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Gigabyte Z77-D3H and Z77X-UD5H Reviewed

Motherboards/Intel S1155 by leeghoofd @ 2012-06-24

Panther Point, the Z77 chipset, launched simultaneously with the brand new Intel Ivy Bridge CPU's. Supporting PCI-3.0, native USB3.0, high BCLK and RAM frequencies, but only if bundled with one of Intel's 3d generation CPU's. As usual, vendors launched a wide variety of boards, from low end basic OEM boards to high end gamer/overclocking versions. Choosing the right board is mainly always a matter of features, gimmicks, color schemes and surely the price tag. Today we review two of Gigabyte's offerings: the mainstream targeted GA Z77-D3H and the high end model, the GA Z77X-UD5H.

GA-Z77X-UD5H Contd.

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.

Comment from Teemto @ 2012/07/08

Seems like you had a lot of issues with the UD5H.

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