H67 – A Triumvirate of Tantalizing Technology
by Ian Cutress on March 27, 2011 6:25 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Sandy Bridge
- H67
Overview
The Gigabyte H67MA-UD2H is technically one of sixteen (!) H67 products that Gigabyte have listed on their website. Due to the issue regarding Intel and the chipset recall, Gigabyte have re-released all their boards with the new B3 stepping, and modified their name to match. So the H67MA-UD2H we are testing here is the equivalent of the H67MA-UD2H-B3, but in reality they are the same motherboard, and perform the same, apart from the minor chipset error changed. We expect the UD2H-B3 version to retail at the same as well - $125.
The UD2H has a similar issue to the other two boards tested here today, in that while it states in the BIOS that under single thread loads, the processor should invoke its turbo mode from 33x multiplier base to 37x. In reality it stays for most (98%+) of the time at the 36x multiplier, and very rarely hits 37x, even for short periods of time. I was initially told by ASRock that this is an Intel specification, and it does seem that way. As a result, I can only conclude that by buying a H67 board, consumers are losing that last turbo boosted multiplier under single thread environments. Tsk.
After testing the motherboard, it was a mixed bag of joy and disappointment. On the one hand, the UD2H was the only board out of the three H67 we test here that allowed some form of CPU Overclocking. At first glance in the BIOS, I thought it was better than expected given some of the options (it looked like I could set the CPU to the max turbo multiplier for 100% of the time), but delving deeper I discovered this was not the issue. The 3D performance wasn’t stellar, and the motherboard only has two fan headers on board, meaning my Corsair H50 could only have both fans rotating with an additional 3-pin to molex connector. The design is also a little different…
Visual Inspection
Gigabyte has taken a different tack to ASRock and ECS is our little H67 combined product review – the layout of the board is different (PCIe x4 instead of a PCI) for a start. The SATA ports are all further into the board, and the RAM slots are further away from the 24-pin power connector, leaving a relatively large gap on the board.
With the SATA ports further into the center of the board, and also angled 180° compared to previous manifestations I have encountered, it makes it a little trickier to fit cables in when the board is in a case and a dual slot GPU is present. The PCIe configuration is x16, x1, x1, x4 (electrical), and thus does away with the PCI slots seen on the other boards. Technically these boards do not support Crossfire, and I attempted to fit two GPUs into the board for testing. However, my 5850s are long, dual slot GPUs, and obscure the SATA ports which prevent me testing. Perhaps two short, single slot cards would fit, but unfortunately I have none available to test with.
Another point of interest is the board color – Gigabyte are known for their black and blue boards. But as seen in my review of the P67A-UD4, Gigabyte was veering towards a purely black scheme, as it apparently helps overclocking, according to Gigabyte. As H67 is not a CPU-OC chipset, Gigabyte may have forgone the 10¢ of color and passed the savings on to the consumer. Possibly.
Along the bottom are a plethora of USB headers, but no fan headers. In fact, this board is somewhat lacking fan headers – there is one for the CPU, which is oddly south of the CPU socket, and another next to the SATA ports. Trying to fit a Corsair H50 required some deft placing of the cooler or a fan extension lead, and the second fan required a 3-pin to molex connector.
While no legacy floppy drive connector on board, the PS/2 port in here, along with four USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, the four standard H67 video outputs (D-Sub, DVI-D, HDMI and DisplayPort), a SPDIF_OUT port, an eSATA 3Gb/s port, and the standard Realtek audio inputs and outputs. While there is not a Clear CMOS button, the onboard systems are quite handy at moving into a bootable mode when unbootable settings are chosen.
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Roland00Address - Monday, March 28, 2011 - link
No ahci means no trim for SSDs. Just pointing this out for while a gamer on a budget may not care about this feature, people who want a quicker machine for everday use or htpc and thus want a SSD would be better suited with H67.casteve - Monday, March 28, 2011 - link
The H61 might not support AHCI...but TRIM can work in IDE mode.yzkbug - Sunday, March 27, 2011 - link
Any news on when Z68 is coming out?DominionSeraph - Sunday, March 27, 2011 - link
Any scrimping student with half a brain is going to get a console with a Gamefly subscription rather than blow $900 on a retarded i3 gaymen rig.With a PC you're stuck shelling out $60 apiece for unfinished tech demos and bad ports, only to be playing alone in your room. But you get 3 or 4 consoles on a floor and suddenly you have a glut of party-friendly games passing around.
$900 PC + $900 for 15 games, or $250 in console + extra controller, spending $350 for a couple games and a yearly subscription that gives 2/mo, plus borrowing is free, on a system that actually gives you the college experience? (Doesn't count the price of TV, but you're probably gonna have one of those anyway.)
And yes, it is $900+ for PC.
$680 for i3 2100/GTX 560/4GB/500GB
$150 for any monitor worth having
$60 for a decent mouse and keyboard.
$35 for student copy of Win7.
Dookie11 - Sunday, March 27, 2011 - link
Sorry about being poor and not being afford both.DominionSeraph - Sunday, March 27, 2011 - link
You don't have to apologize.bigboxes - Sunday, March 27, 2011 - link
Sorry to interrupt your flaming post, but if you think that console parties are not nerdy than you are still a virgin. I suggest you sell your gamer gear and get on with the real "college experience" that you are so in need of.omelet - Sunday, March 27, 2011 - link
Most people interested in PC gaming already have desktop computers at home, so you shouldn't include the cost of a monitor, hard drive, mouse, keyboard, speakers, operating system, or case in the cost of upgrading it to low tier gaming-capable. Also, while the i3 is not what a poorman gamer is going to get, let's assume it is for the sake of conversation on this article. You can get an i3 2100, an H61 motherboard, a GTX 460 768MB, and 4GB of DDR3 1333 RAM for $375 including shipping. I'm not counting the $45 in rebates, either, so that probably also covers the cost of a sufficient PSU over a generic 300W one. The build listed above is going to give significantly better performance than a 360 or PS3 at the resolutions the consoles put out. If you need the bigger screen, you can use the TV as a monitor. Plus you get to play games with a mouse and keyboard (or with a controller if that's your thing).There are plenty of games that are on PC and not on consoles. SC2, Civ5, and the vast majority of MMOs are among these titles. A lot of awesome older games, too, which don't even require modern gaming-tier hardware to run well. It's also true that consoles have a lot of games that aren't on PC, and the group gaming experience is different, but there are advantages to both types of gaming and the cost of entry into PC gaming is not at all as high as you're suggesting.
The effective cost of entry into PC gaming is really low for those people who need powerful computers for other reasons, or those who play older games or play on lower resolutions and graphics settings. It's also lower than I suggested for average Joe Blow, since he'd probably go with an AMD build that's ~$60 less expensive than the H61/i3 build.
Zoomer - Monday, March 28, 2011 - link
Quite the opposite, lol. It is definitely cheaper to stick with PC. Besides, there aren't very many games that are well suited for the console's HID.AssBall - Monday, March 28, 2011 - link
Not to mention how awesome an experience typing out and printing reports and presentations, running or coding technical software, checking mail or IMs, and browsing notes, whole classes, research, or entertainment on the internet on an XBOX is..... /sarcasmYou should have a computer for college anyway, a cheap gaming rig is the way to go, the console is just an expensive toy.