With the Z68X-UD7-B3 Gigabyte presents it flagship model which supports Intels latest Sandy Bridge CPUs. This board also comes with the new color scheme which really is very nice to look at. Furthermore there is the long feature list which comes with every motherboard that is based on Intels latest Z68 chipset. 
The Z68X-UD7-B3 belongs to the high end motherboards regarding Gigabytes lineup for the Intels Sandy Bridge CPUs. Therefore we're really curious what they've done from the layout and design perspective.
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Spezifikationen / Lieferumfang
| CPU | Intel Socket 1155 Core i7, Core i5, Core i3 |
| Chipset | Intel Z68 |
| Memory | Dual Channel DDR3, 4 x DIMM, Max. 32 GB DDR3, 2133/1866/1600/1333/1066 Non-ECC,Un-buffered |
| Multi-GPU |
2-/3-way ATI CrossFireX 2-/3-way NVIDIA SLI |
| Slots | 2 x PCI-Express x16 (dual at x16/x16
mode, compatible with PCIe x1 and x4 devices) 2 x PCI-Express x16 (at x8 mode, compatible with PCIe x1 and x4 devices) 1 x PCI-Express x1 2 x PCI |
| Sound | Realtek ALC889, 7.1-Channel HD Audio Codec, Dolby Home Theater certified, S/PDIF Out |
| Storage | 2 x SATA 6.0 Gb/s (RAID 0, 1, 5, 10) 2 x SATA 6.0 Gb/s (RAID 0, 1) 4 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s (RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, JBOD) 2 x eSATA 6 Gb/s |
| I/O internal / Connectors | 1 x 24-pin ATX Power 1 x 8-pin ATX 12V Power 4 x SATA 6Gb/s 4 x SATA 3Gb/s 1 x CPU Fan Header 3 x System Fan Header 1 x Power Fan Header 1 x Chipset Fan Header 1 x Front Panel Header 1 x Front Panel Audio Header 1 x S/PDIF Out 2 x USB 2.0/1.1 2 x USB 3.0/2.0 1 x IEEE 1394a 1 x Clear CMOS 1 x Power Button 1 x Reset Button |
| I/O external | 1 x PS/2-Tastatur/Maus 1 x Optischer S/PDIF 1 x Koaxialer S/PDIF Out 2 x IEEE 1394a 2 x USB 2.0/1.1 6 x USB 3.0/2.0 2 x eSATA-/USB-Combo-Anschluss 2 x RJ-45 6 x Audio Jacks (Center/Subwoofer Speaker Out/Rear Speaker Out/Side Speaker Out/Line In/Line Out/Microphone) |
| Forfactor | ATX (30.5cm x 24.4cm) |
| BIOS | Bios (2 x 32 Mb flash ROM, Award BIOS) |
| Warranty | 6 years |
Regarding the delivery you'll find everything you need. Next to a CrossFire bridge you can even find a SLI bridge which allows a 3-way SLI setup.
Features
| Dynamic Energy Saver 2 | Utilizing Gigabytes Dynamic Energy Saver the board is able to enhance the systems overall power efficiency. Therefore it is able to regulate power consumption of CPU, memory, chipset, graphics card, hard drive as well as connected fans. Of course all this will happen automatically. |
| On/Off-Charge | With On/Off Charge Gigabyte has a Feature onboard which allows users to recharge for example their iPhon, iPod or iPad via USB without starting it up. Furthermore the devices can draw more power from these special USB ports than from standard ones. |
| 24 Phase Power Design | Gigabyte equips its high-end motherboards with their 24 phase power design. It is made of high quality components which guarantee a long lifespan, hight stability and good overclockability. |
| Cloud OC | Cloud OC should allow easy overclocking via an external device that can access the web. The program lets an overclocker access the different settings via a website. |
| Intel Smart Response Technology | [enIntels Z68 chipset allows to use a small SSD as a cache for a big hard drive in order to enhance overall system performance. Especially application and system starts are ment to benefit from this technology. Also the overall user experience should become smoother. Of course you shouldn't expect a setup which makes use of Intels Smart Response Technology to outperform a SSD as a system drive.[/en] |
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Layout
Like with the P67 Gigabyte again uses their new color schema. Therefore the Taiwanese motherboard manufacturer now uses a black PCB as well as black expansion slots. If you look at the heatpipe you see that the UD7 features anthracite and cooper. Finally there are also some white spots which aren't distracting at all. We've been very positively surprised of Gigabyte lately presenting such a beautiful motherboard. We even think that this is one of the most beautiful boards ever introduced to the market. The only mistake regarding the layout can be found right next to the northbridge cooler. The PCI-Express x1 slot really is too close to the cooling block which bares the consequence that the slot becomes almost useless.
