Benchmarks
All results were obtained at 5GHz on a normal install of Windows 7 64-bit and WinXP. These are our results, yours may vary so
only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system.
Drive
Average Read
Average Write
IO Meter IOPS
4K Write
Average IO Response
Max IO Response Time
Plextor M3 PRO 256GB SSD
533
436.9
29325.11
258.7
0.2726
7.8768
Plextor M3 256GB SSD
499.1
360.6
27060.1
266.6
0.2955
8.9941
Intel 520 240GB SSD
475.6
310.5
21603.1
258.2
0.3701
41.171
Corsair ForceGT 120GB
469.1
163.1
13993.4
159
0.5715
40.871
So compelling was
this motherboard
that is started a rap
competition. If you didn't
see the entries check
them out here
possible you may have to look at
other boards. With specifically
our sample and CPU our IMC
was not capable of anything
higher than 2,700MHz when
using air cooling and we used
numerous equally proficient
boards to verify this. So memory
frequency was always going
to be a dead end as something
we can’t really test; however
what we did notice is that on this
board we could easily produce
some impressive CL6 results.
The best we could achieve with
a fairly temperamental CPU
was 1,284MHz 6-10-6-24 1T.
Best of all these settings were
fairly stable so it wasn’t only
for verification purposes but
settings you could actually use
for benchmarks. Sadly however,
CL7 was a no go at least with
TWL at 7 as well. This was
disappointing a little but we
suspect this has everything to
do with the AxeRam kit we used
more than the board.
Back to the board layout, as
mentioned earlier we really
can’t fault GIGABYTE on this.
It’s well spaced out, has all the
clear CMOS, Power and Reset
buttons in the right place and
best of all has better placing
of the POST LED than the
UD5H. Since this board will
not do three-way multi-GPU
graphics, the odds of you using
the very last PCIe slot for a full
length graphics card are slim
so you’re likely to always have
full view of the POST LED. In
contrast to the UD5H where
it’s located on the bottom right
corner, where the PSU ATX
cable may sometimes obscure
the display from view. To the
UD3H’s arsenal, GIGABYTE
has added a BIOS switch to
the mix where you can have
separate profiles to seal the
deal as the cheapest but most
feature packed board we’ve
tested thus far.
Even if you’re not a fan of
GIGABYTE boards for some
reason, for the asking price this
board deserves a chance and
odds are you’re unlikely to be
disappointed as there just isn’t
anything on the market that will
match the UD3H at this price.
This one isn’t perfect, but it gets
two thumbs up from us.
[ The Overclocker ]
Summary
The least amongst the
GIGABYTE Z77 range is
our favourite by some
margin. Great layout,
features and BIOS
options so there isn’t
much not to like about
the UD3H. It’s very
affordable and proves
as equally capable as
the more expensive
boards. If multi-GPU
overclocking is your
thing you’ll have to
look somewhere else
of course, but if single
GPU overclocking is
all you care for much
like us here, this is the
board to buy. We’d wager
that there isn’t a more
efficient board out there
right now at anything
close to this price.
Would you buy it?
Most certainly and just so
we can have one always
ready for LN2, we’d buy
two boards.
The Score
9/10
Issue 20 | 2012 The OverClocker 15