H67 – A Triumvirate of Tantalizing Technology

BIOS

One handy tip for a Gigabyte board is to update to the latest BIOS, then on the next boot, press CTRL + F12.  The board will then ask if you wish to swap BIOSes between the two BIOS chips.  Select yes, let the board copy them over, then when back in the OS, update the BIOS again.  That way, if unbootable settings are chosen and the board needs to use the recovery BIOS, it will be the same version as the one you had before.

While still not on the full graphical UEFI bandwagon yet, Gigabyte’s BIOS-like UEFI system is relatively rock solid and simple to use.  In the P67A-UD4 review, I did have a go at Gigabyte for not jumping on the graphical bandwagon, especially when P67 is where the majority of enthusiasts will be headed, but in H67 it is a bit of a different playing field.

The classic system splits the overclocking options into one menu (the MB Intelligent Tweaker), chipset options into another, boot options into another etc.  It isn’t a flashy UEFI, but smile, Simple Makes It (a) Lot Easier.

Overclocking

Due to this motherboard having that BCLK adjustable option, I’m splitting up the overclock section into two this time around, one for CPU and the other for the integrated GPU.

CPU Overclocking

The CPU overclock is straightforward – keep bumping up the BCLK until it’s unstable, then scale back a little.  In terms of instability, the board made this clear for me by failing to boot into the OS.  Take note of what raising the BCLK on a Sandy Bridge chipset actually does – as it raises the base clock of the whole system, everything is increased – CPU frequency, memory, PCIe lanes, SATA ports, USB ports etc.  So here you really are limited by the lowest common denominator.  If you push the BCLK hard and raise the CPU voltage, it may be pushing something else a bit too hard and lead to failure (like the B2 stepping SATA 3 Gb/s ports).

With my overclock, I knew my chip was capable of 103.5 MHz BCLK (and the memory of 2133 MHz C8, thus plenty of headroom for memory from 1333 MHz C9), so I put that in straight away, adjusting no voltages.  The system booted into the OS fine, so I went back and kept raising the BCLK by 0.5 MHz.  Instability came in at 105.5 MHz, so I downclocked back to 105.0 MHz, where it was stable.  The 105.0 MHz gives the CPU a base clock of 33x105 = 3.465 GHz, and technically an all around 5% rise.

In the 3D Movement Algorithm test, the OC scores were:

- Single Thread: 118.37, up 4.95 % from 112.78
- Multi-Thread: 358.55, up 4.84% from 341.97

GPU Overclocking

One thing did disappoint me regarding GPU Overclocking on this board – there were no presets available to just select and go, like on the ASRock board.  Perhaps we may get some when Gigabyte moves to a graphical UEFI.

However, given on previous GPU OC tests, I was aiming for 1800 MHz overclock, and to confirm what I saw on the ASRock H67 board, whereby a large overclock makes the integrated GPU scale back to a thermally more acceptable value.  I started the OC at 1400 MHz, no change on any of the voltages.

Up to 1600 MHz in 100 MHz jumps worked fine. At 1700 MHz, when running through Metro2033, the game crashed.  In the BIOS you have two graphics voltage options – Graphics Core and Graphics DVID.  The DVID option was only changeable when Graphics Core was set to ‘normal’, but I started by raising the Graphics Core voltage.  After testing all the way from 1.1 V to 1.2 V (the ASRock reached 1700 MHz with only a +0.05V offset), I switched it to normal and left the Graphics DVID on Auto.  In this configuration, Metro2033 completed, but Dirt2 did not.  Even adjusting the Graphics DVID to a +0.1V offset didn’t change anything, so I reset them both back to auto and scaled back to 1650 MHz.  At 1650 MHz, both games ran very stable at auto voltages.

In the 3D tests, the OC scores were:

- Metro2033: 21.8 FPS, up 23.86% from 17.6 FPS
- Dirt2: 28.1 FPS, up 6.97% from 26.27 FPS