Overall and FV
The Z77X-UD3H is the cheapest Z77 board that we have received in to test so when looking at it and comparing it to the Intel board we wrote about this morning we have to keep in mind that price difference. At first glance when going over all of the boards features I was extremely impressed with what Gigabyte had to offer, especially the fact that the entire rear I/O panel’s USB ports are all USB 3.0. It wasn’t until going to test the board did we notice how much of an issue this can cause. See currently all USB controllers including the built in Intel one all require drivers to be installed. This becomes a problem when you can’t use your mouse or keyboard and in our case our USB DVD drive as well. Lucky for us we were able to just hook up USB ports to the front panel headers and get everything worked out. But I would consider this to be a major flaw some people. Once getting past that issue I was actually happy with the board’s performance in almost all of our testing. It held up against the Intel board that retails for $80 more. The only exception to this was its USB 3.0 performance, where we saw a noticeable difference. The built in audio card also showed where Gigabyte was able to save some of that money as well, where we saw performance that can only be called mediocre at best. But being their budget board I expect to see cuts in some locations. For a low price you still get into a Z77 platform board with almost all of the same features of the more expensive boards. Just remember that the money you are saving, you will be paying for with your USB 3.0 and audio performance.
*Update 5/19/2012, we were able to update this boards firmware and see slightly better USB 3.0 performance to put it close to the Intel board.
