Intel Z77 Panther Point Chipset and Motherboard Preview – ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, ECS and Biostar
by Ian Cutress on April 8, 2012 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- Biostar
- MSI
- Gigabyte
- ASRock
- Asus
- Ivy Bridge
- ECS
- Z77
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H WiFi—Visual Inspection
Black and blue seems to be the order of the day when it comes to mainstream boards, as indicated by some of the previous boards but also with the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H WiFi. Perhaps there is a sale on black PCBs and blue heatsinks?
Joking aside, Gigabyte intends to release two high- end boards initially—the Z77X-UD5H and the Z77X-UD3H, both in regular and WiFi variants. The WiFi variant comes with a PCIe x1 WiFi card to be used in the first PCIe slot on the board, and aerials for the outside of the case.
We have the Z77X-UD3H WiFi in to review for the launch of Ivy Bridge, which should retail for around $160 MSRP. Gigabyte has chosen a few different directions regarding which controllers are on the motherboard. This should provide interesting results when it comes to performance.
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The VRM power delivery weighs in at 6 + 4 phase, which is by no means substantial (remember the ASRock Z77 Extreme4 was 8 + 4 and less expensive), and comes paired with a relatively small blue heatsink next to the socket. I’ve noticed that Gigabyte tend to have their memory closer to the socket than most other manufacturers, presumably in the name of performance due to shorter interconnects, but the downside is that it can restrict big air coolers. Nonetheless, it all still conforms to Intel specifications, and there is actually a large gap to the south of the socket.
In terms of fan headers, there are only two within reach of the socket. We have a 4-pin CPU header at the top near the memory slots, and another near the power/reset/ClearCMOS buttons at the top right of the board. The other three headers on board are found at the bottom—one 4-pin beside the SATA ports, one 4-pin next to the USB headers and another 4-pin beside the TPM.
Along the right hand side of the motherboard, Gigabyte has given us a different style of power/reset/clear CMOS button that I have not seen before. The power button is big and red, whereas the other two are relatively small. These will be of use to reviewers and overclockers, however having the ClearCMOS the same size and shape as the reset button may lead to several bad fumblings for the right button followed by several four-letter expletives.
Further down is another style choice—an additional power connector for the PCIe and system, but this case it is a SATA power connector. I prefer this to the awkward molex connectors we see on other products. Below this are the standard six SATA ports from the PCH—two SATA 6 Gbps and four SATA 3 Gbps. Below this is the handy two-digit debug display.
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Along the bottom of the board, from left to right, we have the front panel audio, SPDIF header, a 4-pin fan header, the TPM header, three USB 2.0 headers, and another fan header. At the top of the PCIe is our mSATA connection, useful for mSATA SSDs and boot drives to save case space. In terms of PCIe, Gigabyte has installed a little nugget of common sense, giving enough space between the first two full-length PCIe for GPUs. However, in the x1, x16 (x8 in multi-GPU), x1, x1, x8, PCI, x4 setup, only the first two full length PCIe are for graphics output—the final one is a PCIe 2.0 x4 connector. This would be better served if it were a slightly different color to the other PCIe x16/x8 connectors. Also with two full length GPUs on board, the user will have access to two PCIe x1 connectors but the PCI connector is blocked.
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I know Gigabyte will make a few people jump with joy in relation to the back panel layout—no USB 2.0! From left to right, we have a PS/2 combination port, two USB 3.0, D-Sub, DVI-D, an Optical SPDIF output, HDMI, DisplayPort, two more USB 3.0, two eSATA, gigabit Ethernet, a final two USB 3.0, and audio outputs.
Board Features
| Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H Wifi | |
| Size | ATX |
| CPU Interface | LGA-1155 |
| Chipset | Intel Z77 |
| Power Delivery | 6 + 4 |
| Memory Slots |
Four DDR3 DIMM slots supporting up to 32 GB Up to Dual Channel, 1066-1600 MHz |
| Video Outputs | DisplayPort, HDMI, DVI-D, D-Sub |
| Onboard LAN | Atheros |
| Onboard Audio | Via VT2021 |
| Expansion Slots |
2 x PCIe x16 Gen3 (x16, x8/8) 1 x PCIe x16 Gen2 (x4) 3 x PCIe x1 Gen2 1 x PCI |
| Onboard SATA/RAID |
2 x SATA 6 Gbps (PCH), Support for RAID 0, 1, 5, 10 4 x SATA 3 Gbps (PCH) 1 x mSATA connector (shared with SATA2_5) 2 x eSATA 6Gbps (Marvell 9172), RAID 0, 1 |
| USB |
Six USB 3.0 at rear (2 PCH, 4 VIA VL800) One USB 3.0 header on board Three USB 2.0 headers on board |
| Onboard |
4 x SATA 3 Gbps 2 x SATA 6 Gbps 1 x mSATA Connector 5 x Fan Headers 1 x USB 3.0 Header 3 x USB 2.0 Headers 1 x Front Panel Header 1 x Clear CMOS Button 1 x TPM Header 1 x SPDIF Output 1 x SATA Power Connector |
| Power Connectors |
1 x 24-pin ATX connector 1 x 8-pin 12V connector 1 x SATA Power connector |
| Fan Headers |
1 x CPU Fan Header (4-pin) 4 x CHA Fan Headers (4-pin) |
| IO Panel |
1 x Gigabit Ethernet Audio Outputs 1 x DVI-D 1 x D-Sub 1 x DisplayPort 1 x HDMI 2 x eSATA 6 Gbps 1 x Combo PS/2 Port 6 x USB 3.0 1 x Optical SPDIF Output |
| Warranty Period | 3 Years |
| Product Page | Link |
One of the odd choices of Gigabyte is their network and audio controllers. On near every board I have reviewed, we get either a Realtek, an Intel or a Broadcom for the network, and a Realtek or Creative audio solution. Gigabyte has decided to jump in with an Atheros network controller, and a Via VT2021 audio. It will be interesting to see if this has an effect on our test capabilities.
