The new Z68 motherboards are in-store and available. I picked one up last week and have been pretty impressed with what Z68 boards bring to the table. I want to say upfront that from a performance point of view there is little difference between the two incantations of the motherboard chipsets.
The board I decided on was the flagship Gigabyte offering - the Z68X-UD7-B3. I already own a P67A-UD5 motherboard and wanted the NF200 option for 3-way SLi and Tri-Crossfire that only the UD7 offered.
The Z68 schematic courtesy of Intel shows exactly what the differences are.
Here we can see the big difference namely being the SSD caching technology called Smart Response. This option allows users to speed up their storage system by using a standard SATA Hard Drive with a standard SATA SSD. The SSD will work as a fast cache memory for the hard drive.
And, Quick Sync media accelerator support with Intel's second generation Core architecture. Those Z68 boards that have integrated graphics support are enabled with LucidLogix Virtu™ GPU Virtualization technology which allows the systems to simultaneously take full advantage of both the low-power best-in-class media processing features of 2nd generation Intel® Core processor graphics, like the popular QuickSync video transcoding technology, and the 3D gaming performance of add-in cards with discrete graphics processing units (Video Cards in other words).
This feature is not really something I am going to use with this motherboard as it does not have on-board graphics, thankfully.
But for those boards that do have onboard graphics (for Gigabyte the ones with "H" in their model name like Z68X-UD3H or Z68MA-D2H) the single most important addition to the Z68 is that now you can over clock the CPU and DRAM as well as the onboard GPU on the same board. Before if you had a H67/H61 series motherboard you could not clock your CPU or your ram. After all what is the point of having one of the most over clock friendly CPU’s ever on a motherboard and not be able to do anything with it. And yes I am talking about the K series processors mainly.
The B3 tacked onto the end of the product number is very important thanks to the Intel blooper with the first B2 revision board that were recalled (this only affected P67/H67 not Z68) . The B3 boards are devoid of any of the SATA gremlins of those first boards.
There is very little difference between the specifications of the P67A-UD7 and the Z68X-UD7-B3 motherboard beyound those that I am going to discuss below. 1Day did a write up about the P67A HERE
Go have a read if you have not done so yet.
So what I am going to do instead is to provide a brief specification and feature package and highlight the differences and make note of some important features that are worth repeating.
Plus provide a step by step graphic guide for a 24/7 stable 4GHz, 4.4GHz and 5GHz over clock. Prime95 stable @5GHz too I might add.
The board is a full ATX size and has plenty of fan headers and the full compliment of PCi-e connectors. Numbers 1 and 3 run at x16 and a third card can be added right at the bottom.
Being a Flagship model the board comes with plenty of accessories. Particularly useful is the USB3 panel. It fits perfectly where the old stiffy drives used to go.
GIGABYTE Z68X-UD7-B3 Other Features of Note:
• 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 4 SATA 6Gbps to deliver impeccable data transfer speeds.
• CrossFireX™ and Nvidia® 3-Way SLI™ support for ultimate gaming experience.
• Matte Black colour 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.
• Driver MOSFET Solution
• 3TB+ HDD Support
Differences - First up with the new Z68X Gigabyte boards is a really innovative BIOS offering.
GIGABYTE Touch BIOS™ (Patent Pending)
An Innovative New Way to Modify BIOS Settings
This feature is unique to the Gigabyte range of boards and as a old school over-clocker I must admit to not being very keen on the whole thing when I first heard about it. Well that changed very quickly. Let us move on to the main part of this write up.
Test Set Up
Intel 2600K
Geil PC3-17000 2133MHz C9
TA120.3 High Performance Radiator
Swiftech Apogee XT
MCP655 Laing D5 Vario Pump 12v
Antec Quatro 1200 PSU
Win7 64 Bit
Over clocking the GIGABYTE Z68X-UD7-B3 using Touch BIOS
Before you start you will have to go into your old style BIOS just once. Here is what you have to do. (edit: Newer BIOS updates have made this step redundant - there is no longer any need to make any changes in the BIOS)
During the POST start process.
Press DEL on your keyboard
This is the very first screen that you will see in the BIOS.
You want to use your arrow keys on the keyboard to select the first option. Top left M.I.T.
Then you will see this screen.
Select the option that is highlighted in black and gold above and select Advanced CPU Core Features
And enable Real-Time Ratio Change in OS
F10 and enter to save and restart your BIOS.
Now you simply let the system boot into the OS that you have installed previously.
The OS I have used is Win7 64bit but you can use which ever is your fancy.
