With the apparent delay of Intel Ivy Bridge and of course the Z77 chipset that goes with it) we there is going to be a continued demand for the X79 chipset and the pretty much every flavor of the LGA2011 CPU. To be honest I think that even after Ivy Bridge there will be a demand as the replacement for the LGA 2011 CPUs will not hit the market until around Q4 2012 or even later. So with that in mind we are taking a look at what at first glance appears to be a low cost X79 motherboard from Gigabyte. However, once you take a look at it you just might begin to see the serious overclocking and GPU benchmarking potential that it has. Let’s take a look at the Quad-SLI/Crossfire capable X79-UD3 from Gigabyte.
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 -Quad-SLI/CrossfireAs bad as it sounds this is really the one feature that distinguishes the X79-UD3 from other motherboards in its class. This is not to say there are not other features that will make you want to pick up a Gigabyte products, but if you are looking at those the chances are that you are already interested in getting a Gigabyte board and the price of the UD3 is what pulled you in (along with the Quad-SLI/Crossfire).In the middle (sort of good) -110db AudioeSATA 3.0 6BG/sOnce again the list here is short, but both of these could sway a purchaser from another product if they were comparing featuresFloor Mats -2 Oz Copper333 Technology3D Power3D BIOSNow this list might seem a little strange especially with the 3D BIOS and 3D Power listed. However, it is important to note that these features are going to be on any motherboard from Gigabyte in the UD series. They are important if you are comparing Gigabyte to another manufacturer as they are distinguishing features that set Gigabyte as a whole apart, but they are an expected feature once you are inside the Gigabyte brand.Conclusion – So far the X79-UD3 looks to be an inexpensive product aimed at the lower end of the Core i7 Sandy Bridge E crowd. However there are certain things that really make us think that there is more to this motherboard that you might think. The fact that it is setup for quad-SLI and CrossfireX is an indication that you can load this board up and get good performance. The same can be said for the limit of four RAM slots. Believe it or not this can simplify the trace layout on the board and also make it easier to tune the BIOS not to mention keeping the power flowing cleanly. We are expecting some solid performance from this board once we get it up on the test bench. We will let you know exactly how that goes very soon. For now take a look at our video of the Gigabyte X79-UD3. Discuss this in our Forum
