Tom’s Hardware recommends GIGABYTE Z68XP-UD3 in Z68 head-to-head

Writing for original PC Hardware review pioneers, Tom’s Hardware, the aptly named Thomas Soderstrom has put all his powers of adjudication to the test with a comprehensive comparison of some of the more affordable Intel Z68 motherboards on the market. Testing products from MSI, ASRock, Biostar, Intel and Gigabyte, we’re honored to report that Thomas eventually gave the final nod of approval to our Z68XP-UD3 board. Here’s a sample of what Thomas had to say about it:

“The Z68XP-UD3 firmly targets performance fanatics with a layout that eschews the use of integrated graphics as a primary output, instead favoring SLI and CrossFire.”

“Up against the limits of our intended budget, the Z68XP-UD3 is one of only two motherboards in today’s roundup to include a front-panel USB 3.0 header. The entirety of features would have made this a $160 board even if it had used the P67 chipset, so we’re not entirely clear how Gigabyte managed to retain this price with a Z68 product that includes Lucidlogix's Virtu license.”

“…After careful deliberation, Gigabyte’s Z68XP-UD3 gets our Recommended Buy award”.

Take in the entire Z68 head-to-head article on Tom’s Hardware here.

You can read the Chinese (中文版) version of this blog here.

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Tom’s Hardware Takes a First Look at AMD Llano for the Desktop

Tom's Hardware recently took a look at the nuts and bolts of AMD’s new Llano platform and came upon some interesting analysis. First off, they gave a shout out to GIGABYTE, noting that our GA-A75M-UD2H features Dual-link DVI and is the only board they had that provided DisplayPort connectivity as well.

Also, GIGABYTE’s board was singled out for its overclock ability:

I spent a couple of late nights chatting back and forth with the fine folks at ASRock and Gigabyte, who helped in near real-time with BIOS builds. Eventually, I was able to get Gigabyte’s A75M-UD2H dialed in at nearly 3.4 GHz (it’d run in excess of that, but crashed under load) using a 23.5x multiplier and 145 MHz reference clock reflected as 143.5 MHz. The APU only needed a .05 V bump to achieve those numbers, too…

Other boards simply wouldn’t overclock well at all, failing long before we were forced to fight a bus speed idiosyncrasy.

They also noted that memory really matters with this platform:

Despite marginal gains in application performance, the bottom line here is simple: if you want to get the best horsepower out of a Llano-based APU, that graphics engine needs to breathe. Memory able to support a high data rate at low latencies is absolutely imperative for the best possible frame rates in games.

Don’t sweat DDR3-1866 if it means CAS 8 or 9 timings. Aggressively-tuned DDR3-1600 looks to be the sweet spot.

Stay tuned to our blog for the next couple of weeks, as we will be doing some testing to show how memory and even overclocking on this entry platform can lead to some great performance and more than just playable DX11 gaming.

To read the full Llano overview on Tom’s, please visit HERE.

Chinese Version of this blog here

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