As we continue our coverage of both Ivy Bridge and the Z77 Express chipset we now head over to Gigabyte. Gigabyte is a company that has worked very hard for the position they have in the market. They were originally a manufacturer who concentrated on compatibility and stability rather than working on pushing the envelope in terms of speed and performance. However that was a long time ago. Now they are definitely working to get the most out of each product. We have watch them develop their line up since the P55 days and know that they are more than capable of putting out a motherboard (and other products) that can satisfy your performance needs. So with that in mind let’s take a look at what Gigabyte has built into the GA-Z77X-UD3H in terms of design choices and features.
Features - In the current market motherboard (and indeed almost all component) performance is very close. The days of a large performance advantage between boards using the same chipset are long gone. That is unless someone makes a HUGE mistake (like runs traces completely wrong). Now, the thing that differentiates different products is the features. These are things like power management, extra slots, better audio CODECs etc. It is these items that R&D teams work so hard to drop into what are really identical pieces of hardware at their most basic level. Excellent - mSATA for SSD Caching PCI3 Gen 3 3D Power VirtuMVP This list, while small is still pretty nice. The option for an mSATA card on this board will attract a few enthusiasts as well as cost conscious consumers. The 3D power options are nice to make sure that you have clean and stable power to all components of your board while the PCIe Gen 3 and VirtuMVP from Lucid round out the top features. In the middle (sort of good) - ESD protection Humidity/Moisture protection High-Temp Protection Dual UEFI BIOS 3D BIOS Here the list includes a few things that will be listed as floor mats in a few months. The list of protections built into the board is nice and although not completely unique they do stand out in a crowd of boards that are very close together in terms of specification. The Dual UEFI BIOS is a nice touch and can get you back in the game fast if you mess up during an overclock or if you just want to maintain two profiles. The 3D BIOS we will cover in our performance review. Floor Mats - On/Off Charge SLI Crossfire 2 OZ Copper Here we have a partial listing of items that do differentiate Gigabyte products, but they are not enough to make you buy this board. They are also becoming extremely common between all manufacturers in one way or another.
