Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H Review: Functionality meets Competitive Pricing
by Ian Cutress on July 25, 2012 5:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Gigabyte
- Z77
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly donating hardware for our test bed:
OCZ for donating the Power Supply and USB testing SSD
Micron for donating our SATA testing SSD
G.Skill for donating our memory kits
ASUS for donating AMD GPUs and some IO Testing kit
ECS for donating NVIDIA GPUs
Test Setup
| Processor |
Intel Core i7-3770K ES 4 Cores, 8 Threads, 3.5 GHz (3.9 GHz Turbo) |
| Motherboards |
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 ASRock Z77 Extreme6 ASRock Fatal1ty Z77 Professional ASUS P8Z77-V Pro ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe Biostar TZ77XE4 Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H Gigabyte GA-Z77MX-UD3H MSI Z77A-GD65 Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H |
| Cooling | Intel All-in-One Liquid Cooler |
| Power Supply | OCZ 1250W Gold ZX Series |
| Memory |
GSkill RipjawsZ 4x4 GB DDR3-2400 9-11-11 Kit GSkill TridentX 2x4 GB DDR3-2666 11-13-13 Kit |
| Memory Settings | XMP (2400 9-11-11) |
| Video Cards |
ASUS HD7970 3GB ECS GTX 580 1536MB |
| Video Drivers |
Catalyst 12.3 NVIDIA Drivers 296.10 WHQL |
| Hard Drive | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed - CoolerMaster Lab V1.0 |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit |
| SATA Testing | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| USB 2/3 Testing | OCZ Vertex 3 240GB with SATA->USB Adaptor |
Power Consumption
Power consumption was tested on the system as a whole with a wall meter connected to the OCZ 1250W power supply, while in a dual 7970 GPU configuration. This power supply is Gold rated, and as I am in the UK on a 230-240 V supply, leads to ~75% efficiency > 50W, and 90%+ efficiency at 250W, which is suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading. This method of power reading allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency. These are the real world values that consumers may expect from a typical system (minus the monitor) using this motherboard.
Power consumption for the Z77X-UD5H was low at idle compared to the majority of the motherboards we have tested with, but draws the most power under OCCT and Metro 2033 (though not by much).
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Dustin Sklavos - Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - link
Derp. Well, color me stupid.Nice one, though. ;)
Belard - Thursday, July 26, 2012 - link
Okay, you are stupid.Well, for another reason. Nobody makes a keyboard worthwhile to replace the one I use today... 1996 era. This keyboard *IS SO OLD*, its not even a PS/2! Its an AT-connector, plugged into a PS/2 3" Adapter into an extended PS/2 cable. A USB convert doesn't work.
But gigabyte makes many boards with ps/2 ports.
VGA is not needed on a high end board (lower end $60~120 boards have VGA).
And actually, a floppy connector *IS NOT* needed of modern boards. When a modern board like Gigabyte doesn't include a floppy connector, they can update the BIOS from within the OS or with a flash drive.... far easier than a stupid old-school floppy drive (I keep one just in case).
DigitalFreak - Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - link
Did you test the VIA USB 3 chip performance, or only the Intel PCH controller?Mustang66 - Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - link
Are the two red USB ports on the back 2.0 or 3.0? The paragraph says they're 3.0 but the feature list seems to infer they are 2.0.IanCutress - Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - link
Sorry, the red ones are USB 2.0. USB 3.0 on every manufacturer is currently blue (for now).Ian
cameleon - Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - link
No Dual link DVI Port on HD4000, so I can't run my old 30" display without dedicated card.Craxit - Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - link
Display-Port to DVI-D cable?Same prob here.
PolarisOrbit - Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - link
So Gigabyte finally dropped VIA as the onboard audio provider on their motherboards. About time- I almost swore off Gigabyte because I had so much trouble with that driver!rickon66 - Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - link
I have this board and really like it. The board package includes a front panel USB 3 bracket so you can add USB3 to the front of your case. I thought that was a very nice addition. The board is built so stoutly that it could double as body armor.Craxit - Wednesday, July 25, 2012 - link
Has anybody found out how to switch on the boardby keyboard?
Can do wakeup from sleep using the kbd but not a cold start.