t-break: Tech @ Its Fastest » Motherboard

Gigabyte GA-X79-UD7 Review

Taimoor Hafeez — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:32:50 +0000

When last I looked at one of Gigabyte’s high-end motherboards, it was found wanting. It was good, but for the price it wasn’t as great as some of its closest competitors. Today I’ll be looking at the G1.Assassin 2’s distant cousin, the GA-X79-UD7. This is Gigabyte’s mainstream entry on the higher-end scale for the latest Sandy Bridge-E platform.

Looking at the packaging, it seems that Gigabyte decided to go with some very subtle. The whole package is just white, with shades of grey. On the back are the features and a picture of the motherboard itself, wherein you’ll see the black and orange color scheme.

Opening it up we notice a host of accessories. First of there are 4X SATA cables, a 4-way, 3-way and 2-way SLI bridges along with a CrossFireX bridge. There’s a USB 3.0 3.5”bracket with 2 ports to be hooked up upfront or at the back.

Apart from the I/O panel, there’s a Bluetooth + WiFi adapter with two antennae. Closing off we have the eSATA bracket. All of these combined with a 3 or 4-way SLI could result in a completely jam packed rear panel of your desktop casing.

Intel DX79SI Motherboard Review

Taimoor Hafeez — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 09:23:00 +0000

You’d be surprised to know that not a whole lot of people know Intel makes motherboards. The brand name is synonymous for processors of all kinds, and in recent years, some very high quality SSDs. But ask someone about an Intel motherboard and they’ll look at you confused.

Well, they do, and today I’ll be looking at their latest high-end DX79SI motherboard designed for the enthusiast community. Price at around $280, the DX79SI is not out to compete with the likes of ASUS RoG series or Gigabyte’s G1 series of motherboards. Instead, it’s content with providing you with a strong platform on which to work, but probably not exceed expectations.

The packaging itself is appropriate, with the Extreme Series skull on the top, underneath which is a see-through packaging to admire the motherboard itself. Inside you’ll find the usual manuals and CD, along with 4x SATA cables, one 2-way and one 3-way SLI bridge and a Bluetooth/WiFi module (not included in our test board). Oh, and a slim Extreme Series mouse pad.

VIA debuts Dual Core Pico-ITX Motherboard

Mohammad Qamar — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 19:59:23 +0000

VIA Technologies, a company that used to be at the forefront of microprocessor design in its heyday, seems to be trying to make a resurgence. With that in mind, on Wednesday they revealed the first ever dual core pico-ITX motherboard. The company has managed to squeeze in a respectable 1GHz VIA Eden X2 CPU and a VIA VX900H Media System Processor on to a minute board measuring a little less than 4.0” x 3”.

Four gigabytes of DDR3 memory, HD audio and 1080p HDMI video, VGA and 24-bit LVDS display connectivity all feature. The rear panel boasts one HDMI and one VGA port each, two USB 2.0 ports as well as a GigaLAN port. Couple that with onboard pin headers to gain five more USB 2.0 ports, an LPC connector, and SMBus connector, PS/2 support, audio jacks, LVDS, two UART ports and four pairs of DIO ports, and you have a mighty impressive little package indeed.

The VIA ChromotionHD 2.0 video engine is also present for high-performance HD video decoding, and according to VIA,

”The VIA ChromotionHD 2.0 engine provides advanced filtering and cutting edge post-processing to perform ultra smooth decoding of H.264, MPEG-2, VC-1, WMV9, and HDCP for Blu-ray content protection providing smooth playback of the most demanding multimedia titles at resolutions up to 1080p without incurring a heavy CPU load. The VIA EPIA-P900 features the VIA Vinyl VT2021, a 10 channel HD audio codec, delivering outstanding sound quality and support for Blu-ray and HD DVD Audio Content Protection.”

“The VIA Pico-ITX allows embedded system design to pack unprecedented levels of performance into even smaller form factors,” said Epan Wu Head of the VIA Embedded Platform Division, VIA Technologies, Inc. “The new VIA EPIA-P900 opens up exciting new possibilities for innovation in ultra compact embedded designs.”

