Many of Gigabyte’s competitors have disparaged the company’s use of a BIOS in an era of UEFI. But, at the same time, the only significant drawback we've seen associated with the older technology is complications with hard drives larger than 2 TB. We’re told that Windows 8 will make UEFI a more significant factor in motherboard selection, but that's still speculation until we see otherwise.

Gigabyte’s M.I.T. menu is little more than a placeholder for overclocking submenus, though repetitions from the power menu can help to simplify the overclocking process.

Advanced Frequency Settings include CPU and DRAM multipliers, plus base and graphics clocks. We used X.M.P. Profile 1 to test the board’s memory overclocking capability.

The Advanced Memory Settings menu includes redundant multiplier controls. Setting DRAM Timing Selectable to Quick allows both channels to be manually configured simultaneously.

Primary and secondary timings are easily adjusted from either or both of the Timing Settings submenus, depending on the DRAM Timing Selectable setting.

Graphics core and DRAM reference voltage are added to the traditional array of voltage settings. We achieved 1.35 V under full load by setting Multi-Steps Load-Line to Level 6.
- Four Z68 Express-Based Motherboards For Enthusiasts
- ASRock Z68 Extreme7 Gen3
- Z68 Extreme7 Firmware
- Asus P8Z68 Deluxe
- P8Z68 Deluxe Firmware
- Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD5
- Z68XP-UD5 Firmware
- MSI Z68A-GD80 (B3)
- Z68A-GD80 Firmware
- Test Settings And Benchmarks
- Benchmark Results: Crysis And F1 2010
- Benchmark Results: Just Cause 2 And Metro 2033
- Benchmark Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Benchmark Results: Productivity
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- Overclocking
- A Word On Warranties
- Whose Enthusiast-Class Z68 Board Is Best?
My AsRock AliveNF6G-VSTA in my warehouse full of dust, mites, cobweb still works.. Recently upgraded to 4GB RAM and GTS 450 1GB video card..
Gigabyte
MSI
Asus
Asrock
The answer to my first email question to Asus came a three full weeks later AFTER I had decided to return the board. AND the answer was an absolutely stupid response that did not address the real problem. Still wanting an answer to my question, I clarified the question and sent it back to Asus again. TWO weeks later I got ANOTHER asinine response from them. At that point I realized I was wasting my time.
I don't know how good AsRock's customer service is since I have not had a problem with the board.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/z68xp-ud3-dz68db,2980.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/z68xp-ud3-dz68db,2980.html
Crashman to the rescue again
Real enthusiasts, on the other hand don't use integrated graphics and already have a dedicated SSD. Enter P67 in the round-up and the winner would still be for almost 18 months running, the $255 Asus P67 WS Revolution.
Luay, real enthusiasts do use integrated graphics just they use it for Quick Sync only.
lol I have succesfully RMA'd many a part!!! Asus, Seagate, Sapphire, Asrock, you name it...
I am surprised at the gigabyte board. The power regulation seems too complicated to be useful, and the lack of UEFI seems strange and will hurt boot performance.
I could care less about using the 3rd pci 16x lane
If you've never gotten a warrenty back than you must have very bad luck. Most companies will happily send a replacement product. OCZ even works with oyu to ensure that you are satisfied with what you recieve back. Out of all the products I've sent in for warranties in the past 3 years, all 4 of them got a working product back. One I didn't bother to ship out because shipping was more than it was worth at the time.
I could care less about using the 3rd pci 16x lane
Agreed, Quads and Tri GPU's are just not worth the price at this stage.
Always had luck with Asus, Gigabyte and MSI boards.