****Gigabyte Z87-D3HP Review****

[stulid]

Gigabyte homepage - http://uk.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4519#ov

OcUK product page - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-437-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2574


Z87 chipset motherboards are designed for use with Intel Haswell CPU's, as well as the new chipset Intel has also moved to a different socket design with 1150 contact pins whereas before with Sandybridge and Ivybridge using P67/Z68 and Z77 chipset board the socket used 1155 pins, this means you can not drop a Haswell CPU into previous boards.

The biggest feature Haswell brings is a much stronger integrated graphics processor and also a move away from having voltage regulators on the motherboards power stage to now having in integrated into the CPU itself. Memory speed support is also improved.

Gigabyte has taken the Z87 chipset and set out to make another mainstream board which will hopefully take on the precedent set by the Z77-D3H which is considered one of the best budget Z77 boards on the market.


Ultra Durable 5 plus.

This feature adds a few enhancements over Ultra Durable 5 that was used before on the X79, A85 and Z77 UP range of boards.

Enhancements include,

• Custom made solid capacitors with minimum 10K hour life - http://www.chemi-con.co.jp/e/tech_topics/pdf/new_cp_201304.pdf
• On/Off Charge revision 2.0 (it now supports non-Apple devices)
• Gold plated CPU socket.



Packaging and accessories.

A refresh of the box artwork and colour.

On the rear you find the selling points and overview of the main features.



Installation manual, user guide, I/O shield, four SATAIII cables (two with 90 degree heads) and a installation disk.



The motherboard.

Finally a move away from blue to a nice matt black PCB.

Dual CPU fan headers for the larger heatsinks that have twin fans is a welcome improvement.

• Two internal USB3.0 headers.

• Six native SATAIII ports from the PCH, you can also do RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5 and RAID 10 from these.
• 4pin PWM system fan header.
• Front panel connector which also has the clearCMOS pins above it.

The Dual BIOS chips which are a great safety feature should you have a bad BIOS flash (please use Qflash to update the BIOS not @BIOS).

• Two USB2.0 internal headers.
• TPM (trusted platform module) header.
• COM (serial port) header
• Front audio connector
• SPDIF in and out

• PCI-E 16X slot (electrically wired at 16X).
• PCI-E 1X slot.
• PCI-E 1X slot.
• PCI-E 16X slot (electrically wired at 4X).
• 2 X PCI legacy slots.

Now I can understand having one PCI slot on this board with its price range as you may still have a PCI sound card etc, but two I feel is too many. Maybe the first 1X PCI-E slot could have been moved down here so it's not blocked if you use a dual slot GFX card?

SLI is not supported on this board as Nvidia do not certify boards that use a electrically connected 4X for SLI, Crossfire is supported.

• Two 4pin PWM system fan headers.

The two larger chips in the picture (one beneath the heatsink and the other to the far right) are Renesas USB3.0 hubs, these run an internal USB3.0 header and six USB3.0 ports at the rear, there is no resume from sleep USB drive disappearing issue when using these ports.

The front USB3.0 header named F_USB30_2 is from the Z87 chipset (with the plastic cap), all other USB ports (front and rear) are from Renesas uPD720210 hubs.[/B]




• Realtek ALC892 audio offers up to 7.1 channels.



• Two USB2.0 and PS/2.
• Dsub and DVI-D.
• Two USB3.0 and HDMI.
• Two USB3.0.
• Gigabit LAN and Two USB3.0.
• Five audio jacks and optical out.


The UEFI BIOS.


Well this is a pleasant surprise, gone is the 3d mode (that I don't think anyone used) and "in" is an all new "window" mode.

This is the default screen.

With the four user definable tabs, you can customise how you want a each to look.

This tab controls the basic frequencies, the CPU upgrade option gives you four preset overclocks.

Memory control including timings.

Load Line Calibration goes up to Extreme, Phase control goes up to extreme performance.

Voltage options for every aspect of the CPU.

You have control of the system fan headers as two sets, system fan 1 is separate to system fan 3+4.

Here you are able to switch the PCI-E 16X slot between gen 3.0 or 2.0.

You can pick which page of the UEFI you want it to go to first after pressing the "DEL" key to enter.

Two preset background images are available or you can upload your own from disk.

Fast boot!! two settings with a varying amount of drivers allowed to load when the OS starts.

And if you still want it, the classic look is still an option.



Application software.


The installation disk includes a number of software/applications such as,

• Google drive, Google chrome and Google search bar for IE.
• Norton Internet Security.
• Download links to Cyberlink PowerDVD 12, PowerDirector 11, Power2Go 8, PhotoDirector 4, YouCam 5.

