Gigabyte Z87X-UD5 TH Thunderbolt Motherboard Review

The Hardware Asylum Multi-GPU index is a portable set of data we can use to determine the multi-gpu potential of any motherboard.  A higher index number indicates a favorable condition for multiple graphics cards while a lower number indicates a hindrance in one of our leading indicators.  Since the Index is not dependent on system architecture it can be applied to any motherboard regardless of processor or chipset generations.

Index: 3.25
Optimized: 2x
Max Support: 3x

Technologies Supported
NVidia SLI
AMD Crossfire

This motherboard will support up to three graphics cards and is optimized for dual card operation.  

For best video performance you will want to populate the top most PCI Express slot with your video card and try to avoid using the secondary slot.  The secondary slot is hardwired to 8x PCI Express lanes and only active if the slot is populated.  Given the distance between the slots if you choose to enable Crossfire be sure that your bridge connector is long enough to reach.

Boards like this are really quite fun to mess with and even though the last slot is hardwired to 4x lanes you can still run a third card either as a dedicated PhysX processor or play with 3-way Crossfire using AMD GPUs.  The best option would be to reserve it for hardware RAID controllers or leave it open for better dual card cooling.

It should be noted that the UD5 TH comes with a mystery expansion slot not unlike a 1x PCI Express.  The positioning is incorrect for PCI Express and the manual indicates that it is for future expandability.  Our best guess thus far is for a third Thunderbolt connection via expansion card.