This new baby looks set to spark a new embedded-solutions race, with traditional industry giants AMD and Intel coming under heavy fire from Nvidia’s and ARM’s embedded SoC solutions, which are massively more efficient and cost-effective than mobile versions of traditional AMD/Intel architectures. Embedded solutions like VIA’s are the only way forward, it seems, and a revolution in HTPC and tablet PC design, and hence gaming technology, is underway.

Here’s hoping VIA makes it with their EPIA-P900.

No information about actual consumer interest (read pricing or availability) was given, so stay tuned for the update.

You can visit the official site here.

Reviewed: ASUS F1A75-V PRO vs ECS A75F-A vs Gigabyte A75-D3H

Taimoor Hafeez — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 10:58:53 +0000

With the recent release of the new AMD Llano desktop motherboards, there is going to be a whole lot of choice for people to get a motherboard suitable for their needs. Now, Bear in mind that the AMD Llano desktop APUs aren’t exactly powerhouses when it comes to raw performance. They’re mid-range CPUs combined with lower-end GPUs on one die.

This means that you can have playable gaming performance for a resolution of 720p with 30+fps in most modern games, and much higher in older games. Alternatively it also makes one hell of an HTPC processor since it can easily power even the most demanding high-definition video files and Bluray movies with ease. All the while staying extremely cool.

So what I’m looking at today are three motherboards that promise to squeeze out every last drop of performance from your new AMD Llano APU. All of these boards have specific features to improve and enhance your experience and extend the usability of this new platform. So let’s move on to see today’s contenders.

Z68 Review: Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3-iSSD vs ASUS P8Z68-V Pro

Taimoor Hafeez — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 11:30:10 +0000

Intel’s Sandy Bridge platform launched with much gusto and fanfare earlier this year with significant advancements in performance. And while the updated Core-i3/i5/i7 processors showed both computing and onboard graphical prowess, to complete unleash all of its powers meant the consumer base had to be split. Not any more.

Basically, if you want to overclock a Sandy Bridge processor, first of all it has to be a “K” series CPU, meaning that all the cores are unlocked. Hence a Core i7-2600, for instance, cannot be overclocked, while the Core i7-2600K can indeed be overclocked from it’s stock 3.4GHz up to 5GHz and beyond. For overclocking the “K” series CPU and memory, one was limited to the P67 motherboards, while overclocking on the H67 motherboards was limited to the onboard integrated GPU. I have to say that Intel did design the H series motherboards for HTPCs and the like in mind, but to restrict the movements of the hardcore overclocking community with the P series was quite disappointing. What the Z68 platform brings is a combination of both the H series and the P series motherboards into one glorious package.

Apart form the fact that one is now able to overclock the CPU, memory and onboard GPU on the Z68 motherboards, we can now fully exploit Intel QuickSync feature on Sandy bridge processors thanks to Intel integration of the Lucid Virtu chipset. We’ve heard of Lucid previously as their previous Hydra technology allowed both Nvidia and AMD GPUs to work together on one motherboard. While that technology was severely limited to driver support and not adopted by many motherboard manufacturers, the Lucid Virtu is fully supported by Intel and we should be seeing it in pretty much all the Z68 motherboards.

The last great feature of the Z68 I want to touch on is the SSD caching in the form of Intel’s Smart Response Technology. Basically ISRT allows you to add an SSD and use it as a cache for your existing HDD. ISRT only works in RAID though, not AHCI or IDE, so you’ll have to reinstall Windows 7 on your HDD and set it up with RAID, unless you want to be greeted by BSOD galore. I have to say that I was a bit skeptical at first as to how fast this would really be, but after the tests the results look very promising indeed. More on that later however, let’s have a look at today’s contestants first.

MSI P67A-GD55 Sandy Bridge Motherboard Review

Taimoor Hafeez — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 12:24:38 +0000

I have already covered MSI’s P67A-GD65 in our roundup of some of the best premium motherboards for Intel’s new Sandy Bridge LGA 1155 processors where it performed admirably. Today I’ll be looking at the P67A-GD55 which is a step below the GD65 as it comes $20 cheaper and has some features missing.

So for $160 you get pretty much the entirety of the P67A-GD65, except for 2 less SATA III (6Gbps) ports, no eSATA ports (GD65 has two of those) and no voltage check point compared to the one on the GD65. That’s a fair enough reduction for $20 worth, but for those who plan to use more than two SATA III HDDs in the future, the GD65 maybe a more tempting offer.