Like other Gigabyte boards before the Z68X-UD7-B3 comes with a 24 phase power design which guarantees stable current supply and very good overclockability. Furthermore the 24 pahse VRM design is equipped with high quality polymer capacitors which have a life expectancy of 50'000 hours on average, low RDS(on) MOSFETs for lower temperatures and high quality inductors made of ferrite.
Totally you'll find four DIMM-slots on the Z68X-UD7-B3. Officially supported are DDR3-2133/1866/1600/1333/1066 with up to 32 GByte capacity. The DIMM-slots are quite close to the CPU socket which might cause some compatibility problems with big coolers especially when you choose to install RAM with big heatspreaders.
Northbridge, Southbridge as well as the current converters are being held at adequate temperatures via a passive heatpipe cooling solution. The fact that the cooling blocks around the CPU socket aren't too big make it comfortable to install a big aircooler. We also noticed the very high manufacturing quality of the cooling blocks and their weight which is quite immense.
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Anschlüsse und I/O
Totally Gigabyte provided the Z68X-UD7-B3 with eight angled SATA ports which should be enough for any office PC or gaming system. You'll also find practical onboard power- and reset-buttons. Gigabyte even thought of a debug display which is very useful if you should once have issues with one of the components in your system. It is quite common that the last PCI-Express x16 slot is also the expansion slot the closest to the bottom edge of the board. That has the consequence that the connectors at this place aren't accessible anymore. With the UD7 Gigabyte took this into account and placed the last PCI-Express x16 slot as the second last expnsion slot and therefore there wont be any complications.
Totally you'll find eight fan headers on the Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 which is more than enough, to provide a well equipped midrange or even a high-end-system with fresh air. The fanheaders are located around the CPU and their also spread over the whole board which makes them easily accessible from any position in an enclosure.
Looking at the external connectors directly at the back-panel Gigabyte provided the Z68X-UD7-B3 with a PS2 mouse/keyboard connector, six USB 3.0/2.0 ports, a firewire port, tow eSATA ports, two gigabit ethernet port, a SPDIF and coaxial optical out as well as an analogue audio panel.
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BIOS
What you're meanwhile getting with every single board that can be use for overclocking is the feature to save and afterwards reload different BIOS profiles. Once again Gigabyte succeeded in creating another very well structured BIOS. Although it doesn't come with a graphical user interface like all the UEFI BIOS that are available it is very easy to understand and locate the different settings. Furthermore this Award-BIOS also is very suitable for overclocking. You'll find all the settings needed under the "MB Intelligent Tweaker" menu. Therefore one can for example manipulate all the different voltage settings.Discuss this article in the forums
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Test setup
Hardware |
|
| Motherboard |
- Gigabyte
Z68X-UD7-B3 - ASUS P8Z68-V Pro - ASUS P8H67-M Evo - ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional - ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe - Intel DH67BL - Intel DP67BG - MSI P67A-GD65 - MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 - ASUS Sabertooth P67 - Gigabyte P67A-UD4 - ASUS Maximus IV Extreme - ASUS P8P67 WS Revolution - ASUS P8P67-M EVO - Gigabyte P67A-UD7 |
| Processor | Intel Core i5 2500K |
| Memory | 2 GB Kingston PC3 16'000 9-9-9-27 |
| Graphic card | Asus 5850 |
| Hard disk | Samsung Spinpoint F1 320 GByte |
| Power supply | bequiet! Dark Power Pro 1000Watt |
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Futuremark
3DMark11
3DMark 11 is Futuremarks latest benchmark for the entire graphical subsystem. The benchmark uses DirectX 11 and it supports all recent features which can possibly generate high load on a GPU. Therefore you find tessellation, compute shader calculations, divers lighting effects and different depth of filed animations. Following we publish values regarding the performance preset of 3DMark 11.
