[XS]Gigabyte's P67A-UD4 Sandy Bridge Motherboard Preview

[opethian]

http://img444.imageshack.us/i/anner.jpg/

Gigabyte's P67A-UD4 Sandy Bridge Motherboard
Early next January these boards and the rest of the new line will be released, most likely at CES.


I recieved today a sample from Gigabyte to run through it's paces and give it a good testing.

So let's start of with the unboxing of this new board.
The front and back of the package.





Opening the box we find the usual assortment of parts & manuals.



Included in the bundle is:
Motherboard
Driver CD
User manual
Quick installation guide
Four SATA cables
I/O shield
2-way SLI connector

Gigabyte's P67A-UD4 Features
Industry’s leading 12 phase power design for maximum power delivery.
Onboard SuperSpeed USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps to deliver impeccable data transfer speeds.

GIGABYTE Ultra Durable™ 3 design with 2x Copper PCB to provide the stability, reliability and longevity essential to meet the power needs of high-end processors and other components running today’s most demanding applications and games.

Unique GIGABYTE 3x USB Power design with On/Off Charge USB ports to offer faster battery charging for iPhone, iPad and iPod devices.
New Matte Black color PCB offering a stylish new outlook that blends itself to decoration and case mods.

CrossFireX™ and Nvidia® SLI™ support for ultimate graphics performance
GIGABYTE patented DualBIOS™ technology delivering the highest level of failure protection.

Motherboard Pictures


For additional pictures please go >Here<


Now about heat sinks.
It would have been nice if Intel had decided to not come up with a new heat sink mounting hole pattern but it's not the case. How ever heat sinks like the Mega Shadow and a little fugging around will fit as you can see by these photos. The bad news is others that have a more rigid mounting system will not, like Corsairs H70 which I tried to fit, but it would not. So for the most part I think we will need to wait for adapter kits.




And as you can see here there is plenty of space to mount two fans on the Mega Shadow.


Some addition pictures of the test setup.
You can also see that there is plenty of space between a graphic card and the heat sink for added sound cards if wanted.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=263696

 

[AFQ]

Gigabyte has done phenomenal work this time. Great motherboards.

 

[syed misbah]

grat mobo yar

 

[LeGenD123]

Great motherboard, as expected.

However, poor job with accessories.

 

[sandford]

NIce big mobo there.

 

[zulfiqaralie]

Great piece of device, why such Brands are not officially available in Pakistan ................?

 

[Mazhar Ali Khan]

awesome board and love the esthetics........

 

[Lord Ammar]

black for ALL expansion slots including RAMs? getting a bit carried away arnt we gigabyte :/

 

[AI Protech]

Great motherboard.... Gigabyte is one of the best but i dont understand why no one wants to import em here....

 

[sunny945]

very nice black color scheme (2t) this motherboard is awesome

 

[Buckeye]

Just a update to this post.

Looking over at my main rig which still had 2x 260gtx's installed on it I decided it was time to get a few new cards.

On my main rig I like to run SLI, plus I have a ARC-1231ML Raid controller installed. I had thought about just getting 1x 580gtx but the price of those are just a bit to much for me at this time, and two of those would be over the top for me as I am not a heavy duty gamer anymore.

But I do like to game still so I was looking at the best bang for the buck I could get.

I have been looking at Gigabyte's Super Overclock 460gtx's for sometime. I really like these cards, they have great performance and the cooling system on them is very good. Plus the price of these cards is very good now.

So two Gigabyte Super Overclocked 460gtx's were ordered and I decided to run them on the P67A-UD4 setup and see what they could do.



And here they are installed on the P67A-UD4 system I have here.



These are very nice cards and perform really well for a system like this. Even at full fan speed they do not make that much noise. Heat output is not that bad either.

First test is 3DMark Vantage



Next is 3DMark 11



And finally the Heaven bench



I am not all that super crazy about the OC_Guru utility, it does work well but the graphics seem a bit cluttered. Maybe some different skins for this would make it easyier on the eyes.

Just with quick testing on air the highest overclock on these cards I was about to get was 950core with out any voltage bumps. This is really enough for gaming and anything higher just adds more heat output if installed in a case.



These cards really added a nice boost to the P67A-UD4 system and are a good match for this board and CPU. Newer graphics cards are great but with a 2500K going all out on GPUs might be a better to go with a 2600K and higher end motherboard.

 

[StrikerX]

AaaaaH... Nice mate. Try n OC them to 1GHz. A member here (MR AFQ) already did that on Sparkle X460G Calibre's.

---------- Post added at 05:03 AM ---------- Previous post was at 04:57 AM ----------

http://www.pakgamers.com/forums/f24...ing-fest-1000mhz-73606/index3.html#post983881

 

[Buckeye]

Yeah I am pretty sure they can go that high, but tbh there is no real need, at least for me. It just adds extra heat output and installed in a case I don't really need that.
On desktop right now I am looking at temps of 27c, while gaming Civ 5 last night I saw temps in the 40c's with everything maxed out in game and full screen windowed mode so I can alt-tab back and forth.

 

[Cyclone123]

Gigabyte has done phenomenal work this time. Great motherboards.

i just wish Alienware bhai will bring Gigabyte motherboards,,

i am waiting for that day to come true

 

[OmMeE]

Pretty darn nice..!!!