Gigabyte Z77-HD4 Review
by Ian Cutress on May 19, 2013 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Gigabyte
- Z77
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our test bed:
Thank you to OCZ for providing us with 1250W Gold Power Supplies.
Thank you to G.Skill for providing us with the memory kits.
Thank you to ASUS for providing us with the AMD GPUs and some IO Testing kit.
Thank you to ECS for providing us with the NVIDIA GPUs.
Thank you to Corsair for providing us with the Corsair H80i CLC.
Thank you to Rosewill for providing us with the 500W Platinum Power Supply for mITX testing, BlackHawk Ultra, and 1600W Hercules PSU for extreme dual CPU + quad GPU testing, and RK-9100 keyboards.
Test Setup
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.
While this method for power measurement may not be ideal, and you feel these numbers are not representative due to the high wattage power supply being used (we use the same PSU to remain consistent over a series of reviews, and the fact that some boards on our test bed get tested with three or four high powered GPUs), the important point to take away is the relationship between the numbers. These boards are all under the same conditions, and thus the differences between them should be easy to spot.
For a low cost motherboard with few features, we would expect it to have a lower power consumption than that of a mid-range Z77 motherboard. The truth of the matter is that as a board is more expensive, especially at the high end, component efficiency is a factor in the overall board cost. As a result, the Z77-HD4 does well at idle and CPU load, but breaks over 500 W in Metro2033.
POST Time
Different motherboards have different POST sequences before an operating system is initialized. A lot of this is dependent on the board itself, and POST boot time is determined by the controllers on board (and the sequence of how those extras are organized). As part of our testing, we are now going to look at the POST Boot Time - this is the time from pressing the ON button on the computer to when Windows starts loading. (We discount Windows loading as it is highly variable given Windows specific features.) These results are subject to human error, so please allow +/- 1 second in these results.
With fewer controllers, a cheaper motherboard would be expected to POST quicker than a more indepth motherboard. But it would seem that the cheaper motherboards also have less time spent optimising the POST sequence. As a result, the default boot time with two GPUs is north of 18 seconds. The fact that the second GPU had to be in an x4 slot via the PCH may also be a factor in this.
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Grok42 - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
I am extremely proud of the Anandtech readers that commented here. I typed out what would have been the first post on this review and at the last minute canceled it. I thought it too harsh and possibly wasn't fair to post it on a specific review when in fact it was about the editorial leaning of Anandtech as a whole.Go read the About page and you'll see this site is dedicated to reviewing computers, phones and components from consumer to enterprise. However, as of late it seems that all the reviews on the consumer side are completely bent toward some stereo-typical gamer building water cooled overclocked triple GPU gaming rigs. While nothing wrong with these types of builds and they are fun to read and think about, there has to be some respect for those that want other builds. I just spent $1500 building a mITX gaming and workstation rig with a core i7 3770. It has a $300 GPU, $300 CPU, $350 SSD, $120 case and a $80 MB running a stock Intel cooler. I couldn't be happier and NEVER intend to overclock it. As strange as my choices are, I bet I'm closer to 90% of the readership than a $600-$900 dual or triple GPU and $200 MB rig that seems to be implied as required equipment around here.
The worst of it is that there is a huge movement to smaller, cooler and quieter rigs that doesn't seem to have a voice on the inside at Anandtech. A full ATX tower running 3 GPUs and 5 HDDs is no longer the sought after box for a growing base of enthusiasts. The small cool looking mITX that can also play games is what's hot.
jabber - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
Yes indeed, also quite a few of us here are over the age of 30 so a lot of the toys and whistles and flashing lights don't really appeal so much.We prefer durability, stability and value for money more.
I think a lot of the high-end manufacturers have forgotten that a lot of their consumer base has got a lot older. Buying boxes with dragons and wonderwomen on them doesn't have quite the appeal it might have 15 years ago.
Razorbak86 - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
LOL. Age doesn't have a thing to do with it. Money often does though. Remember, this site is oriented towards enthusiasts first. So don't hate because others like more expensive components than you can afford.kmmatney - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
It not about being able to afford the high end stuff - but why pay %100 more for maybe a 10% gain in performance. I like to see all the reviews - high and and low end, so this review was great. At the end of the day, the parts I buy will be whatever gives the best bang-for-buck, at the performance level (and noise level) I can accept. I don't hate the reviews of high end parts, but I want reviews like this to balance things out.Wall Street - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
It isn't even for a 10% gain in performance. I, and a many users like me, are not going to use more than one SSD, aren't going to use more than one GPU, aren't going to use more than a couple of USB 3.0 ports (I don't own a single USB 3.0 device), won't overvolt/aggressively overclock and I even use the digital audio out on top of that (although the analog audio on this board is very disappointing).In that case, $120 boards like this are nearly identical in performance to one of the top end offerings. I think that, in thinking this is a low end offering, Ian misses where the sweat spot of the market is entirely. $120 motherboards are solidly midrange. You can get a low-end motherboard for less than $70 on Newegg. Compared to what Dell uses in its desktops, this board is feature packed!
jabber - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
It does actually. When you get a bit older you find out.Enjoy your youth while you have it!
jabber - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
Oh and the PC enthusiast market is slowly diminishing. Sites like this need to diversify to appeal to types that don't think the peak of a good day is spent running Prime95 on a new PC for 24 hours.Rob94hawk - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
Anyone want to explain to me why they're still putting USB 2.0 and SATA 3Gb/s when everything's backwards compatible?lever_age - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
Every SATA 6 Gb/s and USB 3.0 port is handled by the Z77 chipset on that board. Actually, all the SATA 3 Gb/s and USB 2.0 are as well.If you want more of the faster SATA and USB, you need to pay for extra 3rd-party controller chips, which increases board costs. It's a legitimate form of product differentiation to leave those out on the cheaper products. But supposedly 8-series chipsets with Haswell (or at least most of them?) will support six SATA 6 Gb/s and six USB 3.0 natively.
jabber - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
I find USB3 still isn't quite a solid in terms of "it just works" like USB2 does. I think the USB3 chipsets still haven't got bedded down in the OS as solidly as USB2.Give it another year or two and it should be...I hope.