away from what is otherwise a great motherboard . It ’ s the UEFI / BIOS has been the case for GIGABYTE boards for years on end . Probably the one major gripe that sets ROG boards apart from AORUS or GIGABYTE gaming products . That level of refinement and attention to detail is imply absent .
That said , you can work around these with some effort and still end up with an awesome motherboard and experience that is well worth your time and money . Outside of these UEFI issues , it ’ s pretty much smooth sailing and once you ’ ve adjusted to the odd way in which things work within the UEFI you ’ re ready to extract maximum performance from your CPU .
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION Given what this platform looked like in March and what it has delivered , it is safe to say there ’ s been a huge improvement . Just the performance figures alone that seemed impossible are not par for the course . It ’ s literally like a different platform . Some issues that are inherent in some games in regards to Ryzen are still prevalent , but the updates have mitigated these by some margin . It ’ s simply staggering what AMD has done along with GIGABYTE to bring this board and the entire platform to this level . On Amazon the current going price is $ 210 USD versus that of the MSI and ASUS boards at $ 299 and $ 252 USD respectfully . In light of this , the GAMING K7 from GIGABYTE is a bargain and it packs a wallop of a punch in performance . Despite its UEFI shortcomings , there ’ s enough going for it that it makes up for it and manages to be the most appealing board for amateur overclockers , gamers and anyone who is looking for a high end AM4 motherboard . Higher memory speeds may not be readily accessible , as 3,600MHz with relatively high DRAM timings is about the best you can get . Still , you ’ re better off at 3,400 or 3,466MHz if you have the DRAM for it . If not , 3200 will still give you plenty of performance and the good thing about the K7 is that it allows you all these options . Tweaking for even better performance will take some time , but out the box the board is already mighty fast .
TheOverclocker
Summary
At the going price you ’ ll struggle to do better than what the K7 is offering . It isn ’ t perfect and could do with some improvement software wise , but it makes up for these issues in how efficient it is and the functionality it provides . At the going price , it ’ s really hard to argue against this motherboard and as stated in the beginning it is my favourite AM4 board outside of competitive overclocking .
Would you buy it ?
YES !
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