But the biggest news is a new Gigabyte App Center which gives you a expandable tray icon and redesigned/rewritten applications.

You can select which of the above applications you wish to install along side it.

This is @BIOS, you can use it to flash your BIOS either via the Internet or from file , but it is strongly recommended to use QFlash found within the BIOS instead.

Face wizard allows you to change the boot-up logo and picture.

USB blocker does exactly what it suggest, you can stop certain class USB devices from working.

Finally! the previous Easytune6 has been chucked in the bin and now a all new Easytune is finally available.

The three overclock presets all work perfectly (if a little bit too much Vcore compared to what my CPU needs to be stable at these speeds). This is good, as the previous Easytune6 on Z77 I never had much luck with it and found the two higher presets to be unstable and Autotune to also be unstable.

Smart fan, where you can let the software calibrate itself to your fans (dependant on what sort of individual fan control a particular board has) and it will find out where the fans will "stall" and reach "maximum" so it knows how much voltage to feed them to give you the three preset fan speeds.

Or within the advanced section of Smart Fan you can define your own custom fan curve.

The above is self explanatory.

3DPower where you can adjust the amount of load Line Calibration or the speed at which the power phases switch, important options to get high clocks form your CPU.

System monitor, does exactly what it says on the tin.


Well that wraps that up, hopefully you can see how much improved the new Easytune is compared to before and it really is a joy to use and most importantly it works. But to add a little more choice,

You can select between three different colours.


Overclocking.

Test System.

i5 4670K
Kingston HyperX Predator 2400MHz RAM
2 X Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD's in RAID0
Alpenfohn K2 cooler.

i5 3570K
Z77X-UP5 TH

BCLK overclocking.

BCLK overclocking has improved too and now like X79 there are BCLK multipliers available to use and try,

The above is with a 1.25X BCLK gear ratio.

And the above is with the BCLK increased from 100Mhz to 102.5MHz also with the 1.25X gear ratio.

Above is with the gear ratio increased to 1.66X with the extra 2.5MHz on the BCLK.

There is also a 2.5X ratio available to use but I was not able to boot into Windows with it applied, maybe more time spent could see it happen?


Multiplier overclocking.

This is a mainstream board so you can expect some modest overclocking, but the D3HP surprised me by managing to do a stable 4.6GHz, but again as with all overclocking it also depends on the silicon lottery, so you may or may not get to this level.

So overall it's looking very good indeed with this board, I was also able to get easily into Windows and run SuperPi and the new 3Dmark at 4.7Ghz but other tests like X264 FHD would freeze.



Game and synthetic testing results.

Below are some results I have got, I used the built-in Benchmarks for Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinte.

Conclusion.

So this is my first Z87 experience and I have to say its been smooth, the motherboard has not faltered once, the new UEFI is sharp with the mouse cursor moving nicely within it.

Overclocking was a easy really either manually or by one of the UEFI presets options or even Easytune, speaking of Easytune its good to see it has had a complete overhaul as the previous EasyTune6 was pretty dire and didn't work properly for me.

I think there is one too many PCI legacy slots on this board and one would have been enough at this price point, but apart from that every thing is nicely positioned, right angle SATA ports would have topped it all of nicely.

Overall a sweet board with good enough overclocking abilities I reckon at a keen price.

 

[stulid]

Great review Stulid as always, I think this is a great entry level Z87 based on your finding's I will be specing this more often

Cheers dude, thanks for the art work.

 

[stulid]

Good review. What kind of temps were you getting whilst running Intel Burn Test at 4.6GHz with the K2?

Board looks very good, seems very similar to the UD3H that I'm currently using and I must say I'm very impressed it.

High 80's with the K2 fans running at standard speeds.


Edit..just looked, it was like top 80's with one or two cores creeping into 90C.

Don't use Burn Test..it kills chips

 

[stulid]

Thanks for the positive comments guys.

whats the bios like stulid compared to giga z77? is the mouse laggy? or sharp like asus?

what memory did you test with? any major overclocking setting omissions in the bios being a cheapish board?

The mouse moves fine, the best way I can describe it is the difference between playing a game with a poor frame rate (Z77 UEFI) and one that is just about managing to maintain a decent and consistent frame rate (Z87 UEFI).

This is the RAM I used - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-135-KS&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1387

The BIOS seems to have everything in it you need to overclock, I can't see anything missing myself.

 

[stulid]

I could make a video, but it would be difficult to show the actual mouse movement and the UEFI at the same time.

 

[stulid]

Is this a special offer?

