Section IV Performance – Gaming
Gaming as a test of motherboard performance is sort of a joke these days. The big player in the gaming arena is the GPU. Everyone but a few hardcore PR teams know this. However, it is important to run at least a few (one from each current DX version) to see if there are any issues with the combination of components on a motherboard. These are items like Audio lag, memory lag and of course problems with the PCIe lanes and signal traces. If there are issues in design, drivers or BIOS then you can have odd gaming performance. So without much more preamble let’s dive into the three games we currently use; Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 for DX9 FarCry 2 for DX10 and Battlefield Bad Company 2 for DX11.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 DX9 -
As the third installment in the Modern Warfare franchise you are picking up some old roles while adding a couple of new ones as well. The game play is almost identical to what you are used to in Modern Warfare 2 as are the graphical settings. The AI is a little different thought it is still similar to the bar fight style AI we like in the Call of Duty series. For our testing we run the first mission (Black Tuesday) from start to finish.  Settings are shown below

As we have found Modern Warfare 3 is not that demanding of a game with its DX9 engine. The UD3H is able to do quite well with this game (which could be a good thing for many people). When there is an add-in GPU thrown into the mix things get even better.

FarCry2 DX10 -
Although not one of my favorite games this tedious game does have some good graphics. The large sandbox style of the game lends to mission based play. The only problem is that the AI is rather low grade. Still the more CPU power the more the bad guys try to do. Over all the game was a little bit of a disappointment to play, but still not a bad DX10 representation. Our testing run starts right after you get your first mission to clean out the safe-house and ends after the hostage rescue. Settings and performance numbers are shown below.

There is really not much to say here. The iGPU is not meant for hardcore gaming and the DX10 engine used in FaryCry 2 is simply too much for the Z77X-UD3H when that is all you have to drive the display. When you have a real GPU in the system things turn around and the gaming performance is much better.

Crysis 2 DX11 –
Another sequel Crysis 2 follows up on two other Crysis games (making the title a little misleading). You take the role of a Force Recon Marine who is given a battle suit by a character named Profit (you will remember him from the other two Crysis games). From there you run around an Infected and Invaded New York City trying to survive and, of course, save the planet. For our testing we ran through the first “mission”. Settings are shown below.

In our time playing Crysis 2 we found that the UD3H does very well playing this game while overclocked. It is not all that great at stock speeds though. Granted all of the boards we tested would work well for gaming… as long as you have the right combination of parts in the system.

Gaming wrap-up -
Overall the gaming performance on the Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H is what we would expect from a motherboard it its price range. You are going to get solid performance as long as you have the proper components in the system. Of course you can do some mainstream gaming if you want to use the iGPU that comes in either a Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge based CPU, but you are not going to be able to play the more modern (and demanding) games. The audio was solid, but again not award winning, but it will do for many games.