Visually the P67A-GD55 has the exact same layout as the GD65, you’ll notice the missing voltage meter on the top right as well as the missing SATA III ports on the left of the SATA II ports near the bottom right.

Bundled with the MSI P67A-GD55 are four SATA cables (2x straight and 2x L-shaped), rear I/O panel cover, one SLI connector and a Drivers & Utilities software disc. Pretty basic stuff, but then again this is a $160 motherboard.

Gigabyte P67A-UD7 first look

Taimoor Hafeez — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 14:58:38 +0000

With the slew of new Intel Sandy bridge CPUs incoming next month, motherboard manufacturers are hard at work trying to get their latest and greatest into the market, ready for eager customers to lay down the buck. Gigabyte recently sent Tbreak their newest motherboard for the Intel LGA1155 chips, the P67A-UD7.

First look at the box and you can already tell that this is a premium item, what with the mirror gold and black finish. Inside you’ll find the gleaming motherboard, along with drivers & utilities disc, 3-way and 2-way SLi bridge, six SATA cables and an external SATA bracket along with manuals. However, what your eyes will focus on completely is the beauty of the P67A-UD7 itself. The gunmetal black and gold trim is mighty impressive to behold, and as your eyes will travel to the rest of the board, you’ll see that it’s nicely spaced out and has a lot of…well everything really.

Starting off from the top you’ll notice are the 24 power phases. Under normal operations they alternate between 12-phases on each reboot, however, all 24-phases can be activated in the BIOS should you want to reach overclocking extremes. On the right we have the four dual-channel DIMM ports which support up to 2133MHz ram.

On the top left we have the rear I/O panel which has 6x USB 3.0 (blue colored) ports at the back, plus 4x headers on the board itself. All 10 of these USB 3.0 ports are controlled by a two dual-port NEC controller chips. Then you have the standard USB 2.0 ports (yellow colored) and the eSATA/USB combo ports. The rest of the panel is finished off with Firewire, optical/SPDIF and Realtek audio ports.

Moving to the lower half we see the SATA ports, and the two SATA 6GB/s ports in white. Once again, we have two chips, Marvell in this case, controlling both the rear panel eSATA ports and the eight ports on the board. Just behind the SATA ports you’ll see the NF200 chip which is sitting snugly underneath the heatsink. The NF200 is used primarily to control the four 16x PCIe slots on the left. Providing 8x speeds to each of the four slots, the P67A-UD7 only supports 3-way SLi or CrossFire setup. The rest of the power from the NF200 is being used to provide bandwidth to the USB 3.0 controllers for uninterrupted flow.

That’s all I can discuss about the P67A-UD7 for the time being. It’s being put through it’s paces in the Tbreak office, but all of those hard numbers will be revealed once Intel officially launches the Sand Bridge CPUs next month. Look forward to all of our reviews and to see how the Gigabyte P67A-UD7 stacks up along with the rest of the LGA1155 motherboards.

ECS A890GXM-A2 review

Taimoor Hafeez — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 04:13:25 +0000

We initially used the ECS A890GXM-A2 while reviewing the updated AMD X6 1075T and X4 970BE where it performed superbly. Now however, it’s time for the actual motherboard itself to take on the limelight and show us what all it really has.

Being a socket AM3 based motherboard, the ECS A890GXM-A2 will support pretty much any processor released by AMD in the last 2 years, including the latest X6 processors. The specialty here is that it has the ability to unlock some of the hidden cores on some of the Phenom II and Sempron 140 processors through the BIOS itself. Unfortunately we didn’t have any AMD processor from that range otherwise this would have been a really fun little experiment to conduct.

Being a Black Series motherboard, overclocking is something that was factored into the board’s design from inception. So things like dual heat pipes and large fins for heatsinks are quite a common sight. One other interesting thing on the ECS A890GXM-A2 is the onboard AMD HD 4290 graphics chip with 128MB GDDR3 memory onboard. This little card allows you to connect the motherboard to any monitor or TV via VGA, DVI, HDMI or a DisplayPort. A good option for those who just want to use their PC for more computing tasks than gaming, but let’s face it, nobody will buy a Black Series motherboard just for its onboard graphics capability, minuscule as it is. This is why the ECS A890GXM-A2 also features two PCI-e x16 slots for 2-way CrossFire setup.

