Gigabyte Z68X UD7 B3 Motherboard Review

As with all of our reviews, we pit the default speed system against the overclocked one in a head-to-head byte match.  The effective overclock for these tests is 4.9GHz @ 48x multiplier and 104 BLCK.  The results are show below.

Overclocking the Sandy Bridge architecture is a little different from what we are accustomed to, in fact the process reminds us of the old days when the only option was to hack the system to adjust the multiplier or hotwire the system clock to raise the frequency.  In doing so there was also a good chance your attached devices would stop working.

We were able to run our 2600K at 5.0Ghz without issue however with this particular CPU it runs best, and with less voltage, at 4.9Ghz.  This is still plenty fast for our benchmark suite.  Overall we had no issues overclocking but did have some concerns with CPU voltage given the change in load line configuration in the BIOS.  Hopefully in future revisions at least one model will come with a way to do voltage tests from a convenient location on the motherboard.

Since the release of the P67A-UD7 we have been testing and turning this particular 2600K processor and posted some rather amazing results which have not been possible on any other motherboard we have tested.  As we mentioned before much of it is is due to our particular CPU but you need a good motherboard to realize the full potential.