GIGABYTE Z87X-UD4H LGA 1150 Motherboard Review @ [H]

GIGABYTE Z87X-UD4H LGA 1150 Motherboard Review - The GIGABYTE Z87X-UD4H looks to be a solid bargain and a good value for the money. While this motherboard looks great on paper the devil is in the details and all it takes is one or two quirks to knock a product out of the running in a market literally filled with excellent motherboards. So how did the Z87X-UD4H fare?

Great review, as always! I think Dan is absolutely right about "Unfortunately the devil is in the details and I think GIGABYTE needs to work on some of those smaller issues.".

After using Asus exclusively (almost exclusively) for many years, I find that while Gigabyte build good boards, they are just short of great.

Their software as improved a lot, but still falls short of what ASUS if offering with AI Suite III. Their UEFI BIOS as also improved a lot but still has a few annoying issues (screen capture crashes, mouse issues when a game controller/joystick is installed, the fact that you have to go into the old BIOS to configure certain items like the onboard NIC).

Still, once everything is setup properly, it runs perfectly fine and they are pretty responsive when you report an issue or need support.

ASUS software, while better than the rest, is still not great. It lacks a certain polish. It cannot access all functionality it needs in non-admin mode. Many of the APIs it uses can only be called in admin mode. Instead of detecting this and returning a reasonable error or disabling those areas of the UI it just crashes. God forbid a second non-admin user logs onto your machine they are treated with a spew of multiple error dialogs.

Thank you very much for the review of this Motherboard (as well as the Z87X-UD3H).

If you'd ever get around to reviewing the Z87X-OC, I'd be very curious to read about your experience with it.


Regards,

Nice review!

I didn't see any mention of testing the board in the incubator for a couple days like you guys usually do. Are you no longer using the incubator on mobos or did I just miss it? That was always my favorite part of the reviews. Any board that could come out the other end of that test unscathed is one hell of a well built motherboard.

Nice review, but I'm kind of confused on the LAN tests. Are those good scores?

Rather good review.

Hit most of the points where the board fails except.... full ram population. Fill all the ram slots and see how your OC goes

My Samsung memory (4x4GB 1600 low profile) that was stable at 1600 7-8-8-22 1T @ 1.45v on a AMD 960T/ Asus M5A97 Evo will not even post on my GA-Z87X-UD4H F7 Bios. Overclocking the memory and stock CPU has even been a PITA. Even 2133 11-11-11-30 @ 2T 1.52v has been troublesome.

I have read others having issues populating all slots over at overclock.net

On the same note when the system failed to post with those 1600 7-8-8 it went crazy power cycling a few times and then flashed the Bios back to the original F3 version that shipped with the board but then did boot up afterwards. After that I slide the 2nd switch to Single Bios mode. I thought Dual Bios was for failed Bios Upgrade, not failed settings LOL.

Edit, Thinking about this board some more. I also have random BSOD's and I mean random with stock CPU. Also weird random issue with computer staying asleep. Been using Fresh install of Win8 x64 Pro. I'm figuring bad board or setting I haven't found.

I did all my OCing with all RAM slots filled as pointed out on the test spec page.

Good review. I had a similarly easy experience with my UD4H. Maybe it seems that way coming from a Z87 Asrock Extreme 6 that was difficult yet lacking in detailed options and had a dead pci-e slot. My system would BSOD alot with that board. I noticed a big jump in stability. I can also max out at 4,7ghz with 1.305v since my ram is running at 2400mhz.

What's up with the low LAN scores in recent reviews? Do you guys plan to investigate if there is a problem with your testing method or Intel's new controler?

dgingeri said:

Nice review, but I'm kind of confused on the LAN tests. Are those good scores?

Click to expand...

The particular testing methodology seems to get low scores on all the boards we tested. I've heard that Windows 8 improves the test scores using this test by a considerable amount. I've not verified this myself. Additionally the scores shown here are consistent with similar network solutions found on other boards using this same test.

Tankerton said:

ASUS software, while better than the rest, is still not great. It lacks a certain polish. It cannot access all functionality it needs in non-admin mode. Many of the APIs it uses can only be called in admin mode. Instead of detecting this and returning a reasonable error or disabling those areas of the UI it just crashes. God forbid a second non-admin user logs onto your machine they are treated with a spew of multiple error dialogs.

Click to expand...

True but while it certainly lack polish it's more responsive than the software offered by Gigabyte and more feature rich (whether anyone use/need every features is of course debatable).

But the devil is in the details and having to switch from the (really nice) BIOS Dashboard Mode to the Old BIOS for certain adjustments (Network adapter settings and a few other settings) show a lack of polish/care. It's not even close to a deal-breaker but there is still room for improvement.

Maybe it's just me but ASUS BIOS feel more mature all around.

Meeho said:

What's up with the low LAN scores in recent reviews? Do you guys plan to investigate if there is a problem with your testing method or Intel's new controler?

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I have looked into it.

It's just how this particular test works. It' is simply not comparable to other tests we've used in the past. It is in fact the test that motherboard manufacturers recommended for us to use. Though it's recommended primarily for Windows 8.x. Evidently it produces better results. The settings used such as the test file size and packet configuration may product different results. The default settings will produce higher numbers but the test is too quick like that. It's a small read/write rather than being indicative of a file copy. Additionally the results are similar on Killer NIC E2200's and Realtek 8111GR controllers as well as Intel's i217v.