Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD4 Review

You connect it to just the card, enable the software and it switches automatically between them.

The media espresso software shows an icon depending on a what its using to accelerate, i.e you see a CUDA symbol or Intel HD icon. Or none if its using no acceleration.
 
Fantastic, so should you only hear the gfx card fans when they are in use. I guess, internet browsing, youtube and divx should use onboard so would mean a quieter system.
 
The graphics card doesn't switch off so the fans spin slowly in a sort of idle mode similar to when your just browsing the internet with a high powered gpu anyways.

But I have a custom cooler on my card so its whisper quiet anyways.
 
Looking at this board for my new i7 build.

One thing that is putting me off is only 1 16x pcie slot. If I SLi in the future would it run marginaly slower being 8x than both slots 16x?

Also, can the Noctua NH-D14 fit fine on this motherboard?
 
Looking at this board for my new i7 build.

One thing that is putting me off is only 1 16x pcie slot. If I SLi in the future would it run marginaly slower being 8x than both slots 16x?

Almost all Z68/P67 boards do SLi/Crossfire at 8X/8X. the only way the others can do 16X/16X is to use a NF200/PLX chip to add more PCI-E lanes, these motherboards are really expensive,

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-056-AK&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-338-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-475-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1990


Hardocp have conducted a test comparing SLI/Cossfire at 16X/16X vs 8X/8X and the difference was only 1-3% and that is at eyefinity type resolutions.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/08/23/gtx_480_sli_pcie_bandwidth_perf_x16x16_vs_x8x8/

Also, can the Noctua NH-D14 fit fine on this motherboard?

Yep, choose low profile RAM such as XMS3 or Vengeance LP

But Ripjaw RAM doe fit also,

 
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stulid, thank you for replying :D

If bulldozer is a complete flop like the leaked benchmarks show, then i'm getting this motherboard for an i7. Thank you :)
 
Good review stulid! lots of hard work there!

Still can't decide if I should take the new Gen3 ASRock Extreme 4 or this board... they are within 5 quid between each other and new ASRock had some great reviews...
 
I have just upgraded to the UD4 and it was fairly painless to overclock and things seem to go ok.

Only had issue with upgraded PCB board on my 800d case.
 
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