Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3 Review
by Brendan van Varik on July 11, 2011 7:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Gigabyte
- Motherboards
- Sandy Bridge
- Z68
3D Movement Algorithm Test - link
The first benchmark ran is actually one which was written by our very own, Senior Editor – Ian Cutress. This first benchmark uses various algorithms for three-dimensional simulation and movement of independent particles. The algorithms both employ uniform random number generation or normal distribution random number generation, and vary in various amounts of trigonometric operations, conditional statements, generation and rejection, fused operations, etc. The benchmark runs through six algorithms for a specified number of particles and steps, and calculates the speed of each algorithm, then sums them all for a final score. This is an example of a real world situation that a computational scientist may find themselves in, rather than a pure synthetic benchmark. The benchmark is also parallel between particles simulated, and we test the single thread performance as well as the multi-threaded performance.
When we tested this motherboard using the single threaded benchmark, the UD3H did well - coming in at third place at both stock and overclocked speeds.
Using our multithreaded 3D Movement test with the CPU at stock settings, this is technically one of the fastest motherboards out of our database of Sandy Bridge motherboards. Sadly, it didn’t take top spot when the system was overclocked, which is probably down to the BCLK/multiplier limit of the board but it still performed above average.
WinRAR x64 3.93 - link
With 64-bit WinRAR, we compress the set of files used in the USB speed tests. WinRAR x64 3.93 attempts to use multithreading when possible.
This is the fastest score we currently have on record.
FastStone Image Viewer 4.2 - link
FastStone Image Viewer is a free piece of software which allows quick viewing of flat images, as well as resizing, changing color depth, adding simple text or simple filters. It also has a bulk image conversion tool, which we use here. The software currently operates only in single-thread mode, which should change in later versions of the software. For this test, we convert a series of 170 files, of various resolutions, dimensions and types (of a total size of 163MB), all to the .gif format of 640x480 dimensions.
Neither a good nor a bad result - more or less bang in the middle here.
Sorenson Squeeze 6.0 - link
Sorenson Squeeze is a professional video encoder, complete with a vast array of options. For this test, we convert 32 HD videos, each a minute long and approximately 42 MB in size, to WMV 512KBps format. Squeeze can encode multiple videos at once, one for each thread.
The second slowest score recorded whilst on the Sandy Bridge platform is quite unfortunate as this motherboard does do well in other aspects of our testing.
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kamiyo - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - link
hopefully this will inspire me to upgrade the rest of my rigbas94041 - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - link
Why do reviews such as this ignore that which is fundamental to product quality?Namely, Customer Support.
I will never purchase another Gigabyte product as in my experience their support is incompetent and unprofessional.
Until these tech companies are called out on it they will continue to provide abysmal support. Product reviews should provide a measure of tech support capacity just as they measure a products technical features.
just4U - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - link
I've played with this board and it's little cousin, the GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3. I've found that both boards are a little quirky almost as though the bios versions are not quite mature. Small little nagging things that are hard to pin down.The SSD Caching is an interesting feature. I don't notice a big improvement but it's there for sure... even though the Windows 7 Experience index doesn't show it. If you change hardware frequently then you run into issues as well (or I have anyway) forcing you into the setup utility to disable the cache drive and reset it back up after the fact. Things have gotten better since the last bios update but... not quite there yet. (imo)
The0ne - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 - link
No gimmick, just a great show if you are interested. For the linguist or anyone interested in words and such, the program runs every week on the weekends. I highly recommend it as I listen to them weekly.http://www.waywordradio.org/
Hope you enjoy them as much as I do :D
henhaohenhao - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 - link
Come go and see, will not regret it Oh look
http://www.ifancyshop.com
henhaohenhao - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 - link
Come go and see, will not regret it Oh look
http://www.ifancyshop.com
Diagrafeas - Saturday, July 16, 2011 - link
This is from the manual."Please note the HDMI audio output only supports AC3, DTS and 2-channel-LPCM formats."
Is this correct?
What about 8-channel LPCM, Dolby TrueHD bitstream, DTS-HD Master Audio bitstream?
goodzhang - Sunday, July 17, 2011 - link
Come go and see, will not regret it Oh lookhttp://www.ifancyshop.com
catchmyevo - Monday, July 25, 2011 - link
Brendan,Thank you for posting an article for this Motherboard, as it made my decision to buy it. One thing though, I wasn't sure if you had come across this but after upgrading the BIOS from F2 to F4, the option to set ACPI Suspend Type S1(POS)/S3(STR) disappeared. Any ideas as to why they would make a change to fix some issues, but removed a feature that's printed in their manual?
Conditioned - Wednesday, July 27, 2011 - link
First review I read of a motherboard that gives dpc. Thats so great for us who play (and ofc for those that do audio processing).For the next review I would like to know:
Was the system under load as you took those dpc measurements? Listening to music, harddisk usage, anything loading the cpu?
Was it in 'idle' mode or was it 'clocked' up?
Where sounddrivers installed? Which ones.
Was hpet on or off?
What nic (model and driver version).
What intel inf version.
I wonder at these numbers cause I have ~60 microseconds in dpc with my msi z68 gd80.
I have done two things to lower dpc:
1) Install brainbits low dpc drivers for my Asus essence
2) I have timerresolution.exe running which increases the dpc timer resolution thereby possibly decreasing dpc somewhat.