Let's start off with Gigabyte's mainstream offering : the Z77-D3H. Based on the Z77 chipset, this board offers full overclockability of the K skew socket 1155 CPU's. Also full functional RAM dividers, Intel Smart Response, Smart Connect and Rapid Start Technology. Retailing around 125 euro's, this board might not be the cheapest available socket 1155 motherboard.But at least everything is onboard to get some extra performance out of your CPU and RAM. For more info regarding the different X77 chipset types I like to refer to the Ivy Bridge CPU article.

Back to our Gigabyte board :

 

Typical Gigabyte box art. Since this board is mainstream, the bundled accesories are kept to a basic minimum. No extra USB headers, no WIFI,... just 4 SATA connectors, a manual and the required driver CD. Note the blue PCB, typical for the mainstream lineup. High end boards are build on the black PCB, but cheap doesn't always mean cut backs. Still sporting digital VRMs for stable power delivery, Virtu MVP, Crossfire support ( no SLI license however ), Quick sync and the mSATA SSD support for caching purposes.

The used heatsinks sports the cheaper push pin solution, instead off the more expensive screw down method. However they have a solid mount, as the print in the thermal tape shows. Dual bios supports ( always handy, if ever something goes wrong ) and the mSATA SSD port. This feature is tested later in this review , to show the benefits of the used Gigabyte solution.

 

 

Two PCI Express slots X16, with one running at 16X and one at 4X. According Intel PCI-E 3.0 4X is as fast as the previous PCI-E 2.0 8X technology, so no worries there. For extra expansion cards the GA Z77-D3H has got 3 PCI-E x1 slots; For the older gen cards there's still the option to use the two available PCI slots. The blue SATA 3Gb/s ports are not mounted at an angle alike the white SATA 6Gb/s. A design flaw, maybe to reduce the production cost.  But can be very problematic if you own a graphics card with a big cooler and all the available SATA ports are being used.

 

On the backpanel we find 1 x PS2 port, 1 x D-sub port, 1 x DVI-D port, 1 x HDMI port, 4 x USB3.0, 4 X USB2.0 ports, the RJ45 for the Atheros GbE LAN (10/100/1000 Mbit )

 

 

 

Moving to the current flagship of the Z77 motherboards, the Z77X-UD5H. We are not taking into account the Sniper series as they are specifically gamer orientated:

 

A more feature rich accessoires bundle with the Z77X-UD5H board : Crossfire/SLI cables and a USB3.0 front panel are neatly packed in the box. The black PCB giving the board a more pro finish, but there's more than just looks here. A beefed up VRM area, ready to handle extreme voltages in case of extreme overclocking. To keep the MOSFET temperatures under control, the engineers opted to use a triple config blue heatsink design. All linked via a heatpipe for maximum heat dissipation.

The heatsinks are screwed down in stead of using the cheap plastic push pin method. Another clear sign Gigabyte means business with this board.

 

 

Near the top we find a red Power Button, Black reset and a Blue Clear Cmos button. Ideal positioned for benchers. If you look closely you can spot the voltage readout points on the right hand side of the red power switch. Very handy indeed for the enthousiast crowd. Again present the mSATA SSD port, Gigabyte's own patended technology to boost HDD performance.

 

A total of 3x PCI Express X16 slots, one running at 16X, one at 8X and if using an Ivy Bridge CPU, the bottom one runs at 4X. Still 3x PCI Express 1X slots and one PCI slot for old generation card support. For their high end range Gigabyte uses 90° angled SATA ports. Four black SATA 3Gb/s and two white SATA 6Gb/s ports powered by the Z77 chipset. The dark grey SATA ports are 6Gb/s too but powered by the slower Marvell 88SE9172 chips. The latter also controls the eSATA 6Gb/s connector, found at the bottom of the board.

 

 

A total of 3 Internal USB3.0 headers is provided for maximum fast USB support. The USB3.0 header, close to the 24 Pin power connector is handled via the Intel Z77 Chipset. The two bottom ones via the VIA VL810 hubs. Note the small bios selectable switch.

On the backpanel we find : 1x D-Sub port, 1x DVI-D port, 1x optical S/PDIF Out connector, 1x HDMI port, 1x Display port, 1x eSATA 6Gb/s connector, 4x USB3.0, 2x USB2.0 ports, 1x IEEE 1394a port, Dual lan RJ-45 (LAN1 via Atheros GbE chip, LAN2 via Intel GbE chip) Sound is provided by a Realtek ALC898 codec, supporting X-Fi Extreme Fidelity and EAX HD5.0 technology. On the right picture we see a SATA power connector for extra current when using multi GPU solutions.

