 don't allow have NF200 away if I recall correct
Aquamark comparsion
Aqua (MIVE, 2600K D1 ES, 5167MHz air, EVGA 285 GTX 2GB, 2x2G DDR3, Enermax 1250W)
362226, MIVE
LOD 4.9
362629, UD7
LOD 4.9
Aquamark perf is about the same, in range of accuracy tolerance.
3-way 8800GTX on UD7 with Vantage
I tried to make 3-way SLI with 8800GTX on MIVE, but no luck. It was enabling only 2-way between 1st and 2nd card, or between 1st and 3rd card. :(
Btw, was discovered my old Cinebench 2003 tests from 2005 year "w00t"
Compare the evolution
From celeron 326 up to 2600K
Conclusion
ASUS ROG board and Gigabyte UD7 for Sandy Bridge processors marketed at same level as current flagship motherboard, but in real battle for benchmarks and usability ASUS solution looks like quite ahead. To be honest, I'm not an ASUS fan, but this time their solution works better for me
. Both boards are working perfect for 24/7 use, and allowed me to reach exact top level from my single D1 ES 2600K sample, but Maximus made that easier. ASUS board have bit less performance for 3Dmark01 on XP32, but eventually this issue will be sorted out, it's not limited to ASUS only as I know. UD7 in other way scales with memory overclock less than ASUS solutions. So with these new boards experience and skill of overclocker is still a must, as was always.
Actual practial comparsion of both boards in VRM performance side allow to see, that boards run similar, UD7 have overvolts more with similar LLC settings, have more noise on plane, but VRM runs cooler in general. ASUS board run have better voltage precision, much more VRM adjustable settings thru BIOS, wider voltage range. bit warmer.
I could not see any practical sense to make 24-phase VRM for LGA1155 platform. Yes, it sounds cool, but it's not the key necessary for overclocker (and never was). What is essential for overclockers - is ability to control everything, solid and stable overclocking software, useful and clear BIOS settings, and minimum of issues. Good 6/8-phase design still able to deliver necessary power, and practice shows that even Intel DP67BG is able to make 5.5GHz Sandy Bridge happiness, not matter of it's "weak" VRM.
We should wait for new revisions of Sandy Bridge boards to make final statement, but even current models able to reach much more than 5000MHz using just normal air cooler, without any subzero madness, which is just cool. I'm sure about new world records using Sandy Bridge platform, just after people learn new platform a bit.
Credits:
* cyclone for hardware and support
* Peter for great support and cooperation
* k|ngp|n for doing amazing things constantly 
* And many many others who put effort to OC :\:\:\:\:\
Stay tuned, keep following. TiN
