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. The Gigabyte X79-UP4 is not a board that really has a ton of obvious features. That does not mean it is without features, it is just that most of the things that will make the X79-UP4 attractive are going to be inside. So let’s take a look at the features that make the X79-UP4 a solid board.

Excellent -
Quad-SLI/Crossfire support
PCIe Gen 3.0 Support (with the right CPU)
Gigabyte 3D Power
Gigabyte Ultra Durable 5 (IR3550)

These items do make the X79-UP4 stand out from the crowd in that these help make the board good at what it was built for.

In the middle (sort of good) -
On/Off Charge
Dual 3D Bios
8-RAM Slots

Floor Mats -
USB 3.0
SATA 3.0
eSATA

Conclusion –
So far we are liking what we see in the Gigabyte X79-UP4. We still need to see how well it performs with both the 3960 and 4960, but if the design and component choices are any indication we should see a solid performer. There are still some items that we wonder about though; considering the amount of power the board is going to draw for PCIe 3.0 cards why did Gigabyte go with only one extra 8-pin power connector for the memory and CPU? Will this be a problem when we try to push the CPU and memory faster? Well that is something that we are going to have to find out in part two of this review.

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