Now once we are in OS we have to do a couple of things before we can proceed. First thing is install the latest Intel Drivers for your motherboard. And reboot when asked to.
Second install the latest Intel Management software. You will not be asked to reboot after installing this.
And finally install the latest Touch BIOS (Edit: New one released today 27/5/2011) I used this ver. B11.0512.1 from: http://download.gigabyte.eu/FileList/Utility/mb_utility_touch-bios.exe
Once you have completed the installation I would suggest rebooting your system. It is not required but I think it might be a good idea anyway as lots of really interesting things have been done to the PC and EFI Hybrid BIOS.
One rather important point, if you have previously installed EastyTune6 on your system do a full uninstall and remove it completely. You no longer need it.
The Touch BIOS does not automatically place an icon on your desk top so you will have to open the application from the programmes menu.
Program-->Gigabyte-->TouchBIOS
Welcome Screen for the Touch BIOS
Main Over clock Page
MIT information page, here you can see what your basic CPU settings are. In this instance the default settings.
The Miscellaneous Settings page – shows all the basic information of your system
Default fail safe settings will look like this
In the memory page select the XMP profile 1 – the ram I have used defaults at 2133MHz
With that done return to the Advanced CPU Core Features and we will start with the Clock Ratios
Load Line Calibration is needed. And the Z68X gives you 10 different options unlike the P67A which gave 2 options.
Multi Steps Load-Line (or LLC) set to 6 For anything over 4GHz LLC 6 is the best based on my testing of them all and perfect for 4 GHz, 4.4GHz and 5GHz. Above that you will need far more voltage to the core and that changes which LLC is suitable.
Let us start off nice and slow. In the box marked in red select 40 – leave everything else on Auto. Do not touch your voltages as yet.
4GHz
Then select save to CMOS button under the camera icon. The three steps below need to be repeated each time you make changes. You can of course make all your changes in one go and then only save to CMOS. The changes will take effect the next time you reboot.
Select OK
CMOS success
Select the Restart button to have your changes take effect. PC will reboot back into OS and you are officially at 4GHz. So far it is pretty easy and each and every CPU will be able to clock to 4GHz without any trouble. The same for 4.4GHz if you have a reasonable aftermarket cooler as I am not sure that the stock Intel one will be sufficient for the task, and I am not really going to find out either.
A skimpy 1.28volts for 4GHz that is super.
4.4GHz
Moving every onwards and upwards we move up to 4.4GHz select 44 as the CPU ration and repeat the CMOS steps shown above.
In my view this is a pretty good 24/7 option for a over clock. If you are a gamer then there is no way your Graphic Cards is going to be bottlenecked. And the CPU will still run pretty cool even at maximum load. Just have a look at the volts. And this is still on Auto so there is room to lower them even further.
But for those who want the gold star. Lets shoot for the Holy Grail for SandyBridge CPU’s 5GHz
However before we do we are going to have to make one additional visit to old BIOS. We will have to enable PLL overrider before we set 50 as our CPU ratio or we will not have any success.
49x is the best you can get if you do not enable PLL over rider.
Take note of the volts needed here for 4.9GHz. You will see a huge jump in voltage when we go to 5GHz but first to the BIOS we go and select the marked option. Set to enabled.
F10 and enter.
Select 50 and let us see what happens.
;
Volts for 5GHz still on auto at this point
Time to test let us first do a nice easy one...NOT. Vantage3DMark has a set of pretty nasty CPU tests. Remember we are still on Auto volts at this point. And according to the BIOS a pretty low 1.37volts
Love this board passed with ease and if the over clock can pass Vantage CPU tests then there are few games or applications out there in the real world that will stress it more.
Next was a round of WPrime1024 to check the volt droop. I took the screenshot midway through the benchmark, which utilises 100% of all 4 cores and 4 HyperThreads to fully max the CPU out. Using LLC voltage dropped to 1.36 from 1.37. Marginal.
However no-one seems to take stability seriously unless Prime95 has been run. I did not have the patience or the time to do hours and hours. But 40 minutes and a couple of full passes of blend later and all good.
Prime works SandyBridge hard. I had to up the voltages to 1.4 to complete 40 minutes plus. Failed almost immediately at 1.37.
Good cooling is important when running this stress test. As the CPU is loaded to the maximum huge amounts of heat are produced. If your temps get too high shut it down. Stress tests are nothing more than indicators of stability. The proof is in the pudding – the doing real world stuff and after 2 hours of playing Metro2033 I called it a day. Not one crash or freeze. The sharper eyed amongst you will have seen the 246'C temperature in the Touch Bios. CoreTemp had my temps at a very manageable 48'C during the Prime95 stress test. Seems like a bug that needs to be sorted. (Edit: There is a new TouchBios that was released this morning 27 May 2011, which seems to have fixed that little issue.)