Total
| 3DMark 11 Total | Percent | |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 3'831 | 104.05 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 3'719 | 101.00 % |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 3'714 | 100.87 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 3'709 | 100.73 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 3'709 | 100.73 % |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 3'709 | 100.73 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 3'707 | 100.68 % |
| ASUS P8H67-M Evo | 3'707 | 100.68 % |
| Asus P8P67-M EVO | 3'705 | 100.62 % |
| Intel mATX DH67BL | 3'704 | 100.60 % |
| ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe | 3'702 | 100.54 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 3'688 | 100.16 % |
| Asus P8P67 WS Revolution | 3'682 | 100.00 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro (with Lucid Virtu) | 3'678 | 99.89 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 3'632 | 98.64 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 3'620 | 98.32 % |
| more is better | ||
Physic
| 3DMark 11 Physic Score | Percent | |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 6'461 | 102.65 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 6'421 | 102.02 % |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 6'399 | 101.67 % |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 6'391 | 101.54 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro (with Lucid Virtu) | 6'317 | 100.37 % |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 6'300 | 100.10 % |
| Asus P8P67 WS Revolution | 6'294 | 100.00 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 6'274 | 99.68 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 6'271 | 99.73 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 6'269 | 99.60 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 6'268 | 99 59 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 6'244 | 99.21 % |
| ASUS P8H67-M Evo | 6'201 | 98.52 % |
| Asus P8P67-M EVO | 6'188 | 98.32 % |
| Intel mATX DH67BL | 6'193 | 98.40 % |
| ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe | 6'142 | 97.59 % |
| more is better | ||
3DMark Vantage
3DMark Vantage is able to squeeze nearly everything out of a recent system. Therefore the feature liste is also pretty long: DirectX10, FP16-HDR, motion blur, parallax occlusion mapping, GPU-physics simulation and different shader effects are being used to even make recent high-end systems struggle.
Total
| 3DMark Vantage Total | Percent | |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 16'438 | 105.74 % |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 16'153 | 103.90 % |
| ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe | 16'107 | 103.61 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 16'075 | 103.40 % |
| ASUS P8H67-M Evo | 16'069 | 103.36 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 15'924 | 102.43 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 15'835 | 101.86 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 15'776 | 101.48 % |
| Intel mATX DH67BL | 15'710 | 101.05 % |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 15'760 | 101.38 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 15'757 | 101.36 % |
| Asus P8P67-M EVO | 15'749 | 101.31 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 15'605 | 100.38 % |
| Asus P8P67 WS Revolution | 15'546 | 100.00 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro (with Lucid Virtu) | 15'485 | 99.61 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 15'157 | 97.50 % |
| more is better | ||
CPU
| 3DMark Vantage CPU | Percent | |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 17'379 | 101.35 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 17'354 | 101.21 % |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 17'261 | 100.66 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 17'186 | 100.23 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 17'179 | 100.19 % |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 17'164 | 100.10 % |
| Asus P8P67 WS Revolution | 17'147 | 100.00 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 17'126 | 99.88 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 17'121 | 99.85 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 17'118 | 99.83 % |
| ASUS P8H67-M Evo | 17'101 | 99.73 % |
| ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe | 17'043 | 99.39 % |
| Asus P8P67-M EVO | 17'017 | 99.24 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 16'979 | 99.02 % |
| Intel mATX DH67BL | 16'873 | 98.40 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro (with Lucid Virtu) | 15'055 | 87.80 % |
| more is better | ||
Discuss this article in the forums
[pagebreak]
SiSoft Sandra 1
SiSoft Sandra is a theoretical multi purpose benchmark suite which is able to show differences in CPU architectures. We split the tests with SiSoft Sandra into two parts. Therefore on this page you'll find Arithmetic-, Multimedia- and Cryptography-benchmarks.
