Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD7-B3 mainboard Review Intro
Bluetooth 28 Jun 2011

If you have been longing to buy the top notch Intel P67 board, you should hold your horses and check out the Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD7-B3 mainboard.

Gigabyte seems to have chosen the Z68 chipset for it’s high end board, enhancing the feature set on P67 with a subset of the Z68 feature. The Intel Smart Response Technology that caches and speed up your disk access.

With GIGABYTE EZ Smart Response it does all of this automatically, without users having to perform a complicated install process. This allows them to quickly and effortlessly enjoy a significant boost in system performance. This is not the case for other vendor’s boards.

Gigabyte incorporated TOUCH BIOS, a new way to change settings in your BIOS just like an iPhone from within Windows with a click or finger (with touch screen panels).

Although it supports this good feature of the Z68, this board does not come with any video output port. Basically you cannot use it as a standalone board with graphics unlike other Z68 boards. Lucid Virtu is also not supported to tap the video transcoding power of the Core i5 processor.

The mainboard supports 4 x 1.5V DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting up to 32 GB of system memory of DDR3-2133/1866/1600/1333/1066 MHz memory modules with XMP. For multimedia, it is equipped with Realtek ALC889 audio codec for 7.1 with Dolby Home Theater. There is also dual GbE with Teaming.

On board, there are 2 x PCI Express x16 slots, running at x16 (PCIEX16_1, PCIEX16_2). Another 2 x PCI Express x16 slots, running at x8 (PCIEX8_1, PCIEX8_2).  The PCIEX8_1 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16_1 slot and the PCIEX8_2 slot with PCIEX16_2. The PCIEX16_1/PCIEX16_2 slot will operate at up to x8 mode when the PCIEX8_1/PCIEX8_2 is populated. There is  x PCI Express x1 slot and 2 x PCI slots. The PCIe 2.0 supports 2-Way/3-Way ATI CrossFireX™/NVIDIA SLI technology.

The Intel Z68 chipset supports

Chipset:

1. 2 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (SATA3_0, SATA3_1) supporting up to 2 SATA 6Gb/s devices
2. 4 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (SATA2_2~SATA2_5) supporting up to 4 SATA 3Gb/s devices
3. Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10

In addition, the two Marvell chips suppot

1. 2 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (GSATA3_6, GSATA3_7) supporting up to 2 SATA 6Gb/s devices
2. 2 x eSATA 6Gb/s connectors (eSATA/USB Combo) on the back panel supporting up to 2 SATA 6Gb/s devices
3. Support for SATA RAID 0 and RAID 1

The board has plenty of USB 2.0/3.0 ports.

Chipset:

1. Up to 8 USB 2.0/1.1 ports (4 on the back panel, including 2 eSATA/USB Combo, 4 via the USB brackets connected to the internal USB headers)

2 x Renesas D720200 chips and 2 x VLI VL810 hubs:

1. Up to 10 USB 3.0/2.0 ports (6 on the back panel, 4 via the USB brackets connected to the internal USB headers)
   * The USB 2.0 signals of the 6 USB 3.0/2.0 ports on the back panel are from the Chipset.

As for 1394, the T.I. TSB43AB23 chip:

1. Up to 3 IEEE 1394a ports (2 on the back panel, 1 via the IEEE 1394a bracket connected to the internal IEEE 1394a header)

Other features include a 24 phase power design, dual CPU Power technology (workstation class redundant power design), 100% hardware VRD 12 compliant CPU power design, Driver MOSFETS.

Othe features include 108dB S/N ratio playback, DualBIOS 3TB+ HDD, Ultra durable 3, ON/Off charge technology, SuperSpeed USB 3.0, Turbo XHD, DES2, 10 USB 3.0 / 6SATA3, Cloud OC, Auto Green etc.

ASRock H67M-GE/HT Intel H67 board review  – Introduction
Bluetooth 5 Dec 2010 (updated 7 Jan 2011)

Early next year, Intel will be releasing it’s new generation of Intel Sandy bridge processors. No doubt you would need a new motherboard to support the new processors with integrated graphics and memory within the processor. The new processor is somewhat going to change the perception of integrated graphics. HD decoding is nothing new. How about 3D and improved transcoding speed of the new processor.

The new Sandy Bridge processor improves on a number of areas and they include INTEL Quick Sync Video which allows fast conversion of video files for portable media players or online sharing.

It also brings Full BluRay 3D playback with HD 1080p over HDMI 1.4 with 3D with Intel InTru 3D technology. HD playback is also improved with it’s Clear Video technology.

The new processor embedded graphics is improved with Intel HD Graphics 2000/3000 with DX10.1, OpenGL 3.0. Last but not least, Intel AVX (Advanced Vector Experience) brings improved performance for video and image editing.

Today, we take a look at the ASRock H67M-GE/HT mATX mainboard which supports the LGA1155 processor. The ASRock H67M-GE/HT is a nicely laid out board using 100% all solid capacitors. It supports the new generation K series unlock processors and dual channel DDR3-1333.

Although the socket type doesn’t fit the old LGA1156, you do not need to change your existing heatsinks as it supports Combo Cooler Option. There are multiple holes for you to mount older generation of heatsinks on this new socket. So you can save some money to get more peripherals.

On the mainboard, there are 2 USB 3.0 ports at the rear, PCIe GbE, Multi vga output options including D-SUB, DVI-D, HDMI and Displayport. There is also front USB 3.0 support using the bundled USB 3.0 front panel.