The next instalment will concentrate on extreme clocking under LN2. So stay tuned to the LN2 event at the BatCave this weekend. Hopefully a few UK records will tumble.
Wrap Up
The board is certainly a step up from the P67A-UD5 that I am used to and benched near exclusively with these last four months. But if you are going to be using multi-graphic cards then the Z68X-UD7-B3 motherboard is worth the extra money I think. The NF200 chip manages the PCi-e lanes differently than it does on my M4E boards and in multi card benchmarks my 3D performance is up by a couple of hundred points in all of the benchmarks I ran. 2D was as always very quick and the Super Pi 1 mil time for this board at the exact same default settings was substantially quicker than the P67A-UD7 board I borrowed from 1Day.
I have a couple of things that I would have liked to see improved on and one odd thing. The SATA ports are a real pain to access if you are using large graphic cards. And if you buy a UD7 you are going to be using some pretty serious graphic hardware. My 580GTX cards made accessing the white SATA (INTEL SATA3) ports quite tricky. Not an issue if you are sticking the board in a case because the card will be put in last. But as a bencher often find that I need to change hard drive a couple of times with the graphic card still in. And is was not easy. Another tricky issue for someone with big hands the CMOS reset button is a awkward find. It is tucked away behind the 24 pin power connector. The reset is easier to access but still really small. I think that Gigabyte design team could have splashed out on more sizeable and aesthetically pleasing buttons. The power button is fine, it is just the other two that look very cheap in comparison. The one odd thing I had was my Lan connection was not detected during the Windows 7 installation but needed to have the drivers installed manually. Once drivers were installed it was perfect. But odd none the less.
Big Plus Factor
The single thing that stands out for me is the ease of achieving the 5GHz stable over clock. Gone are the struggles I had with the P67A boards I tried to use before the release of Z68X. This board just did what it was meant to do right from the get go. Seamless out of the box performance. I would have liked to see my CPU get an additional 250MHz and break the 6GHz barrier but that is impossible with my CPU. The motherboard is not the limiting factor my CPU is. This board is so much smoother than what I was expecting and a real pleasure to use. The weekend will show just how handy this board is when it gets subjected to serious cold. So far it is a real winner.
The board I decided on was the flagship Gigabyte offering - the Z68X-UD7-B3. I already own a P67A-UD5 motherboard and wanted the NF200 option for 3-way SLi and Tri-Crossfire that only the UD7 offered.
The Z68 schematic courtesy of Intel shows exactly what the differences are.
Here we can see the big difference namely being the SSD caching technology called Smart Response. This option allows users to speed up their storage system by using a standard SATA Hard Drive with a standard SATA SSD. The SSD will work as a fast cache memory for the hard drive.
And, Quick Sync media accelerator support with Intel's second generation Core architecture. Those Z68 boards that have integrated graphics support are enabled with LucidLogix Virtu™ GPU Virtualization technology which allows the systems to simultaneously take full advantage of both the low-power best-in-class media processing features of 2nd generation Intel® Core processor graphics, like the popular QuickSync video transcoding technology, and the 3D gaming performance of add-in cards with discrete graphics processing units (Video Cards in other words).
This feature is not really something I am going to use with this motherboard as it does not have on-board graphics, thankfully.
But for those boards that do have onboard graphics (for Gigabyte the ones with "H" in their model name like Z68X-UD3H or Z68MA-D2H) the single most important addition to the Z68 is that now you can over clock the CPU and DRAM as well as the onboard GPU on the same board. Before if you had a H67/H61 series motherboard you could not clock your CPU or your ram. After all what is the point of having one of the most over clock friendly CPU’s ever on a motherboard and not be able to do anything with it. And yes I am talking about the K series processors mainly.
The B3 tacked onto the end of the product number is very important thanks to the Intel blooper with the first B2 revision board that were recalled (this only affected P67/H67 not Z68) . The B3 boards are devoid of any of the SATA gremlins of those first boards.
There is very little difference between the specifications of the P67A-UD7 and the Z68X-UD7-B3 motherboard beyound those that I am going to discuss below. 1Day did a write up about the P67A HERE
Go have a read if you have not done so yet.
So what I am going to do instead is to provide a brief specification and feature package and highlight the differences and make note of some important features that are worth repeating.
Plus provide a step by step graphic guide for a 24/7 stable 4GHz, 4.4GHz and 5GHz over clock. Prime95 stable @5GHz too I might add.
