Question 1

The instructions seem to be fuzzy. If i am say populating all four of the pci-e 3.0 slots, will the top two still function at x16? It seems as though if all are populated, only one will function at x16, the rest at x8

Accepted Answer

Not entirely. There was definitely a compromise made in the manufacturer of this motherboard to keep cost down, but its not as you describe.

You have four PCI-E 3.0 slots:
16_1
08_1
16_2
08_2

Looking down on the motherboard from a bird's eye, thats also the other in which they appear from top to bottom.

16_1 runs at x16, 100% of the time
08_1 runs at x8, 100% of the time
08_2 runs at x8, 100% of the time
16_2 can only run at x8 when 08_2 is populated, otherwise it runs at x16, 100% of the time

So in theory, you can do this:

16_1, populated
08_1, populated
16_2, populated
08_2, empty

Which will give you speeds of x16, x8 and x16 for the last slot.

Makes sense?

Question 2

What BIOS version does this motherboard ship with?

Accepted Answer

My GA-X79-UD3 shipped with the F16 BIOS and I installed the Intel i7 4820 Ivy Bridge e and she started right up with no issues whatsoever.

After reading comments here I thought I had bought a board and a chip I wouldn't be able to use or return.  If the information I have given you above had been in the description it would have saved me a great deal of worry and concern.  Anyway, it's all good and it works just fine.  I really couldn't be happier.

Question 3

Can I set up multiple RAID arrays on this mobo? I want to use 4 drives in a raid 10 and 2 more in a raid 0. Is this possible? Or should I buy a cheap raid card?

Accepted Answer

I have not set up a RAID on this board.  However, I will tell you what I know from the manual.  There are two SATA controllers on this board.  The one in the Intel X79 chipset and another one on the PCIe bus that is the Marvell 88SE9172.  Both support building RAIDs.  It also seems like that the BIOS utilities for setting up the arrays on the X79 might support multiple arrays on that 1 controller.  But regardless of this it seems that since both controllerrs allow you to build at least 1 RAID volume that you should be able to do what you want with just the mobo.

Question 4

I currently am using this motherboard and was interested in upgrading memory. Would it be possible for me to use DDR4 memory with this motherboard?

Accepted Answer

No. DDR4 is not backward compatible with DDR3 slots. This motherboard has DDR3 slots.

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