Any affiliation with OCUK you need to declare, should be posted too.

It's a bundle that is available else where too.

And no, I do not work for OcUK.

It was bought to do an update.

 

[stulid]

I thought underboss were ocuk employees?

Nope, you don't have to work for OcUK to get on the moderating team.

I don't think any of the underbosses are OcUK employees.

Besides, I'm a bit far away to commute

 

[stulid]

How does this board compare to Gigabyte Z87X-OC ?

The OC is a higher tier product, supports SLI, overclocks higher, its designed for one thing and that is overclocking.

 

[stulid]

Thorough and well written review, with great pictures, thanks for taking the time
How do you get such nice shots of the bios screens ? (and they do look very nice over the basic bios).
Does the windows easytune give full cpu voltage control, or is tied to a profile depending on multi ?

To get the BIOS screens you stick a USB stick into the board and press F12 (you can see this mentioned along the bottom of one of the BIOS screens captures) and this saves automatically a PNG to the USB drive.

You have full voltage control by clicking on the box and scrolling up or down to the value you want.

 

[stulid]

Let me sort some pics up for you from the BIOS and an explanation.

What sort of clock did you want? as not all Haswell CPU's seem to clock the same or even get as high as I can.

4.2GHz? 4.4GHz? maybe higher?

 

[stulid]

Ok, give me say 24hrs and I will get something up.

Tired after a hard days work carpeting out a T5 van.

 

[stulid]

Cheers mate! I guess I will try 4.2 then 4.4. What's the best way to test stability?

AIDA64 has a good stability test in it, X264 FHD is another good one.

 

[stulid]

So here's a quick and simple guide to get some speed out of your CPU.

I will keep it short and simple so not to confuse you with too much info and acronyms.

If you want a more serious guide you can find one here - http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums...e-Gigabyte-Z87-Haswell-Overclocking(OC)-Guide

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To start with lets look at two features of the CPU

• Speedstep.

This downclocks your CPU from its 3.4GHz clock speed (for the 4670K) to 800MHz by changing the CPU ratio from 34X to 8X (8 X 100MHz base clock = 800MHz)

The picture below shows Speedstep in action while the CPU is idle at desktop.

Also note the voltage has also dropped to save power at the same time.

This feature is controlled by an option in the BIOS called CPU EIST Function.

You will find it at the bottom of this page.

So if you don't want your CPU to downclock to save power then just disable the option. Setting the power options in Windows to High Performance also stops the Speedstep.


• Turboboost.

This does the opposite of Speedstep and speeds the CPU up from its 3.4GHz clock speed up to a maximum of 3.8GHz again by increasing the CPU ratio, but this speed also depends on how much load the CPU is under and so can vary depending on how many cores are being used.

This you can see in the BIOS picture below,

So in the case of the 4670K you have a maximum of 3.8GHz when up to two cores are just being used or 3.6GHz when all four cores are being hammered.

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BIOS preset overclocking.

In the BIOS are two options to overclock the CPU for you, these do work if your CPU is able to run at the selected speeds except that I found the D3HP board doesn't like going past 4.6GHz even though my CPU will on other (better) boards.

The first option is called Performance Upgrade this increase both CPU and RAM speed.

I have highlighted that as well as the CPU speed increasing you also get a memory speed increase which varies with which Performance Upgrade option you select.


The second option in the BIOS is called CPU Upgrade and it just increases the CPU speed only.

But both of the options are the crudest method available to you even though they are easy to use. The Vcore provided to your CPU is usually also excessively high (probably done as all CPU's require a differing amount of Voltage to operate).

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Manual overclocking.

A better way is to do it yourself and set the values you want and the Vcore your CPU actually needs. The below is with altering the Turbboost ratios, you can also disable Turboboost and set the CPU ratio instead so you have a constant set speed.

To start with here is how I get a simple 4.0GHz clock speed.

So by altering the four Turbboboost ratios to 40X each you will have a 4.0GHz clock speed yet still retaining the Speedstep and so getting 800MHz at Idle.

Next here is a 4.4Ghz overclock.

Again all you need to do is set the four Turboboost ratios to 44X each, but my CPU also needs a bit of LLC (Load Line Calibration) added to stop the droop on the Vcore when under load. This is the only voltage value/control my CPU needs altering to get this speed stable.

Droop occurs under load, you set a Vcore value in the BIOS yet this is not actually what you CPU is feed when it is under load, increasing the LLC setting will try and keep this value steady or even increase it if you set one of the maximum settings.

LLC control is on this page, my CPU likes it set to High and this will help keep the Vcore constant.