Apart from all that, the ECS A890GXM-A2 features your, now usual, features like USB 3.0 and SATA 3G (@ 6GBps). Then there are the BIOS and Drivers update utility along with the eJIFFY interface based on LINUX. Think of it like a UI system present in many netbooks and laptops that basically allows you access to the web and IM service. This is, of course, additional software for you to install, so users can skip it entirely if your Windows 7 boots up in 10 seconds on your RAIDed SSDs.

ASUS Crosshair IV Extreme review

Taimoor Hafeez — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 12:13:12 +0000

Every time we get ASUS Republic of Gamers hardware at the Tbreak office, everybody gets excited, and for good reason too. Not once has an RoG hardware failed to impress us, and surely the Crosshair IV Extreme would be no less than its predecessors.

Based on the AMD 890FX/SB850 chipset, the ASUS Crosshair IV Extreme will support any AM3 based Phenom II, Athlon II and Sempron 100 series CPU. Since this is a Republic of Gamers enthusiast motherboard, packed in along with the instruction manual and the drivers CD is an extra eSATA expansion bracket, 3x SATA 6.0GBps cables, 1x SATA 3 cable, 1x USB cable, rear i/o panel cover and an RoG sticker for your case. There’s also a set of voltage reading cables and three additional temperature sensors for the CPU along with a CrossFire cable added in for good measure.

Speaking of CrossFire, the Crosshair IV Extreme has 5x PCIe x16 slots. In a 3-way SLi or CrossFire, 3 of the slots will run at x16 speeds, otherwise in a 4-way SLi or CF setup, 2 slots run at x16 speeds while the remaining 2 run at x8 speeds. Moving up the board we see the sharp looking heatsink on the Southbridge controller as well as the Lucid HYDRA chip. The latter is especially interesting as the Hydra chip allows multiple GPUs from different manufacturers to be run on the Crosshair IV Extreme, i.e. you can run a GTX 580 along with an HD 6870 if you wish. Sadly the HYDRALogiX drivers failed to install (both the one’s supplied with the motherboard and the latest v1.7.102 from their website) so we couldn’t test this feature.

Moving to the top right we see the PCIe switches and the Probelt voltage plugs for simple readings, a process made easier thanks to the included voltage dongles. The 5 PCIe switches turn the corresponding PCIe slots on and off. This greatly helps if you have a multi-GPU setup and want to remove one card for whatever reason (whether it failed or you want to not run an AMD or Nvidia card) then this is far easier than shutting down the PC and unplug the whole card. We always welcome onboard Reset and Start buttons, but the enthusiast nature of the Crosshair IV Extreme shows when there’s an additional CPU core unlocker button on the motherboard itself (right of the Start button).

Just near the CPU plug you can see the Northbridge controller with a mini 40mm fan. Don’t let this little sucker fool you though, it can scream real loud when temperatures start going above 50C.

Specs and Pics for Gigabyte Sandy Bridge Motherboards

Abbas Jaffar Ali — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 06:13:21 +0000

Matte Black PCBs, Sandy Bridge CPUs and H67 chipsets- Gigabyte has a range of upcoming boards for the upcoming and highly awaited refresh of Core line of CPUs from Intel.

P67A-UD7

Features:
Industry’s leading 24 phase power design for maximum power delivery.
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.
Onboard 10 SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports (total of 18 USB ports including USB 2.0) and 6 SATA 6Gbps to deliver impeccable data transfer speeds.
CrossFireX™ and Nvidia® 3-Way SLI™ support for ultimate gaming experience.
New Matte Black color PCB offering a stylish new outlook that blends itself to decoration and case mods.
Dual Gigabit LAN with Smart Dual LAN technology offering hassle free, zero downtime and high speed network connectivity
Unique GIGABYTE 3x USB Power design with On/Off Charge USB ports to offer faster battery charging for iPhone, iPad and iPod devices.
GIGABYTE patented DualBIOS™ technology delivering the highest level of failure protection.

