Choosing the Best H55/H57 Motherboard, Part 2
by Rajinder Gill on February 22, 2010 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
Gigabyte H57M-USB3
The H57M-USB3 hits the nail on the head for pricing at $120; let's take a look at the feature set.
| Gigabyte H57M-USB3 | |
| Market Segment | H55 General Use/HTPC |
| CPU Interface | LGA-1156 |
| CPU Support | LGA-1156 i3/i5/i7 Series of Processors |
| Chipset | Intel H55 Express Chipset |
| BCLK Speeds | 100-600MHz in 1MHz increments |
| DDR3 Memory Speed | 800, 1067, 1333 Frequency Ratios |
| QPI Frequency | All supported multipier ratios available |
| Core Voltage | 0.5V ~ 1.90V in 0.00625V increments |
| CPU Vdroop Compensation | AUTO, Disabled and Enabled |
| CPU Clock Multiplier | Dependant on Processor, all available multipliers supported |
| DRAM Voltage DDR3 | Auto, 1.30V ~ 2.60V in 0.02V increments (1.50V base) |
| DRAM Timing Control | tCL, tRCD, tRP, tRAS, + 10 Additional Timings |
| DRAM Command Rate | Auto, 1T, 2T and 3T |
| PCH Voltage | Auto, 0.95V ~ 1.50V in .1V ~ 0.02V increments, 1.05V Base |
| CPU VTT (Uncore) Voltage | 1.05V ~ 1.49V in 0.05V ~ 0.02V increments |
| CPU PLL Voltage | 1.6V ~ 2.54V in 0.1V ~ 0.02V increments, 1.80V Base |
| IGD VID | 0.2V~1.68V in 0.05V ~ 0.012V increments |
| Memory Slots | Four 240-pin DDR3 DIMM Slots Dual-Channel Configuration Regular Unbuffered DDR3 Memory to 16GB Total |
| Expansion Slots | 1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 Slot 1 x PCIe x16 Slot (running at x4) 2 x PCI slots |
| Onboard SATA/RAID | 5 x SATA 3.0GB/s (Support RAID 0,1,5,10, NCQ, AHCI and Hot Plug) 1 x eSATA on Rear I/O Gigabyte SATA 2 chip: 1 x IDE, 2 x SATA 3Gb/s (RAID 0, 1 and JBOD) |
| Onboard USB 2.0/3.0 | 14 USB 2.0 ports (6) I/O Panel (one SATA combo), 8 via brackets 2 x USB 3.0 Ports (NEC D720200F1) |
| Onboard LAN | 1 x Realtek 8111D Gigabit LAN (PCI-E x1) |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC889 - 7.1 Channel HD Audio (Dolby Home Theatre support). |
| Other Onboard Connectors | 1 x COM, 1 x S/PDIF In, 1 x S/PDIF Out, 1 x FP Audio, 1 x FP connector, 1 x 1394, 1 x FDD |
| Power Connectors | ATX 24-pin, 8-pin EPS 12V |
| I/O Panel | 1 x PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse 1 x RJ45 6 x USB 2.0/1.1 2 x USB 3.0 Ports (NEC D720200F1) 1 x 1394 1 x eSATA (Intel PCH) 1 x Optical Toslink 1 x DVI-D 1 x HDMI 1 x VGA/D-sub 6 Audio I/O jacks |
| Fan Headers | 1 CPU + 1 Additional Header (Both 4 Pin) |
| Fan Control | Full temp/speed fan control for CPU header via OS software No independant control for system fan header (auto controlled according to system temp) |
| Package Contents | 2 x SATA cables, 3 x User Guides, 1 x Driver/software DVD, 1 x I/O Shield |
| Board/BIOS Revisions Used | Board Rev: 1.0 BIOS Files Used: F2, F3a |
| Form Factor | uATX (9.6 in. x 9.6 in.) |
| Warranty | 3 year standard |
Before we continue, it's worth a mention that the current F4 release BIOS has an issue with our PIONEER DVD drive. The board will not boot from a CD/DVD if we select AHCI mode for the SATA ports in the BIOS. This issue was also found on the H55M-USB3 motherboard but was fixed in the F4/F5 release BIOS files at our behest. It's probably a 5 minute fix for the H57 board on Gigabyte's part, but it should have been patched without request when the red flag was raised on the H55 model. In its current state, this makes installing an OS with AHCI mode active a pain. We managed to work around the problem by selecting IDE mode for our Windows 7 install and then modifying the registry after installation to enable AHCI drivers—something most users won't want to do. Gigabyte need to fix this fast.