The board is a full ATX size and has plenty of fan headers and the full compliment of PCi-e connectors. Numbers 1 and 3 run at x16 and a third card can be added right at the bottom.
Being a Flagship model the board comes with plenty of accessories. Particularly useful is the USB3 panel. It fits perfectly where the old stiffy drives used to go.
GIGABYTE Z68X-UD7-B3 Other Features of Note:
• 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 4 SATA 6Gbps to deliver impeccable data transfer speeds.
• CrossFireX™ and Nvidia® 3-Way SLI™ support for ultimate gaming experience.
• Matte Black colour 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.
• Driver MOSFET Solution
• 3TB+ HDD Support
Differences - First up with the new Z68X Gigabyte boards is a really innovative BIOS offering.
GIGABYTE Touch BIOS™ (Patent Pending)
An Innovative New Way to Modify BIOS Settings
This feature is unique to the Gigabyte range of boards and as a old school over-clocker I must admit to not being very keen on the whole thing when I first heard about it. Well that changed very quickly. Let us move on to the main part of this write up.
Test Set Up
Intel 2600K
Geil PC3-17000 2133MHz C9
TA120.3 High Performance Radiator
Swiftech Apogee XT
MCP655 Laing D5 Vario Pump 12v
Antec Quatro 1200 PSU
Win7 64 Bit
Over clocking the GIGABYTE Z68X-UD7-B3 using Touch BIOS
Before you start you will have to go into your old style BIOS just once. Here is what you have to do. (edit: Newer BIOS updates have made this step redundant - there is no longer any need to make any changes in the BIOS)
During the POST start process.
Press DEL on your keyboard
This is the very first screen that you will see in the BIOS.
You want to use your arrow keys on the keyboard to select the first option. Top left M.I.T.
Then you will see this screen.
Select the option that is highlighted in black and gold above and select Advanced CPU Core Features
And enable Real-Time Ratio Change in OS
F10 and enter to save and restart your BIOS.
Now you simply let the system boot into the OS that you have installed previously.
The OS I have used is Win7 64bit but you can use which ever is your fancy.
Now once we are in OS we have to do a couple of things before we can proceed. First thing is install the latest Intel Drivers for your motherboard. And reboot when asked to.
Second install the latest Intel Management software. You will not be asked to reboot after installing this.
And finally install the latest Touch BIOS (Edit: New one released today 27/5/2011) I used this ver. B11.0512.1 from: http://download.gigabyte.eu/FileList/Utility/mb_utility_touch-bios.exe
Once you have completed the installation I would suggest rebooting your system. It is not required but I think it might be a good idea anyway as lots of really interesting things have been done to the PC and EFI Hybrid BIOS.
One rather important point, if you have previously installed EastyTune6 on your system do a full uninstall and remove it completely. You no longer need it.
The Touch BIOS does not automatically place an icon on your desk top so you will have to open the application from the programmes menu.
Program-->Gigabyte-->TouchBIOS
Welcome Screen for the Touch BIOS
Main Over clock Page
MIT information page, here you can see what your basic CPU settings are. In this instance the default settings.
The Miscellaneous Settings page – shows all the basic information of your system
Default fail safe settings will look like this
In the memory page select the XMP profile 1 – the ram I have used defaults at 2133MHz
With that done return to the Advanced CPU Core Features and we will start with the Clock Ratios
Load Line Calibration is needed. And the Z68X gives you 10 different options unlike the P67A which gave 2 options.
Multi Steps Load-Line (or LLC) set to 6 For anything over 4GHz LLC 6 is the best based on my testing of them all and perfect for 4 GHz, 4.4GHz and 5GHz. Above that you will need far more voltage to the core and that changes which LLC is suitable.
Let us start off nice and slow. In the box marked in red select 40 – leave everything else on Auto. Do not touch your voltages as yet.
4GHz
Then select save to CMOS button under the camera icon. The three steps below need to be repeated each time you make changes. You can of course make all your changes in one go and then only save to CMOS. The changes will take effect the next time you reboot.
Select OK
CMOS success
Select the Restart button to have your changes take effect. PC will reboot back into OS and you are officially at 4GHz. So far it is pretty easy and each and every CPU will be able to clock to 4GHz without any trouble. The same for 4.4GHz if you have a reasonable aftermarket cooler as I am not sure that the stock Intel one will be sufficient for the task, and I am not really going to find out either.
A skimpy 1.28volts for 4GHz that is super.
4.4GHz
Moving every onwards and upwards we move up to 4.4GHz select 44 as the CPU ration and repeat the CMOS steps shown above.