Either opt to work with the flashy 3D Bios or the more classic looking, but more advanced bios version. Below are the Advanced bios screenshots from the Z77-UD5H board.  The bios resemblance with the more mainstream D3H is nearly identical, besides a few voltage, ram settings which are lacking.

 

 

 

The 3D Bios is a simplified version, but might be more user friendly to most. But if you want to go deep, you probably will like to dig straight into the Advanced bios version, as shown on the previous page.

 

It's time to see how the two Gigabyte Z77 boards fair against the competitors boards. Our test setup comprises out of the following hardware :

• Intel i7-3770K CPU at 4500Mhz 1.25Vcore
• 16Gb G.Skill RipjawsZ 2133c9-11-10-27 1T
• Nvidia GTX480 290.62 drivers
• Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB HDD
• Corsair 850TX PSU

Now why run the CPU overclocked ? This is done to avoid discrepancies between board manufacturers that either stay loyal to the Intel rules regarding the Turbo function or others that trick the Turbo into a single speed for all cores. Secondly it's an extra test to see if each board can keep our ES 3770K stable at 4500Mhz during the entire test suite. The 16GB of G.Skill memory also give a little bit more strain on the IMC ( memory controller ) as the four banks are being used. For the ram timings, we only set the main timings of 9-11-10-27, command rate 1T at 1.65Vdimm. All the second and tertiary timings are set by the bios. This allows us to get an idea how tight or loose them timings are programmed by the bios engineers.

As usual we are starting off with two tests that are being used at HWBot. SuperPi 32M is a single threaded ram related test, that depends heavily on RAM bandwith and timings. Wprime 1024 is a raw CPU test. Stressing all the cores thoroughly. Any weaknesses in Vcore or such will be imminent visible.

 

 

Both Gigabyte boards leading the pack in both tests. It's known inside the OCing community that out of the box that the Giga boards timings are set pretty tight. Manual tweaking of the other boards especially with the TRSSR and tRWDR timing will boost performance up to the Giga levels. Compromise is that the ram compatibility at high speeds with the Gigabyte boards might need manual intervention of subtimings to obtain stability. But out of the box everything up to 2400mhz ran stable, with BBSE, PSC and Samsung IC based dimms. In AIDA 64 the MSI has to allow the competition to pull away. Both Gigabyte boards being master in the Read test.

 

 

Maxon's Cinebench release 10 64bit CPU test relies heavily on the CPU and less on RAM speeds and timings. The mainstream UD3H even manages to beat it's bigger brother the Z77X-UD5H. It's all in the chipset and bios lads. The extra phases and gimmicks will not unleash extra performance in daily overclocks.

 

 

In the Release 11 Cinebench, we throw in the GPU via the OpenGL test. This time the UD5H is ruling the other boards. Similar outcome for the Deep Fritz 12 chess test, both Giga boards reaching scores over 17K. The competition is not that far behind, but better is better not ?

 

 

 

 

Encoding is tested via the X264HD 4.0 test. Differences are not that big, but somehow the Z77-V Pro from Asus kept on pumping out the best FPS. PCMark Vantage tests the entire subsystem, both Giga boards, not by much, but both in front.

 

 

Benching 3DMark 2001 is usually requiring special biosses to unleash a few extra 1000points. The Gigabyte boards are trailing the rest here, but the newer S biosses have got the 3D01 tweak onboard, to be competitive with any board out there. Looking at the 3DMark06 performance we have no doubt that these Gigabyte boards are serious performance contenders.

 

 

 

Board's results are close, but both Giga's manage to stay in front or in worst case scenario, pretty close to the fastest performing board.

 

 

 

Gaming output in both Dirt 3 and Battlefield3 are so close, not much to see here...

 

 

 

Due to the presence of Gigabyte's innovative and patended mSATA SSD onboard technology we opted to briefly test this feature. The concept is to obtain via an affordable mSATA SSD, a faster and more responsive data subsystem. Faster boot times and full compatibility with Intel's Smart Response and Rapid Start features.

We tested the performance of our HDD, a Western Digital Green Caviar 1TB, versus the RAID setup combined with a Kingston mSATA SSD of 64GB versus an Intel 520 240GB SSD hooked up to either the SATA2.0 or 3.0 port.

Installing the MS100 SSD is pure child's play. We decided to go for a full RAID configured installation instead of using the Gigabyte Software. All scores are the average out of 3 runs.

