EDITOR’S CHOICE
AWARD
GIGABYTE Z77X-UD4H
RRP: TBA | Website: www.gigabyte.com
Test Machine
Intel Core i7 3770K
MSI NGTX680 Lightning
(310.64)
Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB
CoolerMaster Silent Pro M2
1500W
Windows 7 64-bit SP1 /XP SP3
H
ow do you improve on
an already impressive
motherboard, but not
price it much higher than
the previous iteration? A
question I suspect came up
a few times at GIGABYTE in
whatever dialogues that may
have taken place before the
production of this board.
See, essentially what the
UD4H is, is a refreshed
10 The OverClocker Issue 22 | 2012
UD3H. Some may even find
it unnecessary because
in essence the boards are
identical. Component wise,
very little has changed
like the audio controller
which has been switched
back to the Realtek ALC892
(replacing the VIA VT2021)
and the Realtek Gigabit LAN
chip instead of the Atheros
chip. Short of that it’s hard
to tell the boards apart when
reading the specifications.
That doesn’t though mean
the boards are the same in
performance or overclocking
headroom. For instance,
the inconsistency of the
UD3H is largely done away
with. On rare occasions, two
UD3H boards would offer
remarkable differences in
overclocking headroom.
This was true as well for the
UD5H if not more so. This
time all of that is a thing of
the past and the UD4H will
give you predictable results
every time, all the time. This
should bring a bit of a relief
for those looking at a budget
overclocking board and
were considering going the
GIGABYTE direction.
During our time spent with
the board, we discovered that
despite it being designated as
a budget board, we genuinely
like the UD4H above all
other Z77X motherboards
from GIGABYTE. This is
especially because it’s such
a great memory overclocker,
something you could hardly
say about the UD3H. Whatever
magic GIGABYTE worked
on the UD4H has turned an
already great motherboard
into one of the most efficient
and complete Z77 products on
the market.
Just to highlight this new
found overclocking capacity.