In my view this is a pretty good 24/7 option for a over clock. If you are a gamer then there is no way your Graphic Cards is going to be bottlenecked. And the CPU will still run pretty cool even at maximum load. Just have a look at the volts. And this is still on Auto so there is room to lower them even further.
But for those who want the gold star. Lets shoot for the Holy Grail for SandyBridge CPU’s 5GHz
However before we do we are going to have to make one additional visit to old BIOS. We will have to enable PLL overrider before we set 50 as our CPU ratio or we will not have any success.
49x is the best you can get if you do not enable PLL over rider.
Take note of the volts needed here for 4.9GHz. You will see a huge jump in voltage when we go to 5GHz but first to the BIOS we go and select the marked option. Set to enabled.
F10 and enter.
Select 50 and let us see what happens.
Volts for 5GHz still on auto at this point
Time to test let us first do a nice easy one...NOT. Vantage3DMark has a set of pretty nasty CPU tests. Remember we are still on Auto volts at this point. And according to the BIOS a pretty low 1.37volts
Love this board passed with ease and if the over clock can pass Vantage CPU tests then there are few games or applications out there in the real world that will stress it more.
Next was a round of WPrime1024 to check the volt droop. I took the screenshot midway through the benchmark, which utilises 100% of all 4 cores and 4 HyperThreads to fully max the CPU out. Using LLC voltage dropped to 1.36 from 1.37. Marginal.
However no-one seems to take stability seriously unless Prime95 has been run. I did not have the patience or the time to do hours and hours. But 40 minutes and a couple of full passes of blend later and all good.
Prime works SandyBridge hard. I had to up the voltages to 1.4 to complete 40 minutes plus. Failed almost immediately at 1.37.
Good cooling is important when running this stress test. As the CPU is loaded to the maximum huge amounts of heat are produced. If your temps get too high shut it down. Stress tests are nothing more than indicators of stability. The proof is in the pudding – the doing real world stuff and after 2 hours of playing Metro2033 I called it a day. Not one crash or freeze. The sharper eyed amongst you will have seen the 246'C temperature in the Touch Bios. CoreTemp had my temps at a very manageable 48'C during the Prime95 stress test. Seems like a bug that needs to be sorted. (Edit: There is a new TouchBios that was released this morning 27 May 2011, which seems to have fixed that little issue.)
The next instalment will concentrate on extreme clocking under LN2. So stay tuned to the LN2 event at the BatCave this weekend. Hopefully a few UK records will tumble.
Wrap Up
The board is certainly a step up from the P67A-UD5 that I am used to and benched near exclusively with these last four months. But if you are going to be using multi-graphic cards then the Z68X-UD7-B3 motherboard is worth the extra money I think. The NF200 chip manages the PCi-e lanes differently than it does on my M4E boards and in multi card benchmarks my 3D performance is up by a couple of hundred points in all of the benchmarks I ran. 2D was as always very quick and the Super Pi 1 mil time for this board at the exact same default settings was substantially quicker than the P67A-UD7 board I borrowed from 1Day.
I have a couple of things that I would have liked to see improved on and one odd thing. The SATA ports are a real pain to access if you are using large graphic cards. And if you buy a UD7 you are going to be using some pretty serious graphic hardware. My 580GTX cards made accessing the white SATA (INTEL SATA3) ports quite tricky. Not an issue if you are sticking the board in a case because the card will be put in last. But as a bencher often find that I need to change hard drive a couple of times with the graphic card still in. And is was not easy. Another tricky issue for someone with big hands the CMOS reset button is a awkward find. It is tucked away behind the 24 pin power connector. The reset is easier to access but still really small. I think that Gigabyte design team could have splashed out on more sizeable and aesthetically pleasing buttons. The power button is fine, it is just the other two that look very cheap in comparison. The one odd thing I had was my Lan connection was not detected during the Windows 7 installation but needed to have the drivers installed manually. Once drivers were installed it was perfect. But odd none the less.
Big Plus Factor
The single thing that stands out for me is the ease of achieving the 5GHz stable over clock. Gone are the struggles I had with the P67A boards I tried to use before the release of Z68X. This board just did what it was meant to do right from the get go. Seamless out of the box performance. I would have liked to see my CPU get an additional 250MHz and break the 6GHz barrier but that is impossible with my CPU. The motherboard is not the limiting factor my CPU is. This board is so much smoother than what I was expecting and a real pleasure to use. The weekend will show just how handy this board is when it gets subjected to serious cold. So far it is a real winner.
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