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extide - Tuesday, April 10, 2012 - link
Do you even know what it means to preempt a frame? Cavalcade is describing the technology correctly. He is explaining pretty much the same thing as you are but you just don't get it..Also separate input and rendering modules means a lot. Typically a game engine will have a big loop that will check input, draw the frame, and restart (amongst other things of course) but to split that into two independent loops is what he is talking about.
Iketh - Wednesday, April 11, 2012 - link
You really should look up "preemption." This is not what is happening... CLOSE, but not quite. Preemption is not the right word at all. This makes him incorrect and I kindly tried explaining. You are incorrect in backing him up and then accusing me of being inept. Guess what that makes you?On top of that, he's also not talking about splitting input and rendering into two loops. Not even close. How did you come up with this idea? He's asking how the input polling is affected with this technology. It is not, and can not, unless polling is strictly tied to framerate.
I want to be clear that I'm not for this technology. I think it won't offer any tangible benefits, especially if you're already over 100 fps, and they want to power up a second GPU in the process... I'm just trying to help explain how it's supposed to work.
Iketh - Sunday, April 8, 2012 - link
"handling input in a game engine" means nothing here. What matters is when your input is reflected in a rendered image and displayed on your monitor. That involves the entire package. Lucid basically prevents GPUs from rendering an image that won't get displayed in its entirety, allowing the GPU to begin work on the next image, effectively narrowing the gap from your input to the screen.Iketh - Sunday, April 8, 2012 - link
mistake post, sorryRyan Smith - Sunday, April 8, 2012 - link
The bug comment is in regards to HyperFormance. Virtual V-Sync is rather simple (it's just more buffers) and should not introduce rendering errors.Ryan Smith - Sunday, April 8, 2012 - link
Virtual V-Sync is totally a glorified triple buffering, however this is a good thing.http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/video/triplebu...
Triple buffering as we know it - with 2 back buffers and the ability to disregard a buffer if it's too old - doesn't exist in most DirectX games and can't be forced by the video card. Triple buffering as implemented for most DirectX games is a 3 buffer queue, which means every frame drawn is shown, and the 3rd buffer adds another frame of input lag.
On paper (note: I have yet to test this), Virtual V-Sync should behave exactly like triple buffering. The iGPU back buffer allows Lucid to accept a newer frame regardless of whether the existing frame has been used or not, as opposed to operating as a queue. This has the same outcome as triple buffering, primarily that the GPU never goes idle due to full buffers and there isn't an additional frame of input lag.
The overhead of course remains to be seen. Lucid seems confident, but this is what benchmarking is for. But should it work, I'd be more than happy to see the return of traditional triple buffering.
HyperFormance is another matter of course. Frame rendering time prediction is very hard. The potential for reduced input lag is clear, but this is something that we need to test.
DanNeely - Monday, April 9, 2012 - link
Lucid was very confident in their Hydra solution; but it never performed even close to SLI/xFire; and after much initial hype being echoed by the tech press it just disappeared. I'll believe they have something working well when I see it; but not before.JNo - Monday, April 9, 2012 - link
Thisvailr - Sunday, April 8, 2012 - link
Page 8 quote: "The VRM power delivery weighs in at 6 + 4 phase, which is by no means substantial (remember the ASRock Z77 Extreme4 was 8 + 4 and less expensive)."Yet: the "Conclusions" chart (page 14) shows the same board having 10 + 4 power.
Which is correct?
flensr - Sunday, April 8, 2012 - link
I'm bummed that ASUS didn't include mSATA connectors. Small mSATA SSDs would make for great cache or boot drives with no installation hassles and they're pretty cheap and available at the low capacities you'd want for a cache drive. That's a feature I will be looking for with my next mobo purchase.Ditching USB 2.0 is also one of the next steps I'll be looking for. Not having to spend a second thinking about which port to plug something in to will be nice once USB 2.0 is finally laid to rest. Having only 4 USB 3.0 ports is stupidly low this long after the release of the standard, and it's hampering the development of USB 3.0 devices.
Finally, I've been repeatedly impressed by my Intel NICs over the last decade. They simply perform faster and more reliably than the other chips. I look for an Intel NIC when I shop for mobos.