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My 4.6GHz setting.

Not all CPU's are the same and all vary from the way they are made and this means not all CPU's overclock the same, some CPU's may do 4.6GHz or higher, some may stop at 4.4GHz, this is nick named Silicon Lottery.

So what I have done here is set the four Turboboost values to 46X each, I have disabled EIST and also the C3, C6/C7 sleep states, I have also disabled the thermal monitor and C1E. This gives me no Speedstep and no Vcore drop when idle.

I have set the power Watt and Amp limits to 300 each (the faster you run your CPU the more power and watts it consumes) otherwise your CPU may slow down even when you core temperatures are fine.

The uncore ratio is also increased to over 4.0GHz as per the Xtremesystems guide.

Lastly LLC is set to maximum and CPU-Z reports a Vcore of 1.3V when my CPU is put under load.



All that is left to do is check that it is stable, Intel Burn Test I find is a real killer, the core temperatures are just stupid. Prime 95 is gentler yet still a bit excessive.

Instead I use AIDA64 stability test which I find to be easier on the CPU, also testing with X264 FHD is another good one, finally if it is stable in the games/applications you use, then that's all that matters right?

 

[stulid]

Thanks Stulid, a few more questions:

1. So basicaly put LCC is vdroop control, and max setting limits vdroop as much as
the board can ?

2. Speedstep/turbo and c1e, c6/c7, cpu thermal mon and cpu eist presumably best to disable find were your cpu is happiest with the voltage/heat combination you desire with stability, then re-enable for power /heat consumption savings afterward and set your fastest tested stable clocks in turbo ?

3. Does disabling the onboard graphics affect the O/C ability, or anything else for that matter with a seperate graphics card installed ?

4. Is 1.3v is the stock Vcore under load for a Haswell ?

5. Given that temps can be an issue with the way i5's are put together, what is pushing it as a reported max temp ?

1) Correct, it can even add Vcore on the higher settings.


2) I've never tried this, but sounds like it can work, I've either gone for the full always overclocked method, or alter the Turbo ratios and have my overclock when the CPU needs it.


3) Never compared the two, I have overclocked the onboard GFX and run Cinebench to see how increasing the gfx speed increases the score.

I do have the results if anyone would like to see?


4) It varies from chip to chip, each CPU is given a VID (Voltage Identification)programmed by Intel to ensure that particular CPU gets the voltage it needs, as you increase the speed the board may automatically increase this for you to a point.

This is also how offset Vcore is worked out, you add a offset in the BIOS which is used when overclocking to add stability.

VID+Offset = Vcore fed to the CPU.

So say my CPU had a VID of 1.2V, but I need 1.3V to remain stable at 4.6GHz, I would then set the offset voltage to +0.1V in the BIOS, this 0.1V is then given to the CPU as and when it needs it when overclocked to 4.6GHz.

This is a more elegant solution than just setting 1.3V in the BIOS and the CPU getting this voltage all the time.


5) 100C is the TJmax for Haswell CPU's, reach this and the CPU will slow itself down to try and keep cool.

But I would never recommend going this high, when I ran Intel burn test at 4.6GHz I saw high 80's, nearly 90C on one core.

This is why I prefer AIDA64 stability test as its closer to 80C when run and I feel a safer temperature, luckily no games/applications will get a CPU as hot as a stress test.

 

[stulid]

Good info, thanks again
Presumably if I leave bios on defaults, fire up cpu-z, load cpu with a benchmark, it will show my cpu's stock vid.
if I see much over 1.3 it'll be a pants clocker

CoreTemp or RealTemp show the vid.

 

[stulid]

I had a play and got an o/c and voltage I am happy with, reset the bios to optimized defaults, with the aim I can just have it oc when its needed and sit underclocked when on desktop. but it doesn't seem to drop below its default turbo of 3800, any ideas ?

Leave it to settle? May take a minute or so to drop.

 

[stulid]

Where is the seven segment debug display ?, I cannot find it

It does not have one.

 

[stulid]

Pity

You have one and having problems?

 

[stulid]

I just updated to F5 bios, but wanted to run memtest for a bit.
I can't seem to get it to boot from my optical drives, I set order in bios and save on exit, but it ignores it and goes into windows, when I restart and go to bios it has changed it all back again.

What have I overlooked ?

Did you load defaults after the flash then setting the BIOS how you want? try flashing again.

 

[stulid]

Any special reason I should update away from F2 bios on this board? I cannot find any changelogs for the updates.

Haven't encountered any problems so far with the "older one", but I don't want to update if it does not give any performance updates.

If its not broke then don't fix it.