 

 

The Crystal Disk Mark scores in both read and write tell the tale. This is a very fast and easy system boost, especially if you want to keep a balance between speed and large storage capacity. The Intel 520 SSD hooked up to SATA2.0 is a bit crippled. However it's power is totally unleashed if we hook up the Intel 520 SSD to the SATA3.0 port. But how about 340 euro's for just 240GB of storage space ? The Kingston mS100 is not cheap either, with close to 100 euro's for just 64GB storage/caching action. But the results speak for themselves.

 

 

 

The boost from the normal HDD drive, towards the combination with the Kingston MS100 mSATA SSD, is a day and nite difference. Take note when installing a mSATA SSD, that SATA port 5 will be disabled as it used the same resources.

 

Sadly enough, the UD5H challenged me and Massman during the hours we tested the board intensively. We already tested a sample provided by the Benelux office and that one was categorised as 'faulty sample' because it was giving massive issues under cold. Anyway, the second board did better than the previous sample (it actually worked below -35°C), but the final outcome was still a mixed bag for extreme overclocking. Here's a list of our findings with the retail F4, F5 and S4 bios. Plus the replies from a Gigabyte Tech rep on our findings in italic.

Hardware used:

• i7 3770K (retail)
• UD5H (bios: S4)
• G.Skill Flare (F3-16000CL7D-4GBFLS) 2x2GB
• G.Skill RipjawsX (F3-17000CL8D-4GBXMD) 2x2GB
• G.Skill RipjawsZ (F3-19200CL9Q-16GBZMD) 2x4GB
• G.Skill TridentX ("2666 CL11 kit") 2x4GB
• MSI GTX580 TwinFrozr PE/OC

 

- coldbootbug at -149°C (this cpu had no coldbootbug issue on competitors boards)
- coldbug at -167°C (similar remark about the coldbug issue as before ) This time the board shuts down during PI-32M when going below this temperature. Witnessed on other setups too. Very annoying bug.

There are two CBBs from my observation. One is when system still remembers your bclock which tends to normally be at -150 (some chips don’t have any) and second one is when you clear CMOS and some chips can have a CBB as bad as -75C. Please use S2 bios and see if this behaviour changes!

- PSC, BBSE and TridentX kit didn't show very good OC compatibility over 2400Mhz. The PSC/BBSE had to run AUTO timings to boot at DDR3-2600 and failed with tightening up the CL to 8. Fyi, the PSC kit was tested on the Gene V board and could run DDR3-2666CL8-12-8 stable. The TridentX did not pass DDR3-2800 even though we're sure the CPU can handle that memory frequency (previously tested on GeneV)

In regards to RAM clocking. Please note that GIGABYTE bios tightens secondary subtimings a lot more than Asus and one of the main reasons why you will reach the frequency but be very inefficient until you manually tighten up the right timings. If you loosen up secondary subtimings it will clock higher but logically it performs less. Try slots 1 and 3 on UD3H and UD5H as it clocks a bit higher than slots 2 and 4. BBSE sticks were tougher for me to tune and I think we still need some bios work on all boards.

EDIT : set tRRD to 7 and tRRSR to 5, this will allow most kit's to boot at 2600mhz.

- Regarding timings, the bios displays incorrect timings set by the user or the XMP profile. This might lead to confusion from where to start.

 

- The CPU ratio is locked in x39 after a hard crash. I'm setting x56 in the BIOS, but in OS it shows x39. I can, however, increase the CPU ratio with the GTL software to x56 no problem. Small issue, but very strange nonetheless.

In terms of CPU ratio observation this happens when you select only 1 core on CPU! If you select 2 cores you will get proper CPU ratio otherwise it will be at x39 which can be adjusted in GTL as you’ve found out.

- The board fails at 110MHz BCLK (in fact, it fails at 107MHz at -50°C too). Massman tested all 10 retail Ivy CPUs on a another board before and all could run 110MHz BCLK easily. Fyi, the UD3H has no issues with that BCLK.

Bios S4 issue , plz flash back to S2

- Debug led no longer functions after a series of crashes. When this happens, you can only get the board up and running after CMOS clear, but any profile you load will result in no boot/no debug again. I had to warm up the system to -107°C before everything worked normal again. We've seen many Gigabyte users required doing this at the EOS event. Sometimes switching to Bios 2 got the board alive again.

- Once in a while, after an OC failure, there are no options visible in the BIOS. It shows the background image, but none of the three OC fail options (load default and reboot, load default and boot, enter bios). We had that very often on the previous board, only a couple of times with this sample.