Package contents, bundled software and board layout are identical to Gigabyte's H55M-USB3; the only real change here is the H57 chipset adding RAID support and bolstering the lowest PEG slot to x4 link width. We'll cover the differences on this page but refer you back to the H55M-USB3 section for software, board layout and BIOS overview.
Overclocking
4GB overclocking results are identical to Gigabyte's H55M-USB3 model:
8GB configurations don't fare as well however and seem to fall around 148BCLK for stability when using the 2:10 memory ratio with a QPI link frequency in the region of 3.3GHz. We're not sure on the root cause of this, but suffice it to say that the BIOS needs some work for 8GB memory configurations using the 2:10 divider. Gigabyte's H55M-USB board takes the same modules to 155BClk (DDR3-1550MHz), while ASUS' H55/H57 EVO models manage DDR3-1600 speeds using a higher QPI ratio.
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jackylman - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
First, thank you for the detailed information on fan control. I've made a few comments about that in the past and it's nice to see that category now seems to be part of a standard Atech mobo review.I'm not in the market for a Clarkdale platform, but if I was, this article would be very useful.
Shadowmaster625 - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
A lot of people are talking about new motherboards being released before they are ready. And for good reason. Why bother? Why not go and buy a well known and well established motherboard like the GIGABYTE GA-G31M-ES2L for $45 and drop in a E5200 and a quiet GT 220 or 5450? Overclock it to a modest 3 GHz and it will surely smoke this H55/H57 garbage in all the gaming benchmarks, for a LOT cheaper.I do not understand the value in this entire product line. Why do you not compare these with the option I just mentioned? I dont care about how intel wastes their monopoly advantage. If hardware from a year ago is cheaper and better than this crap they are shoveling out now, then it is your responsibility to tell us that.
TrackSmart - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 - link
Point taken, but as readers, isn't it great that we don't have to buy all the newest, most expensive hardware to find out how it runs? And the problems with it? We can just read articles like this one.The Anandtech folks *do* write articles showing budget parts that offer exceptional value (via overclocking or unlocking cores). This just isn't one of those articles.
Rajinder Gill - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
Hi,I think the E5300 was benchmarked against Clarkdale here in our chipset/CPU launch articles.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...">http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...
regards
Raja
Taft12 - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
Interestingly, a tasty OC on an E5300 will push the benches up towards the E8600 in those charts, that is to say, faster than Clarkdale.OK, so an E5300 won't get quite THAT far, but it shows you that Clarkdale is marginally better than Wolfdale at best and not at all worth the price.
lukeevanssi - Saturday, June 26, 2010 - link
if anybody want to know more about it so plz visit this link:-http://www.healthproductreviewers.com/force-factor...
there is a lot off knowledge about this product
TrackSmart - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
Thank you for pushing Gigabyte on the AHCI issue! Can you ask them about their 790-series boards, too? I'm frustrated with the lack of AHCI support on my new GA-790-XTA-UD4 motherboard. There's a 30-45 second delay in initializing SATA hard disks when returning from sleep mode. This causes Windows 7 to blue screen. The only fix is to revert to IDE mode for all drives. I wasted 2 days trouble-shooting this only to find out its an unaddressed problem with AHCI support on this motherboard (and many others).Lukas - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
This may not be the solution you're looking for, but it fixes the bluescreen at least:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977178/#top">http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977178/#top
TrackSmart - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
Thank you for the tip. I tried the hotfix.It's funny because the hotfix definitely prevents total operating system failure (i.e. BSOD). However, Windows takes up to a full minute to become responsive when resuming from sleep mode. Presumably the OS is waiting as long as it needs to for the SATA boot drive to become responsive again.
I will continue running in Native IDE mode for now, since losing 1% system performance is less irritating than waiting forever for my system to become responsive.
*** It would be nice if AMD or Gigabyte addressed the true problem, but I won't hold my breath. I still haven't heard back from their customer support about this problem and it's been a few days. Not even a "we'll get back to you soon" message. Nada.
Taft12 - Monday, February 22, 2010 - link
Great article Raja, I also appreciate the detail of the good and bad!I have a question for you or anyone else who might know - you mentioned ASUS dropping the MSRP of their H55 board at the start of the article... Where can I look up what the different vendors MSRP's are? Intel and AMD have made it quite easy to find out the 1K unit price of their CPUs on their own sites, but I haven't seen anything similar for motherboard vendors. Is there an authoritative, frequently-updated source?