Arithmetic Benchmark
| SiSoft Sandra - Arithmetic Benchmark - Drystone | GIPS | Percent |
| ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe | 68.00 | 101.12 % |
| ASUS P8H67-M Evo | 67.83 | 100.86 % |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 67.77 | 100.77 % |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 67.67 | 100.62 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 67.62 | 100.55 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 67.60 | 100.52 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 67.59 | 100.51 % |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 67.58 | 100.49 % |
| Asus P8P67-M EVO | 67.37 | 100.18 % |
| Intel mATX DH67BL | 67.25 | 100.00 % |
| Asus P8P67 WS Revolution | 67.25 | 100.00 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 67.19 | 99.91 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 67.13 | 99.82 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 67.00 | 99.63 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 67.00 | 99.63 % |
| more is better | ||
| SiSoft Sandra - Arithmetic Benchmark - Whetstone | GFLOPS | Percent |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 49.00 | 100.51 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 49.00 | 100.51 % |
| Asus P8P67-M EVO | 49.00 | 100.51 % |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 48.81 | 100.12 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 48.80 | 100.10 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 48.80 | 100.10 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 48.78 | 100.06 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 48.76 | 100.02 % |
| Asus P8P67 WS Revolution | 48.75 | 100.00 % |
| Intel mATX DH67BL | 48.71 | 99.92 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 48.70 | 99.90 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 48.69 | 99.88 % |
| ASUS P8H67-M Evo | 48.43 | 99.34 % |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 47.77 | 97.99 % |
| ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe | 47.52 | 97.48 % |
| more is better | ||
Multimedia
| SiSoft Sandra - Multimedia - Integer | MPixels/sec | Percent |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 120.62 | 100.16 % |
| Asus P8P67 WS Revolution | 120.43 | 100.00 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 120.41 | 99.98 % |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 120.41 | 99.98 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 120.34 | 99.93 % |
| Asus P8P67-M EVO | 120.34 | 99.93 % |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 120.33 | 99.92 % |
| ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe | 120.30 | 99.89 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 120.23 | 99.83 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 120.19 | 99.80 % |
| ASUS P8H67-M Evo | 120.10 | 99.73 % |
| Intel mATX DH67BL | 120.00 | 99.64 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 120.00 | 99.64 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 120.00 | 99.64 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 120.00 | 99.64 % |
| more is better | ||
| SiSoft Sandra - Multimedia - floating point | MPixels/sec | Percent |
| Asus P8P67 WS Revolution | 71.21 | 100.00 % |
| ASUS P8H67-M Evo | 71.20 | 99.99 % |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 71.20 | 99.99 % |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 71.19 | 99.97 % |
| ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe | 71.19 | 99.97 % |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 71.18 | 99.96 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 71.17 | 99.94 % |
| Asus P8P67-M EVO | 71.16 | 99.93 % |
| Intel mATX DH67BL | 71.00 | 99.71 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 71.00 | 99.71 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 71.00 | 99.71 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 71.00 | 99.71 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 70.87 | 99.52 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 70.65 | 99.21 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 70.57 | 99.10 % |
| more is better | ||
Crytography
| SiSoft Sandra - Crytography - AES 256 | GB/sec | Percent |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 7.38 | 117.14 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 7.30 | 115.87 % |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 7.00 | 111.11 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 7.00 | 111.11 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 6.87 | 109.05 % |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 6.85 | 108.73 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 6.30 | 100.00 % |
| Asus P8P67 WS Revolution | 6.30 | 100.00 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 6.30 | 100.00 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 6.26 | 99.37 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 6.25 | 99.21 % |
| Asus P8P67-M EVO | 6.00 | 95.24 % |
| ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe | 5.78 | 91.75 % |
| Intel mATX DH67BL | 5.74 | 91.11 % |
| ASUS P8H67-M Evo | 5.70 | 90.48 % |
| more is better | ||
| SiSoft Sandra - Crytography - SHA 256 | MB/sec | Percent |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 550 | 101.48 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 550 | 101.48 % |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 550 | 101.48 % |
| Asus P8P67-M EVO | 550 | 101.48 % |
| ASUS P8H67-M Evo | 550 | 101.48 % |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 550 | 101.48 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 549 | 101.29 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 549 | 101.29 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 549 | 101.29 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 549 | 101.29 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 549 | 101.29 % |
| Intel mATX DH67BL | 548 | 101.11 % |
| Asus P8P67 WS Revolution | 542 | 100.00 % |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 530 | 97.79 % |
| ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe | 510 | 94.10 % |
| more is better | ||
Discuss this article in the forums
[pagebreak]
SiSoft Sandra 2
At this point we deliver the values regarding Memory Bandwidth, Memory Latency as well as Memory and Cache Access.