- Using the GTL software, the system freezes in OS when changing the Command Rate.
- Memory frequency is reported incorrectly after failed OC. When booting up with the DDR3-2666, the post fails at '51', then recovers and shows 1680MHz in BIOS (DDR3-3360).

Known bugs and being worked on

 

So is the UD5H board bad or what ? Nope, seems we have been using the wrong bench bios during our final testing. The S biosses are far more forgiving and high performance in certain benchmarks, than the early F4 and F5 bios we used with our first board. Small recap that the efficiency is great on these Gigabyte boards. But the bios engineers are slowly working their way through some annoying bugs ( RAM compatibility and the CB - CBB probs ) Those should be corrected as soon as possible. The Z77X-UD3H was far more cooperative during our LN2 sessions. Therefore in our book it's more recommended for Extreme benching then this UD5H.

For air overclocking both the Z77-D3H and the Z77X-UD5H had no issues to be prime95 test stable at 4700mhz with our 3770K ES CPU.

As this review featured two stars, in stead off of the usual one, we are forced to split up the conclusion in two parts:

GA-Z77-D3H: A budget friendly, but high performaning Z77 chipset based motherboard. The D3H board was rock stable during our entire test suite. Plus didn't break a sweat during the stress test at 4700Mhz, with our aircooled i7-3770K CPU. The lack of a second heatsink over the VRMs initially worried me. But the D3H came out as a champ. Ram clocks up to 2400Mhz didn't pose any issue, with the diversity of rams being used. However looking for higher frequencies needed sometimes massive manual intervention. Conclusion from our testing is that the Gigabyte Bios is nicely dialed in for Samsung based IC's. Let's hope the engineers can further enhance the RAM compatibility in the near future. It's a shame this board is only CrossfireX  ready. No support for Nvidia SLI at all. Second big remark is the positioning of the SATA ports on this board. No idea who decided to put them in an upright position. With a big GPU cooler you will surely run into trouble if all SATA ports are in use.

All in all you get a fast Z77 chipset based motherboard that kicks some serious butt. Leaving some far more expensive boards behind. Ofcourse the decision to opt for a certain board depends on a lot of things: onboard features, gimmicks, colours, etc. If you are happy with just basic needs, no bling bling, then this Z77-D3H board must be an option on your shopping list.

 

PROS:

• Fast, efficient Z77 mainstream motherboard
• Value price (120 euro's)
• OCability on air (LN2 not tested)
• Dual M bios

CONS:

• upright SATA ports wtf ?

 

 

GA-Z77-UD5H:

With the Z77X series Gigabyte offers two boards in the high end market. The black PCB gives the Z77X-UD3H and the Z77X-UD5H a real slick pro look. Retailing at around 220 euro, this board is not cheap, but offers a lot of functionality. Passing the [M] test suite was a no brainer. Both Gigabyte boards are, out of the box, amongst the fastest boards that we have tested. The tight preset subtimings in the bios are partly responsible for this good efficiency. Yes the same remark as with the Z77-D3H, the RAM compatibility at high speeds is so so. Manual timing intervention is a must, to reach higher speeds. For an enthousiast this is no problem, though the users that buy high end ram kits, might run into trouble if they are not used to wandering inside the zillions of options in the bios. Two UD5H boards passed through our hands and one was unsuitable for extreme benching as it had major issues around the -35°C mark. The 2nd board was far better and the new S biosses (for benching) drastically improve the handling of the board. However our Z77X-UD3H was far more cooperative for benching purposes and has got more then enough whistles and bells to be used as a bench platform. Testing is under progress with the older S2 bios.

But what about daily users ? The Z77X-UD5H got you all covered: good stability, SATA connectivity, dual lan ports, CrossfireX and SLI ready, dual bios, mSSD cache onboard, three onboard USB3.0 connectors,... If you need Wifi, Gigabyte also got a special wireless version in the lineup, the Z77X-UD5H-WB WIFI. But for those that don't need eg the Marvell SATA, dual lan ports or a gazillion on power phases, the Z77X UD3H will suit you just fine. Retailing at a far lower price, the performance is similar and it will be a solid platform for your daily needs.

PROS:

• Fast, efficient Z77 high end motherboard
• Dual LAN ports and bios
• Feature rich
• Black PCB adding to the pro look

CONS:

• RAM compatability
• LN2 quirks

I wish to thank Bernice from Gigabyte NL for both samples and Dino from Gigabyte HQ for the support

Kingston for supplying the mSATA MS100 64GB SSD

 

And Mia from G.Skill for the RipjawsZ rams