GIGABYTE Z77X-UP7 - I am officially impressed!

[SoF]

After 2 weeks of intense testing I had to admit - this board is really a nice piece of hardware

Summary:

The Z77X is a very good OC-motherboard with a load of features and all important tweaking options. The buttons on the board come in very handy in many situations.
The equipment in the box contains everything you need, even for allday use you will get everything you need:
10x SATA, 10x USB 3.0, 2x Gbit LAN, 4x PCI-E with big PLX, all outputs for internal GPU, "ok" onboard sound, WiFi / BlueTooth, cables and interesting software suite - nothing you would miss, or? (did I hear a "firewire" - srsly...whaz this )

Several 7 GHZ shots and records from the HQ show the potential of the board, even though we know a huge part comes from the CPUs themselves.

The bios (UEFI, never will get used to the term) is quickly prepared for the first runs. The mem-overclocking past DDR3-2700 was a bit difficult (maybe harder subtimings compared to last time tested G1 Sniper 3 which did 2720 easy).
But the board is very good handling wrong settings and will mostly reboot fine after turning of a couple of times.
You get bios updates and special OC bios so there will always be something to test with this board...



In direct comparison to the G1 Sniper 3 it has a little advantage most of the time and seemed somehow brutally fast in 32m.

full review #AwardFabrik

Impressions

spec sheet

Benchmarks

5 GHZ easy air




LN2 and blowing sh1t up - sooooon...


best regards
SoF

 

[cadaveca]

no 4x4 @ 2666? 2x4 OK, but 4x4 is where the masters sit. 4x4 2800??

 

[SoF]

the old men I am - there is not that much of 4 GB sticks laying here...lots of old 2 GB PSC
but I will try...cpu-wise I should have an ace in the sleve

 

[cadaveca]

the old men I am - there is not that much of 4 GB sticks laying here...lots of old 2 GB PSC
but I will try...cpu-wise I should have an ace in the sleve

I know, I know, I remember you and your IVB binning. That's why I was like ...WTF!?!

I see beta BIOS too...that's a shame.

 

[SoF]

UD7 bios for OC is "F3" - not on the website but inofficial you'll get it here and there.
F5d is really fine for all day - not a major difference in allday use.
honestly I would have to search for the little details I was told F3 has...not remarked any myself yet

 

[cadaveca]

Yeah, I tried F3, seems best for most, but not me, man. interested to see how it goes for ya.

 

[SoF]

I popped in some Geil Evo Corsair and G.Skill Trident sticks and started the 16 GB "challenge".

I struggled to get DDR3-2500 booting and 32m will crash on initial loop. Up to ~1150 MHZ there are no issues. Past 1200 MHZ it gets hard to find stable settings...

with 2x4 GB 1300+ is no problem

 

[Aquinus]

Any particular reason why you're using Windows XP and not something more modern that can actually support all of the motherboard's and CPU's features? XP I would imagine would be rather limited for the two 580s as well.

 

[SoF]

Yes XP is more efficient in SuperPi 32m - you can't compare Win 7 and WinXP times.

Also SLI with 580s is faster on XP often. 3DM01 on Win 7 is PITA, CPU Score in 06 is mostly so much higher that the GPU advantage of Win 7 will not be enough to achieve the same score.

It mostly is because of the speed and scores - and you can use oc buttons on XP also when having the correct driver installed and EIST activated.

So for benching 2D and 580 a good XP still does best most of the time

It is different with 7970 and 680 GTX - they seem to prefer Win 7 but that is GPU side.

 

[eidairaman1]

3DM01!? course it wont run right because it was coded for XP, Also you ever thought of converting Aero to classic Mode when you start a game considering hardware acceleration is being used to render Aero so that taxes the GPUs a lil?

Yes XP is more efficient in SuperPi 32m - you can't compare Win 7 and WinXP times.

Also SLI with 580s is faster on XP often. 3DM01 on Win 7 is PITA, CPU Score in 06 is mostly so much higher that the GPU advantage of Win 7 will not be enough to achieve the same score.

It mostly is because of the speed and scores - and you can use oc buttons on XP also when having the correct driver installed and EIST activated.

So for benching 2D and 580 a good XP still does best most of the time

It is different with 7970 and 680 GTX - they seem to prefer Win 7 but that is GPU side.

 

[SoF]

3DM01!? course it wont run right because it was coded for XP, Also you ever thought of converting Aero to classic Mode when you start a game considering hardware acceleration is being used to render Aero so that taxes the GPUs a lil?

Seriously don't even try to get into "tweaking"...if Aero is all you have, I will not try to explain why using XP (with LSC, maxmem for pi) is still a smart move in professional benchmarking.

Go look here Gigabyte just claims another astonishing 3D Mark 2001 result - on XP...

#Gigabyte DailyTech

Keep in mind this is not about real world anything, just having fun benchmarking on a mobo...go discuss your OS elsewhere...

 

[eidairaman1]

Seriously don't even try to get into "tweaking"...if Aero is all you have, I will not try to explain why using XP (with LSC, maxmem for pi) is still a smart move in professional benchmarking.

Go look here Gigabyte just claims another astonishing 3D Mark 2001 result - on XP...

#Gigabyte DailyTech

Keep in mind this is not about real world anything, just having fun benchmarking on a mobo...go discuss your OS elsewhere...

im just providing a solution to your problem, you dont have to be a dick about it

 

[Aquinus]

What good are XP numbers when hardly anyone uses XP anymore, who are you comparing against? The number of people who are going to run 580s and a modern z77 board on XP is tiny. That's just me though, it doesn't seem practical if you're comparing against other people. I'm just kind of confused. I wouldn't use one OS over another just to get a higher score in a benchmark. So how about a 3DMark 2011 or Vantage score or something that more closely reflects performance on modern software, because I'm willing to bet the majority of people could care less how old software runs on XP with new hardware. It seems like a waste of feature and capability to me.

 

[TRWOV]

You know? A few years back I didn't think the board made any kind of significant difference in performance but after upgrading from an Asrock H61M-GE to my current GA-Z77X-UDH3 I was able to overclock my 6950 to 875/1350. I could only get 840/1300 on my previous board.