hers123 :
Hey. I'm having a little problem with picking motherboard. I don't want to do OC. I just need to put i5 4460 and 8gb RAM to MB. Which gigabyte mb should i pick? is the ga h81m hd3 better than cheaper (but not that popular) ga h81m ds2? Is there any difference? And will I have to update BIOS to use i5 4460 with these motherboards? Thanks your for answers
Out of those two Gigabyte motherboards the GA-H81M-HD3 is the better one with the following extras/better features, which are not available on GA-H81M-DS2:
1 x DVI-D port, supporting a maximum resolution of 1920x1200
* The DVI-D port does not support D-Sub connection by adapter.
1 x HDMI port, supporting a maximum resolution of 4096x2160
* Support for HDMI 1.4a version.
1 x DisplayPort, supporting a maximum resolution of 3840x2160
* Support for DisplayPort 1.2 version.
* The DisplayPort does not support other types of display connections by adapter.
Better on-board audio, with six ports in the rear:
Realtek® ALC892 codec
High Definition Audio
2/4/5.1/7.1-channel
Support for S/PDIF In/Out
Extra PCI Slots:
1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16
1 x PCI Express x1 slot
(The PCI Express slots conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
2 x PCI slots
Dedicated chip for USB:
VIA® VL805 chip: 4 x USB 3.0/2.0 ports on the back panel
Full Comparison here -
http://www.gigabyte.in/products/comparison/list.aspx?ck=2&pids=5218,5248
On the budget motherboards, the Gigabyte GA-H81M-HD3 is pretty good one. I would suggest you stick with this motherboard.
Yes, you may need to update the BIOS for any H81/87/B85 chipset based motherboards in order for them to recognize and support any Haswell Refresh CPUs. i5 4460 is a Haswell Refresh.
If you don't want to deal with this BIOS update, I would suggest the i5 4440, as the performance difference is highly negligible or even non-existent in gaming compared to i5 4460 and also no BIOS update required, will work right out of the box.
Cheers!