GIGABYTE Z68X-UD7-B3 Motherboard Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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GIGABYTE Z68X-UD7-B3 Motherboard Review - The Z68X-UD7-B3 is GIGABYTE's latest release supporting LGA1155 processors and new Z68 Intel Express Chipset. This motherboard looks to be gunning for a top spot with is mix of performance and features. Is the UD7 worth your hard earned dollars?
 
A total failure if/when Quick Synk is on the short list of desirable features.
I would recommend people that want to do video editing/reformatting to look elsewhere for a motherboard.
 
Is that 4-pin IEEE1394? Didn't see that on desktop board yet.

Thanks for review.
 
Seems to be a decent board, I decided to go with the Asus version the Maximus IV Z as it comes with dual intel lan...
 
A total failure if/when Quick Synk is on the short list of desirable features.
I would recommend people that want to do video editing/reformatting to look elsewhere for a motherboard.
As of early this year there were exactly two apps that even took advantage of Quick Sync. Has this expanded enough for people to care about it yet?
 
Thanks for the review! i just picked up a UD4 and 2500k...gonna see how your settings work out for me! Crazy Sale for $114 after rebate...not all the bells and whistles of the UD7 though...hopefully similar clocks though! First Gigabyte board build, only issue i heard of was a boot-loop issue when getting into the higher clocks. Did you guys run into anything like this while testing?

No quicksync, but whatever...doesnt break the deal for me
 
"1.475V CPU voltage"

Holy cow! Is that a normal voltage for a SB oc?
 
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There is no such thing as plain packaging when it comes to motherboards. They all look hideous and appear to be required to put every logo of every tech company in the world all over the box. Pretty soon you wont even be able to tell who the maker is because of the requried logos.
 
This is the same motherboard for Maximum PC's Dream Machine 2011. You can read all about the awesomeness in the current issue.

So there is no question that it ROCKS!!!!!
 
Thanks for the review! i just picked up a UD4 and 2500k...gonna see how your settings work out for me! Crazy Sale for $114 after rebate...not all the bells and whistles of the UD7 though...hopefully similar clocks though! First Gigabyte board build, only issue i heard of was a boot-loop issue when getting into the higher clocks. Did you guys run into anything like this while testing?

No quicksync, but whatever...doesnt break the deal for me

UD4 works fine..
 
I have this motherboard so I was really excited to see this review and hoping to get some pointers. This is the first Gigabyte board I have ever purchased as my own system. I have always used Asus and before that Abit. Those boards have always been great to me, but this one has been nothing but trouble.

I havent been able to get the system to power up my logitech 510 keyboard before windows comes up, so getting into the BIOS has been hard. I have to plug in an old Dell keyboard that I found in the trash at work, none of the ones I have at home worked. Gigabyte sent me a BIOS that was supposed to fix that issue, but when I updated that bios, the 5VDC went away from every USB port. Lucky, all the default options brought me back to the original bios. That was scary.

I saw the voltage on your core was 1,5 vdc, is that correct? Mine defaults to 1.0 and since I got the board none of the hardware monitoring has ever read correctly.

The SATA ports always revert to 3gb/sec for my Corsair force GT, so I have issues there also.

IDK, I got an RMA from Gigabyte. They seem to think I got a bad board so I am going to get that off to them and hope that a new one will be more like the one you guys reviewed.

So thanks very much for the review and if anyone has any experience with this board, let me know how you all fared.

Thanks,
Mike
 
I really wish we'd see the death of legacy PCI slots. Gimme some regular PCIe slots. The last PCI device I had went at a garage sale for $5 over a year ago.

I tried two Gigabyte boards. They were both nothing but trouble. Serious problems with +5vsb and resuming from S3. Flaky behavior with even the most modest of overclocks. The model number scheme is a mess, finding just which flavor of which board you have to update to the bios of the week was annoying.

And the post above regarding keyboard issue: had those on both Gigabyte boards.

It shows a general lack of attention to detail IMHO. Their hardware looks cool, but I don't trust them.
 
I've had no problems with my GA-Z68XP-UD4. Maybe you're just a bad apple ianken. :p
 
I bought a Gigabyte Z68X-UD5-B3 but kept having problems with it boot looping and then would have to unplug the power supply to get it to stop and it even corrupted the BIOS during one of its episodes and had to flash itself to the backup so I traded up and have a new Maximus IV Extreme-Z that was delivered today. I wanted a board with the UEFI BIOS anyways.
 
I've had no problems with my GA-Z68XP-UD4. Maybe you're just a bad apple ianken. :p

I also have had very few problems with my UD4, after upgrading to F6 bios...but I do empathise with those who don't - Asus are a lot less problematic IMHO but always have to pay a premium for that...

PS - I found reseting the bios to default/safe, like after a bios upgrade, cured my own issues - sleep now works, no more looping - which happened a bit, memory settings now stay as set which didn't happen before...very stable now...:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
 
Why on the testing for a mobo, are you comparing the performance with differently clocked CPU speeds on various boards ??