ASRock on it’s new generation boards uses Etrontech USB 3.0 controller which is supposedly faster than the NEC USB 3.0 chipset. It claims that it is 3.7% faster than NEC in CyrstlaDiskMark 3.0 (Read Seq)  and 97.7% (8M Write) faster in ATTO Disk benchmark.

In addition, ASRock also bundled in a MCE remote controller & multi angle receiver allowing you to control your PC using the remote control thrown in for FREE. On top of that, ASrock also bundled a 3D Red/Cyan Anaglyph Glasses, allowing you to enjoy 3D with Intel INTRU 3D technology. You no longer need to buy special monitor to view 3D Bluray as it is able to decode Stereoscopic 3D Bluray playback in full HD 1080p resolution over HDMI 1.4a.

For those who prefer the old text based BIOS, be in for a treat as UEFI BIOS now gives you a graphical visual display of yoru system. You can now control different aspects of the BIOS using a mouse. UEFI also supports bootable HDD over 2TB.

For overclockers, ASRock includes AXTU. AXTU is a tuning program software utility that suppoerts overclocking and hardware tuning such as energy usage, hardware monitoring and speed control and OC DNA.

On the next few pages, we will take a look at the board layout and chipsets.

We have just posted our part 1 of our review of the upcoming ASRock H67M-GE/HT Mainboard based on the next generation Intel chipset. The package has some interesting features. They include 3D glasses in the package, non NEC USB 3.0 controllers etc. A new graphical BIOS and a new set of tools for overclocking. Check out the details here

http://en.ocworkbench.com/tech/asrock-h67m-geht-intel-h67-board-review-first-look/

According to our sources, P67 boards should reach retail markets as early as Mid November 2010.

Although the boards will appear on the market, the new processors with 1155 is slated to be lanuched in January 2011 or so. The new embedded graphics on these processors is said to have a 25% improvement in performance over the current LGA1156 processors.

Currently, Intel P55 and H55 boards support overclocking. Unfortunately, the next generation H67 will not support overclocking. So, if you need to overclock, you would have to go for discrete solution, the P67.

Stay tuned to ocworkbench for more updates on these upcoming chipsets and processors.

IDF 2010 : Gigabyte’s Sandy Bridge Motherboard sighted at IDF 2010

The first Gigabyte board with Intel P67 chipset using the Socket 1155 is sighted at IDF 2010 in San Francisco.

Gigabyte showcase two boards model P67A-UD5 and P67-UD7. Both are high end board with a blue and a black PCB respectively.

Intel P67 is a discrete chipset unlike the H67. It is suppose to support both CrossFire X and SLI. It is suspected that the Gigabyte P67 might licensed SLI support through the use of the NF200 SLI chipset from NVIDIA.

The P67-UD5 has 2 x USB 3.0 ports while the P67-UD7 has 4 instead. Native support of SATA 6.0Gbps (SATA 3) is now embedded within the Intel chipset. Thus, it doesn’t require additional supporting chips for that.

Both boards are suspected to be ready by Jan 2011 when the CPU is launched.

Intel will launch new series of P67 and H67 chipsets in Jan 2011 with 25% graphics improvement

It is annual update with chipsets. Intel is slated to launch the P67 and H67 chipsets in Jan 2011. Board manufacturers are eagerly awaiting for the new processors and chipsets as they already have the boards ready for the new yr.

For those who have seen our report of Computex 2010, you would have seen some early static boards of P67 or H67.

Basically, the P67 and H67 do not differ much from it’s predecessors the P55 and H55. Basically the P67 is discrete while the H67 has graphics output ports on the mainboard.

One thing to note is that the P67 and H67 will support new series of processors with LGA1155 socket. Thus, your current processors won’t run on the new boards with new chipsets.

The new processors with 1155 is slated to be lanuched in January 2011 or so. The new embedded graphics on these processors is said to have a 25% improvement in performance over the current LGA1156 processors.

Currently, Intel P55 and H55 boards support overclocking. Unfortunately, the next generation H67 will not support overclocking. So, if you need to overclock, you would have to go for discrete solution, the P67.

While many manufacturers are  showcasing Intel X58 with USB3, SATA3 or unlocking bios of their 890FX boards, BIOSTAR has put up three futuristic boards on display. They are the Intel P67, H67 and H61 chipsets mainboard.

The Intel 6 series chipset is to pair up with the upcoming processor Sandy Bridge. It is a single chipset design. There are 3 models – P67, H67 and H61 and will form the LGA1155 platform. (yes a change of socket is imminent). It will be released in 1H 2011 and will replace the current LGA1156. The LGA1366 will also be replaced by LGA2011 in 3Q 2011, probably with INtel X68.

Biostar has two static display at Computex. The first model is based on Intel P67 chipset model “TP67XE”.  It has 8 phase power, 4 DIMMs of dual channel DDR3, PCIe x16, PCIe x1, 2 PCI and 5 SATA 6Gbps ports, 8 ch audio, GbE, Debug LED. The backplate has SPDIF, 1394, eSATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 ports.

The second model on display is TH67XE based on Intel H67 chipset. This is a microATX board with 4 DIMM slots, 2 PCIe x16, 1 PCIex1, 1 PCI, 5 SATA 6Gbps. 8 ch audio, GbE, SPDIF, DVI HDMI Displayport, USB 3 can be found on the backplane of the board.

The SATA 6Gbps support is from the P67/H67 chipset while the USB 3.0 still relies on a 3rd party solution (NEC?).  There is also no mention of the improvements of the integrated display within the H67 chipset.