Intel Z87 Motherboard Review with Haswell: Gigabyte, MSI, ASRock and ASUS
by Ian Cutress on June 27, 2013 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- MSI
- Gigabyte
- ASRock
- Asus
- Haswell
- Z87
- Shark Bay
- Lynx Point
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.
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ShieTar - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
Is there a special reason not to test the POST times and DPC latency of the Gigabyte Board? Its power consumption is quiet impressive, and whatever design measures have been used to achieve it do not seem to negatively affect the overall performance. So it would be interesting to complete the picture with the two measurements which are missing.IanCutress - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
DPC Latency on the Gigabyte during testing was jumping around a fair bit, hitting 800+, though that is more likely due to the early BIOS revision. I need to run the POST test (as the results are strangely missing from my database) as well as the DPC test on a newer BIOS. Since I started testing almost every manufacturer has released newer BIOSes (as is always the way coming up to a launch) and I really have to lay the hammer down as testing a whole new BIOS takes a good 30 hours or so start to finish, so when I'm locked in that's it. That in a way does give an unfair advantage to the board I test last, but there's not a lot else I can do. I am still getting emails of BIOS updates for these boards as of yesterday.Ian
tribbles - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
Am I wrong in thinking that Gigabyte hasn't been doing well in the DPC Latency Test since Z77? If so, that's kind of surprising, since Gigabyte seems to be a "go-to" brand for digital audio workstation builders.IanCutress - Wednesday, July 10, 2013 - link
I retested the UD3H on the F5 (public) BIOS, and it scored 164. The two next boards I have in for review got 160 and 157, which points fingers to the DPC on Haswell being 150+ regardless of motherboard. This might be a fundamental issue.Timur Born - Saturday, July 27, 2013 - link
Run Prime95 (or turn off CPU power features) while measuring DPC latencies to see how much CPU power saving features affect DPCs.jhonabundance - Thursday, August 28, 2014 - link
great share http://asus.comjhonabundance - Thursday, August 28, 2014 - link
this is the best share http://asus.comRick83 - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
Maybe a bad choice to use two different ways of graphing the Rightmark results.Being consistent with regard to cutting off the irrelevant bit of the graph makes it a much easier read.
Now it appears at first glance as though the Gigabyte board is much better in THD+N, simply because the differences were so minuscule in the dynamic range bit.
On another note: Shouldn't it be more interesting to use a standardized input instead of the input of the board? In the current protocol a good output could be handicapped by a bad input, and conversely. For most users the output is much more important than the input, so it might be better to test it independently? I would recommend using a USB soundcard as an easy means of doing this test on the same machine, without changing the setup protocol too much.
And finally - I seem to remember Rightmark results for earlier reviews - it would be interesting to have those (or maybe a reference soundcard?) as comparison in the same graph. After all, for DPC you maintain a large cross-platform table as well.
Nice thorough initial review, those nitpicks withstanding.
IanCutress - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
Unfortunately I can't adjust the engine to represent from 0 for negative values, I don't have access to the low level options. I forwarded it on as an issue.I'd love to use a standardized input with RMAA. I guess it would be good to get a sound card with an input that supercedes the output of the motherboard and put it through that way, and hopefully there won't be a driver conflict along the line. I'll see what I can do to get in the hardware for that, although many soundcards are designed more for output and the input dynamic range/distortion might be the limiting factor as is the case on motherboards. Something like the Xonar Essence STX has a 118 dBA input with -113 dBA THD+N which might be a good starting point.
Our RMAA testing for Z87 has changed a little from Z77 to make it more of an efficiency test rather than an out-the-box test as audio is such a varied playing field. RMAA is very sensitive to certain windows settings and volumes for example such that with the right combination it was very easy to show A>B or B>A depending on how the OS felt it should be set up. The new testing regimen for RMAA should iron out those issues but the results are not exactly comparable to Z77 for that reason. There are so many wrong ways to set up RMAA it can be difficult (and a learning experience) to get it right.
Ian
popej - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
Nice to see you are planning steps in right direction. Using reference card for measurements is a proper solution. Be aware, that separate card add complications to the test, for example you will have to take care about ground loops and signal level matching. Professional card with balanced input could help a lot.