Gigabyte Z68X-UD7-B3 Review
Published by Marc Büchel on 07.07.11Page:
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 |
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Author: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch Copy edited and translated: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch c.ney@ocaholic.ch
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