Memory bandwidth
| SiSoft Sandra - Memory bandwidth - Integer | GB/sec | Percent |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 22.68 | 117.63 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 22.40 | 116.18 % |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 21.54 | 111.72 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 21.46 | 111.31 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 21.27 | 110.32 % |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 21.13 | 109.60 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 19.36 | 100.41 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 19.30 | 100.10 % |
| Asus P8P67 WS Revolution | 19.28 | 100.00 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 19.22 | 99.69 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 19.16 | 99.38 % |
| Asus P8P67-M EVO | 18.84 | 97.72 % |
| ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe | 18.00 | 93.36 % |
| Intel mATX DH67BL | 17.75 | 92.06 % |
| ASUS P8H67-M Evo | 17.70 | 91.80 % |
| more is better | ||
| SiSoft Sandra - Memory bandwidth - floating point | GB/sec | Percent |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 22.69 | 117.81 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 22.40 | 116.30 % |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 21.53 | 111.79 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 21.47 | 111.47 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 21.25 | 110.33 % |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 21.14 | 109.76 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 19.36 | 100.52 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 19.35 | 100.47 % |
| Asus P8P67 WS Revolution | 19.26 | 100.00 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 19.22 | 99.79 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 19.20 | 99.69 % |
| Asus P8P67-M EVO | 18.83 | 97.77 % |
| Intel mATX DH67BL | 17.75 | 92.16 % |
| ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe | 18.00 | 93.46 % |
| ASUS P8H67-M Evo | 17.72 | 92.00 % |
| more is better | ||
Memory latency
| SiSoft Sandra - Memory latency | ns | Percent |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 59.0 | 90.91 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 59.3 | 91.37 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 64.7 | 99.69 % |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 63.5 | 97.84 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 64.5 | 99.38 % |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 64.8 | 99.85 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 64.9 | 100.00 % |
| Asus P8P67 WS Revolution | 64.9 | 100.00 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 65.1 | 100.31 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 65.2 | 100.46 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 65.3 | 100.62 % |
| Asus P8P67-M EVO | 68.9 | 106.16 % |
| ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe | 70.8 | 109.09 % |
| ASUS P8H67-M Evo | 73.0 | 112.48 % |
| Intel mATX DH67BL | 73.3 | 112.94 % |
| less is better | ||
Memory and cache access
| SiSoft Sandra - Memory and cache access | GB/sec | Percent |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 102.66 | 107.24 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 102.44 | 107.01 % |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 102.20 | 106.76 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 101.65 | 106.18 % |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 101.60 | 106.13 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 101.50 | 106.03 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 96.00 | 100.28 % |
| ASUS P8H67-M Evo | 96.64 | 100.95 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 96.00 | 100.28 % |
| Asus P8P67 WS Revolution | 95.73 | 100.00 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 95.62 | 99.89 % |
| ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe | 95.00 | 99.24 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 95.31 | 99.56 % |
| Intel mATX DH67BL | 94.45 | 98.66 % |
| Asus P8P67-M EVO | 93.45 | 97.62% |
| more is better | ||
Discuss this article in the forums
[pagebreak]
Super Pi 1M - 32M / wPrime 32M
Meanwhile Super Pi even in its latest version has become pretty old. Never the less it is able to show scaling to the clock speed nicely.
Super Pi 1M
| Super Pi 1.5 XS - 1M | sec | Percent |
| Asus P8P67 WS Revolution | 11.325 | 100.00 % |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 11.341 | 100.14 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 11.341 | 100.14 % |
| ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe | 11.341 | 100.14 % |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 11.347 | 100.19 % |
| ASUS P8H67-M Evo | 11.356 | 100.27 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 11.356 | 100.27 % |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 11.357 | 100.28 % |
| Asus P8P67-M EVO | 11.357 | 100.28 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 11.372 | 100.42 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 11.373 | 100.42 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 11.404 | 100.70 % |
| Intel mATX DH67BL | 11.404 | 100.70 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 11.435 | 100.97 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 11.466 | 101.25 % |
| less is better | ||
Super Pi 32M
| Super Pi 1.5 XS - 32M | sec | Percent |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 606.295 | 97.40 % |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 607.120 | 97.53 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 609.992 | 97.99 % |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 610.959 | 98.15 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 613.299 | 98.53 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 615.530 | 98.89 % |
| ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe | 623.877 | 98.88 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 620.803 | 99.73 % |
| ASUS P8H67-M Evo | 620.928 | 99.75 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 621.552 | 99.85 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 621.942 | 99.91 % |
| Asus P8P67 WS Revolution | 622.473 | 100.00 % |
| Intel mATX DH67BL | 623.002 | 100.08 % |
| Asus P8P67-M EVO | 623.143 | 100.11 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 623.549 | 100.17 % |
| less is better | ||
wPrime 32M
wPrime is based on a multithreaded algorithm to calculate the square root to up to 32 billion digits. Therefore it is possible to put 100 percent load on every core or thread and to see differences between architectures.
