P67 Motherboard Roundup: Nine $150-200 Boards

Features
By Thomas Soderstrom
published

Improved per-clock performance and higher achievable frequencies are sure to put Intel’s latest K-Series CPUs on top of many builders’ whish lists, but they’ll still need a new socket to put it in. We test nine enthusiast-oriented LGA-1155 motherboards.

P67A-UD4 BIOS

While the page title “BIOS” might not be descriptive for UEFI boards, Gigabyte’s P67A-UD4 doesn’t have that problem. This is the only product in the roundup to use real, old-fashioned BIOS complete with its benefits and limitations.

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To begin, overclocking is easier. Gigabyte’s BIOS allowed us to disable all those nice power-saving features and instead “lock in” the multiplier we really wanted. This might not be in lock-step with Intel's recommendations, which competing manufacturers followed, but it's significantly more intuitive. Overclocking via Turbo Boost is still an option for those who prefer to save a little power at low loads.

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A wide range of memory timings are also available, with “Auto” mode for individual timings making it easy to adjust only the familiar ones.

Voltage settings are expanded to include DRAM reference and termination values. The P67A-UD4 also supports Gigabyte’s “F11” and “F12” commands from the main menu to store custom configurations as profiles and restore previous settings that haven’t been manually saved.

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.