That really doesn't tell anyone anything as a diff cpu speed will make any comparison irrelevant,

Why even bother showing other mobo's in a chart at all, if not tested same speed to get a real world comparison from in the 1st place.
 
Why on the testing for a mobo, are you comparing the performance with differently clocked CPU speeds on various boards ??

That really doesn't tell anyone anything as a diff cpu speed will make any comparison irrelevant,

Why even bother showing other mobo's in a chart at all, if not tested same speed to get a real world comparison from in the 1st place.

Honestly, it doesn't make any difference. All boards using the same CPU will perform within a 1-3% variance of each other. With the memory controller and more and more of the I/O being moved into the CPU die, and in this case all the chipsets being virtually identical, there is no difference going from one board model to the next, or one board brand to another. An ASUS P8P67 Deluxe performs the same as a Gigabyte P67A-UD7 when using the same CPU. Those boards perform the same as any other P67 chipset based board using the same CPU, memory, and GPU.

What separates a board from another are quality of components and integrated features. That's it. Even the crappiest of boards will perform the same as the better ones. Albeit for a shorter period of time in most cases.
 
Yes, the days where you could compare chipsets, are gone - nothing to compare...Nvidia has a presence but only through the NF200 to provide extra
e-peni/bandwidth:confused::confused: PCI-e lanes with a slight time penalty:rolleyes::rolleyes: otherwise yeh, all 1155 boards, using 2600K are predictably similar and highlighting clockspeed shows little apart from odd or bad performers...
 
So you guys both agree that this is an awesome board, which passed all of the tests etc, and yet silver award? :confused:
 
Yes, the days where you could compare chipsets, are gone - nothing to compare...Nvidia has a presence but only through the NF200 to provide extra
e-peni/bandwidth:confused::confused: PCI-e lanes with a slight time penalty:rolleyes::rolleyes: otherwise yeh, all 1155 boards, using 2600K are predictably similar and highlighting clockspeed shows little apart from odd or bad performers...

The nForce 200 MCP doesn't even change that much either. You'll see slightly less performance in a few tests, but the difference is only one to three FPS at most. All the nForce 200 MCP is good for is getting past the two device limit the CPU's PCIe controller has. It can also ensure dynamic lane allocation so that other switching systems aren't necessary, but those advantages are minimal to non-existent in many cases.
 
I really wish we'd see the death of legacy PCI slots. ...
In what way does the "legacy" slots differ from the ones in frequent use?

I must say that at work we even have a hard time finding a mobo that support our contemporary EISA card. (Used with some medical device.)
 
the only thing that destroys that card for me is that stupid huge dissipator that kills that X1 PCI-E
 
The nForce 200 MCP doesn't even change that much either. You'll see slightly less performance in a few tests, but the difference is only one to three FPS at most. All the nForce 200 MCP is good for is getting past the two device limit the CPU's PCIe controller has. It can also ensure dynamic lane allocation so that other switching systems aren't necessary, but those advantages are minimal to non-existent in many cases.

yes, the 'time penalty' bit was my way of saying 'You'll see slightly less performance in a few tests' - speaking of lanes and allocation, when I checked CPU-z on Friday it was showing my UD4 as running @x8 link speed, max supported as x16. Since the performance of the 2600k was still so good, I figured it was a cpu-z error. However, after updating to bios F8, cpu-z reads both link and supported as x16...have you noticed any funny stuff like this with the UD-7 and is there an f8 bios for that board too?? Anyway, bios f8 seemed to have fixed that in UD4 but now getting turbo working is even more a pain...

PS - must admit, i bought this board BECAUSE it had 2 PCI slots and I needed them for a PCI tv tuna and a PCI x-fi card with bay. Soundcard is still in it's old box as the sound on this mobo, especially with dobly digital live working is quite good for music, games work well too. HD TV tuna works v nice..
 
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could i expect the same performance from the UD5 board over the UD7,minus the better power system in the UD7, would the UD5 take a i5 2600k pretty far?
 
could i expect the same performance from the UD5 board over the UD7,minus the better power system in the UD7, would the UD5 take a i5 2600k pretty far?

Probably. Any P67 or Z68 board I've seen from ASUS, Gigabyte or MSI can hit 4.7GHz+ easily with a Core i5 2500K or i7 2600K.
 
Love the maximus iv extreme-z.

I had thought of this board, But settled on the asus.

I wish the 8pin connector on the maximus was alittle lower down from the top edge though.
 
I plan on geting this and a 2600k and 3 gtx 470 on the first 3 slots. I might add a fourth for physx. I will add x-fi on last slot
 
could i expect the same performance from the UD5 board over the UD7,minus the better power system in the UD7, would the UD5 take a i5 2600k pretty far?

Yea, other then better BIOS support, and better vdroop/LLC levels i would think.
 
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