| wPrime - 32M | sec | Percent |
| Asus P8P67 WS Revolution | 9.263 | 100.00 % |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 9.264 | 100.01 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 9.268 | 100.05 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 9.280 | 100.18 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 9.298 | 100.38 % |
| Asus P8P67-M EVO | 9.298 | 100.38 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 9.314 | 100.55 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 9.469 | 102.22 % |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 9.595 | 103.58 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 9.657 | 104.25 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 9.658 | 104.26 % |
| ASUS P8H67-M Evo | 9.748 | 105.24 % |
| ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe | 9.779 | 105.57 % |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 9.812 | 105.93 % |
| Intel mATX DH67BL | 9.953 | 107.45 % |
| less is better | ||
Discuss this article in the forums
[pagebreak]
Games
Crysis 800 x 600, low details
Crysis is still one of the games which has very high system requirements. Therefore developer Crytek implemented Direct3D-10-API, High-Dynamic-Range-Rendering, Parallax Occlusion Mapping, Soft Shadows, Motion Blur, Depth of Field as well as Soft Particles. We test Crysis by using DirectX9 to show CPU-sacaling especially which low resolutions. If we look at the high resolutions we are able to spot that the CPUs influence compared to the graphic card becomes much less important.
| Crysis DirectX9 (800 x 600 low details) | fps | Percent |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 90.16 | 104.04 % |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 90.16 | 104.04 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 89.80 | 103.62 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 89.75 | 103.57 % |
| Asus P8P67-M EVO | 89.05 | 102.76 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 89.01 | 102.71 % |
| Asus P8P67 WS Revolution | 86.66 | 100.00 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 86.61 | 99.94 % |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 84.64 | 97.67 % |
| ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe | 84.64 | 97.67 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 84.26 | 97.23 % |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 83.42 | 96.26 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 83.27 | 96.09 % |
| ASUS P8H67-M Evo | 81.77 | 94.36 % |
| Intel mATX DH67BL | 81.22 | 93.72 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro (with Lucid Virtu) | 78.94 | 91.09 % |
| more is better | ||
Resident Evil 800 x 600, low details
Resident Evil uses nearly every modern rendering technology: HDR, Hemisphere Lighting, Soft Shadows, Soft Particles, Field- und Motion-Blur oder auch Alpha to Coverage and static Ambient Occlusion. Furthermore Resident Evil 5 has been optimized for multicore architectures and already comes DirectX11 ready. By using the DirectX9 benchmark we can again show CPU-scaling with low resolutions and the compared to the CPU overproportional influence of the graphics card at high resolutions.
| Resident Evil DirectX9 (800 x 600 low details) | fps | Percent |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 175.1 | 107.23 % |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 174.8 | 107.04 % |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 174.5 | 106.86 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 173.4 | 106.18 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 172.6 | 105.70 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 171.6 | 105.08 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 169.5 | 103.80 % |
| ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe | 169.4 | 103.74 % |
| Intel mATX DH67BL | 167.3 | 102.45 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 169.4 | 103.74 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 169.3 | 103.67 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 168.5 | 103.18 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro (with Lucid Virtu) | 167.0 | 102.27 % |
| ASUS P8H67-M Evo | 166.7 | 102.08 % |
| Asus P8P67-M EVO | 166.5 | 101.96 % |
| Asus P8P67 WS Revolution | 163.3 | 100.00 % |
| more is better | ||
Street Fighter 4 800 x 600, low details
Street Fighter 4 comes with an extra benchmark version which makes testing you system childrens play. At low resolutions the system requirements are pretty low and we can see CPU-scaling in the results. At high resolution the graphic card becomes more important and the CPUs clock speed has less influence on the fps.
