Intel Z87 Motherboard Review with Haswell: Gigabyte, MSI, ASRock and ASUS

Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H Conclusion

As the first Z87 motherboard to arrive through my door, I was not entirely sure what I should be expecting.  I had been briefed on the merits of Haswell and Z87, but by and large we were going to see the next evolution of the platform mainly from the point of Flex IO and another CPU cadence step. 

I asked Gigabyte for a motherboard in the $200 +/- 10% range, and they kindly provided the Z87X-UD3H.  At first glance the motherboard looks unassuming, unlike some of the others tested in this review.  With this price point being a fulcrum point between the enthusiast models and the more budget conscious, it is important to step off on the right foot, and I am glad to say Gigabyte are moving in the right direction.

In a nutshell, we have a base Z87 motherboard in a PCIe 3.0 x8/x8 + PCIe 2.0 x4 configuration, featuring eight SATA 6 Gbps (six Intel, two from controller), two eSATA 6 Gbps ports, a total of ten (4+6) USB 3.0 ports, an Intel NIC, Realtek ALC898 audio, and a full gamut of video outputs.  Also on board we have a TPM, a COM port, a PCI slot, voltage read points, power/reset/Clear_CMOS buttons and a two digit debug.

The BIOS and Software have been updated for Z87, and are certainly in the right direction of where Gigabyte needs to be going in terms of modernization.  As with any new chipset release there are a few issues to iron out, which will hopefully be the focus for the internal design teams for the next few weeks at least.  Nonetheless overclocking performance was quite good, with our automatic options giving good stability in the mid 80C range and manual overclocks giving a more than comfortable 4.6 GHz at reasonable voltage.

Performance from the Z87X-UD3H was helped along by the motherboard automatically applying MultiCore Turbo during our normal benchmark suite, matching the other motherboards within statistical variation.  I was quite pleased to see the Gigabyte pull less than 500W during our dual-GPU power test. One initial downside of our performance testing came from a rather unsteady DPC Latency which was jumping around even at idle, but this was the result of the pre-release BIOS.  Updating to at least BIOS F5 from the GIgabyte website gives a more stable value similar to the other boards in this review.

The main critical point facing the UD3H in this review is from the competition.  Every other motherboard in this review has a functionality ace up its sleeve – the MSI has a Killer NIC, the ASRock has 802.11ac, and the ASUS has DIP4 (Dual Intelligent Processors) alongside an awesome hardware/software combination.  All three other boards also come with an upgraded Realtek ALC1150 audio codec compared to the ALC898 on the Gigabyte.  On the counter argument, the UD3H is cheaper than the rest ($170/180 vs. $190+), and it depends on how relevant those extra features become and if they are worth spending the extra $10-$50. 

From our pre-launch testing, the Gigabyte is a nice board to play with, and would satisfy almost every user looking for an ATX motherboard with some extra functionality over the standard Z87 chipset.  The only downside is where the competition stand of pricing, and whether the UD3H really needed a ‘knockout feature’ of its own.  For Z77 at this $180 price point the Z77X-UD5H was a polished product, and while chipset prices have increased since Z77 to Z87, a good shot around this price point is required.  Gigabyte also has the Z87X-OC motherboard at around $200, which should be an interesting comparison.