Gigabyte Z77X UP7 Overclocking Motherboard Review
Author: Dennis Garcia
Published: Monday, November 12, 2012
Benchmarks - Overclocked
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 5.0GHz @ 48x multiplier and 104 BLCK. The results are show below.
CPU-Z
SiSoft Sandra Various Overclocks
Unreal Tournament 3
Crysis
Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare
Overclocking Conclusion
Overclocking the Sandy Bridge architecture is a little different and requires a K type chip for the best result since straight BLCK adjustments are often limited by the processor and onboard components.
The plan was to bench the OC section of this review under LN2 but the schedule never allowed that to happen. We could have switched things up and run the proc under the Single Stage but, let's face it, LN2 is considerably more fun.
For this review we did ramp things up to 5.0Ghz and determined that for the effort and performance 4.8Ghz would have been a better choice.
Overall we had no issues overclocking and for this overclocking adventure we set everything in the UEFI before booting into windows. Doing that typically gives us a better litmus towards system stability and saves time in the long run. With that said we did mess with the overclocking buttons with great joy and success, while we would like to say the buttons work flawless we determined that standard BCLK stepping would move 2Mhz with each click but with the GEAR button enabled would micro-adjust as expected.
The Gigabyte Z77X-UP7 is designed for the extreme overclocker and there are a few quirks in the UEFI to help you get the most from your system including a legacy benchmark booster and the ability to direct key every voltage value. We even noticed that the system would boot faster that most Z77 boards we have tested which really cuts down on the total tweaking time.
The plan was to bench the OC section of this review under LN2 but the schedule never allowed that to happen. We could have switched things up and run the proc under the Single Stage but, let's face it, LN2 is considerably more fun.
For this review we did ramp things up to 5.0Ghz and determined that for the effort and performance 4.8Ghz would have been a better choice.Overall we had no issues overclocking and for this overclocking adventure we set everything in the UEFI before booting into windows. Doing that typically gives us a better litmus towards system stability and saves time in the long run. With that said we did mess with the overclocking buttons with great joy and success, while we would like to say the buttons work flawless we determined that standard BCLK stepping would move 2Mhz with each click but with the GEAR button enabled would micro-adjust as expected.
The Gigabyte Z77X-UP7 is designed for the extreme overclocker and there are a few quirks in the UEFI to help you get the most from your system including a legacy benchmark booster and the ability to direct key every voltage value. We even noticed that the system would boot faster that most Z77 boards we have tested which really cuts down on the total tweaking time.