| Street Fighter 4 (800 x 600 low details) | fps | Percent |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 573.97 | 100.73 % |
| Asus P8P67 WS Revolution | 569.79 | 100.00 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 569.21 | 99.90 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 568.30 | 99.74 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 568.25 | 99.73 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 568.00 | 99.69 % |
| Asus P8P67-M EVO | 567.88 | 99.66 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 563.66 | 98.92 % |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 550.85 | 96.68 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 547.15 | 96.03 % |
| ASUS P8H67-M Evo | 543.94 | 95.46 % |
| ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe | 543.77 | 95.43 % |
| Intel mATX DH67BL | 541.17 | 94.98 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 538.99 | 94.59 % |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 514.97 | 90.38 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro (with Lucid Virtu, only integrated graphics active) | 163.34 | 28.67 % |
| more is better | ||
Discuss this article in the forums
[pagebreak]
Overclocking
| CPU-z | MHz | Percent |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 5'200 | 100.00 % |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 5'200 | 100.00 % |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 5'200 | 100.00 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 5'200 | 100.00 % |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 5'200 | 100.00 % |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 5'200 | 100.00 % |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 5'200 | 100.00 % |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 5'200 | 100.00 % |
| Intel DP67BG | 5'200 | 100.00 % |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 4'600 | 88.46 % |
| more is better | ||
| Super Pi 1M | sec |
| Intel DP67BG | 7.207 |
| Asus Maximus IV Extreme | 7.207 |
| ASUS P8Z68-V Pro | 7.216 |
| ASUS Sabertooth P67 | 7.241 |
| MSI Big Bang Marshal P67 | 7.252 |
| Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 | 7.264 |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD4 | 7.282 |
| Gigabyte P67A-UD7 | 7.298 |
| MSI P67A-GD65 | 7.302 |
| ASRock Fatal1ty P67 Professional | 8.128 |
| less is better |
Discuss this article in the forums
[pagebreak]
Conclusion
| Allgemein | + | - | |
| Like its predecessor, the Z68X-UD7-B3 really is able to convince us. Also with this
board you get Gigabytes new color scheme which in our opionion is the
best looking at the moment. The layout has been very well thought too and
there is only one thing which could have been done better. This concerns
the PCI-Express slot which has been placed right next to the northbridge
cooler. As a result it is almost useless. On the other hand there are
the connectors at the bottom edge which are always accessible. There
won't be any graphics cards covering them because there is a PCI slot
inbetween. Another thing which might be kind of confusing is the fact that this board seems to be almost a copy of the P67A-UD7 - from a design and layout perspective. Never the less we think that Gigabyte did a reasonable descision. Equipping a board like this with onbaord VGA, DVI and HDMI ports makes no sense. People will buy or already own a dedicated garphics card eitherway. If you furthermore consider that Lucids Virtu Software is a flop there are even more pro arguments supporting this descision. |
- Design - Layout |
||
| Layout | + | - | |
| Generally the Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3s layout is very well thought. Once more very practical are the angled SATA connectors as well as the power- and reset-buttons. Also the debug display can become very useful in case you should have issues with a component in your system or the board itself. Furthermore the placement of the PCI-Express x16 slots is well thought too and therefore nothing needs to be criticized at this point. The only thing we didn't like about the layout concerns the PCI-Express x1 slot right next to the northbridge cooler. It has been place that close the it's almost useless. | - Angled SATA connectors - Power/Reset-Button onboard - Debug display - Connectors a the bottom edge accessible in any case |
- PCI-Express x1 slot too close to the northbridge cooler | |
| Performance | + | - | |
| In general this board
is an average performer. It is able to show it's muscles in Super Pi but
on the other hand during our gaming benchmarks it wasn't able to fully
convince. But never the less, from a performance point of view this
board leaves a solid impression. If we look a the performance when Lucid Virtu is activated we see that there is a drop in the single digit percentage range. Therefor the question we've been raising earlier in this review gets some more substance and we don't really understand the point of this software. |
-
3DMark - SiSoft Sandra |
- Crysis - StreetFighter |
|
| Overclocking / BIOS | + | - | |
| Focussing only on the settings, overclocking definitely isn't something unknown for the P68Z-V Pro. Furthermore we also reached the maximum clock speed of our test CPU, which is 5'200 MHz. Looking at the P68Z-V Pros EFI BIOS we find it well structured. You'll quickly find all the different settings and it also resets itself if you should set values that do not work. | - Well structured BIOS
|
- No UEFI | |
| Recommendation | + | - | |
| If you want to build a gaming PC or a well performing desktop rig then the ASUS P8Z68-V Pro will be a safe bet. For a very competitive price you'll get a lot of performance. | -
Gaming PC - Performance Desktop |
Discuss this article in the forums
Author: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch Copy edited and translated: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch c.ney@ocaholic.ch