Gigabyte X79-UD3 Motherboard Review

Motherboards/Intel S2011 by leeghoofd @ 2012-05-01

Even though main focus is lately on Ivy Bridge, let's not forget about Intel's High End range based on the X79 chipset. One of the main drawbacks of Socket 2011 is the total platform cost. Besides the quad core i7-3820, the hexacores versions cost a pretty penny. On top of that, most of the X79 mainstream boards are far from cheap. Prices of 250 euros and more are pretty common. Luckily for us Gigabyte and ASRock have got 'let's call them a more" budget friendly motherboard in their X79 lineup. Gigabyte's type numbering has always been kept pretty simple. Today's UD3 board is the entry board for their limited socket 2011 series. Limited, because Gigabyte only has got 3 boards left in the X79 range : the UD3, UD5 and a gamer orientated G1 Assasin 2 board. The X79-UD7 board has been EOL'ed. And till now there's still no sign of the X79-UD5 S(erver) version. But does a "cheap" board mean that the quality or performance is inferior ? Time to find out what this X79-UD3 has got in store for us.

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Results Part I

TEST SETUP:

 

Our test suite always starts off with for some two outdated benchmarks. SuperPi is just a single threaded that relies heavily on raw CPU power and bandwith. An excellent test to highlight instruction per clock efficiency. Wprime32 is multithreaded and heavily stresses all the available cores. Both tests are not considered as stability tests, but they already give a pretty good indication, if they pass flawlessly, that you are on the right track. The Pi 1M and Wprime 32 are very fast tests and over in a matter of seconds and we observe the little UD3 just taking the lead in Pi and shared first spot with the MSI GD65 8D. Note that all results are the best out of 3 runs. Don't expect to see any big performance differences as all boards are based on the same Intel X79 chipset. Bios optimisations are not done :we only set 45 x 100 Bclock, ram to 2133Mhz 9-11-10-27 1T ( no subtiming tweaking ) and finally the appropriate voltages for CPU and RAM. The board's bios has to take care of the rest.

 

 

The longer versions of the test highlight bios implementations by the bios engineers. The Pi 1M and Wprime 32 version are close to 100%  relying on the CPU power. With the extended versions ram subtimings, power delivery and co start to matter. And as usual ASUS does a fine job there, but there are no world shocking performance differences.

 

 

The Gigabyte X79-UD3 board stays well in front of the pack during our 2D test. So don't get fooled by it's low price. This board seems pretty well dialed in and is ready to serve s a stable platform for your next build.

 

 

 

In both of our Maxon's Cinebench tests the UD3 stays ahead of the competition and it's bigger brother the UD5. The differences however will not be noticed during daily work or usage...

 

 

 

 

In the rest of the multi-threaded suite, the UD3 is right in front. Not really the position where you expect the cheapest board of the here tested X79 boards to be at. This little UD3 is a really nice performing board.

 

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