Specifications:
CPU Support: LGA 1155 Intel® 2nd Generation Core Processors
Chipset: Intel® 6-series Chipset
Memory: 4 DIMMs Dual Channel DDR3 2200 / 1600 / 1333 / 1066 / 800
Expansion slots: 4* PCI-e x16 ( 2×16 or 4×8), 1* PCI-e x1, 2* PCI
Storage: 4* SATA 3Gbps , 6* SATA 6Gbps, 10* USB 3.0, 8* USB 2.0, 3* IEEE1394, Audio: 8-Channel Audio, LAN: 2* PCI-e GbE
Form Factor: ATX
Others: DualBIOS™, Ultra Durable™ 3, On/Off Charge, 3x USB Power

P67A-UD5

Industry’s leading 20 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.

Specifications:
CPU Support: LGA 1155 Intel® 2nd Generation Core Processors
Chipset: Intel® 6-series Chipset
Memory: 4 DIMMs Dual Channel DDR3 1333 / 1066 / 800
Expansion slots: 2* PCI-e x16 ( 1×16 or 2×8), 1* PCI-e x4, 2* PCI-e x1, 2* PCI
Storage: 4* SATA 3Gbps , 4* SATA 6Gbps, 8* USB 3.0, 10* USB 2.0, 3* IEEE1394, Audio: 8-Channel Audio, LAN: 1* PCI-e GbE
Form Factor: ATX
Others: DualBIOS™, Ultra Durable™ 3, On/Off Charge, 3x USB Power,

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.

Brief Specifications:
CPU Support: LGA 1155 Intel® 2nd Generation Core Processors
Chipset: Intel® 6-series Chipset
Memory: 4 DIMMs, Dual Channel DDR3 1333 / 1066 / 800
Expansion slots: 2* PCI-e x16 ( 1×16 or 2×8), 3* PCI-e x1, 2* PCI
Storage: 4* SATA 3Gbps , 4* SATA 6Gbps, 4* USB 3.0, 14* USB 2.0 Audio: 8-Channel Audio, LAN: 1* PCI-e GbE
Form Factor: ATX
Others: DualBIOS™, Ultra Durable™ 3, On/Off Charge, 3x USB Power,

P67A-UD3P

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™ support for ultimate graphics performance
Dolby Home Theater support for best audio experience.
GIGABYTE patented DualBIOS™ technology delivering the highest level of failure protection.

Brief Specifications:
CPU Support: LGA 1155 Intel® 2nd Generation Core Processors
Chipset: Intel® 6-series Chipset
Memory: 4 DIMMs
Dual Channel DDR3 1333 / 1066 / 800, Expansion slots: 1* PCI-e x16, 1* PCI-e x4, 3* PCI-e x1, 2* PCI
Storage: 4* SATA 3Gbps , 4* SATA 6Gbps, 4* USB 3.0, 14* USB 2.0 Audio: 8-Channel Audio, LAN: 1* PCI-e GbE
Form Factor: ATX
Others: DualBIOS™, Ultra Durable™ 3, On/Off Charge, 3x USB Power,

H67A-UD3H

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.
Intel® HD Graphics enabling incredible desktop media and immersive 3D experience.
HDMI/DVI/DisplayPort digital graphics interface to deliver smoother HD video playback.
CrossFireX™ support for ultimate graphics performance.
Dolby Home Theater support for best audio experience.
GIGABYTE patented DualBIOS™ technology delivering the highest level of failure protection.

Brief Specifications:
CPU Support: LGA 1155 Intel® 2nd Generation Core Processors
Chipset: Intel® 6-series Chipset
Memory: 4 DIMMs Dual Channel 1333 / 1066 / 800
Expansion slots: 2* PCI-e x16 ( 1×16 + 1×4), 2* PCI-e x1, 3* PCI
Storage: 4* SATA 3Gbps , 2* SATA 6Gbps, 2* USB 3.0, 14* USB 2.0, 3* IEEE1394
VGA Output: 1* D-Sub, 1* DVI, 1* HDMI, 1* Display Port Audio: 8-Channel Audio
LAN: 1* PCI-e GbE
Form Factor: ATX
Others: DualBIOS™, Ultra Durable™ 3, On/Off Charge, 3x USB Power, DVI / HDMI/ Display Port.