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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Cerb - Tuesday, May 21, 2013 - link
I also don't need heatsinks, or LEDs, or buttons, or anything glow in the dark (now, tritium, on the other hand...).But, a video card? I've spent more on motherboards so as not to buy a video card ever since good IGPs started coming out around 2004-2005, and chose AMD platforms when Intel's were faster, for the superior IGP. Most of the time, I'm buying a video card today, due to either Intel's drivers not being up to the task, or due the motherboard lacking output options. The more of those the board has, the better, doubly so if they can all be used simultaneously (which, oddly, seems to be common on notebooks, but not desktops). I have a video card, but most people don't, and that's including more overclockers, too, every time IGP improves. Multimonitor is getting more common all the time, and most users do not need more performance than the IGP offers.
Most people do not have or want a sound card. That's a lot of money to be saved.
I haven't used a card NIC, outside of PC firewalls, to replace a blown Ethernet port, or to use if Linux does not support the integrated chip, since they got integrated into the board, ages ago.
I'm typing on a PS/2 keyboard right this second. A have USB converter as a plan B, but I would prefer to keep it native.
I need all the USBs I can get, and I want them all to be USB 3.0 ASAP, so that I can reduce the cards I need to add to get them. Why should I have to get another card just so that I can have a card reader and front case USBs plugged in at the same time? Worse, last generation, because some of the USB add-on chips gave more ports, there were cheaper motherboards with more USB 3.0 ports, and several with 2 sets of headers, than you see today.
Firewire, I've never used, though.
More SATAs are basically free, and they offer flexibility. I can have a couple plain SATAs free, a couple eSATAs, and still have plenty for internal drives. They are usually wasted, but there's no way they can cost much, with $50 boards having had 6 or more for years, now, so let's just keep plenty of them the norm.
I don't know about 8 fan connectors, but I simply do not buy boards without at least 2 non-CPU 4-pin fan headers, today. If they want to not expose those to save a penny or two, screw 'em. 3 of them, on top of CPU, tends to handle most any good case. It's the crazy cases with 6-8 fans that they want more for, but there is no real reason for it, except aesthetics.
jabber - Tuesday, May 21, 2013 - link
I've got no problem with having as many USB ports as you need. They are good to have.I'd prefer the removal of the legacy/redundant stuff and say 8-10 USB ports on the back instead.
I know my taste in motherboards my not be to everyones liking but it would be nice for some of us to have the choice of buying a serious high quality stripped down board so we can tailor it to our exact needs and use our existing better quality gear in it.
jonjonjonj - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
or you could get the extreme4 which has all those for either $134 right with a free 8GB of memory on newegg. or wait until one of the weekly/monthly sales when it goes down to the $115 range.DanNeely - Sunday, May 19, 2013 - link
With Haswell just around the corner requesting specific models for a budget board roundup now seems counterproductive. "I need a board with U, V, Y; W would be nice but only if doesn't drive up the cost" seems like it would be more useful for selecting which boards to request samples of.A5 - Sunday, May 19, 2013 - link
Agreed. I'd like a review of whatever the cheapest board with an Intel NIC is :PBeyond that, any sub-$150 mATX is a good place to start.
Ananke - Sunday, May 19, 2013 - link
This is pretty much the perfect board - around $100, 6 SATA ports, internal USB 3 header, HDMI out in cases of no discrete GPU used, 3 fan headers, 4 RAM slots, Z-chipset for dual video usage and Intel Q-sync, stable voltage and heat spreaders on the voltage regulators...and 4 SATA cables.The Perfect board!
Zeroed - Sunday, May 19, 2013 - link
I have a similar low end gigabyte board. I found the dpc latency problem to be caused by the overclocking / system monitor software that came with the board. Soon as I stopped it loading, the problem went away.Razorbak86 - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
Ian actually addresses that in the article, but the 500+ is a max reading, even with EasyTune 6 uninstalled!scottish_usa - Sunday, May 19, 2013 - link
I actually think some of the ASRock boards are a better deal in this price range. I have the Z77 Extreme 4 which features the following at around the same price point:4 x Sata 3 and 2 in raid
PCI-E x 16 + x4 + x4
or
PCI-E x8 + x8 + x4
1 x HDMI
1 x DVI
1 x VGA
1 x SPDIF
1 x eSata 3
spooky2th - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
Gigabyte boards rock! I luv builds with Gigabyte boards! This board is kind of low end but it can be made into a fairly decent gaming rig.