discussion GIGABYTE Z87X-UD4H Motherboard Review

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Test Setup & Testing Methodology

Test Setup & Testing Methodology

For this review, we have prepared eight different test setups, representing all the popular platforms at the moment, as well as most of the best-selling processors. As much as possible, the four test setups feature identical components, memory timings, drivers, etc. Aside from manually selecting memory frequencies and timings, every option in the BIOS was at its default setting.

For all of the benchmarks, appropriate lengths are taken to ensure an equal comparison through methodical setup, installation, and testing. The following outlines our testing methodology:

A) Windows is installed using a full format.

B) Chipset drivers and accessory hardware drivers (audio, network, GPU) are installed.

C) To ensure consistent results, a few tweaks are applied to Windows 7 and the NVIDIA control panel:

• UAC – Disabled
• Indexing – Disabled
• Superfetch – Disabled
• System Protection/Restore – Disabled
• Problem & Error Reporting – Disabled
• Remote Desktop/Assistance - Disabled
• Windows Security Center Alerts – Disabled
• Windows Defender – Disabled
• Screensaver – Disabled
• Power Plan – High Performance
• V-Sync – Off

D) All available Windows updates are then installed.

E) All programs are installed and then updated, followed by a defragment.

F) Benchmarks are each run three to eight times, and unless otherwise stated, the results are then averaged.

Here is a full list of the applications that we utilized in our benchmarking suite:

• 3DMark Vantage Professional Edition v1.1.2
• 3DMark11 Professional Edition v1.0.5
• 3DMark 2013 Professional Edition v1.1.0
• AIDA64 Extreme Edition v3.00.2536 Beta
• Cinebench R11.529 64-bit
• MaxxMEM² - PreView v1.99
• SiSoft Sandra 2013.SP4
• SuperPI Mod 1.9 WP
• Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark v1.0.0.0
• wPRIME version 2.10
• X3: Terran Conflict Demo v1.0

That is about all you need to know methodology wise, so let's get to the good stuff!

 

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Overclocking Results

Overclocking Results

It wouldn't be an HWC review if we didn't include some overclocking results, so we thoroughly tested out this motherboard capabilities, especially with regard to its auto-overclocking functionality. Having said that, if you want to read some really in-depth information regarding how to overclock Intel's new Haswell processors, take a look at what Eldonko comments in his comprehensive review of the ASUS Z87 Deluxe motherboard.


Auto Overclocking

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The Z87X-UD4H features two types of automatic overclocking. Within EasyTune there are Smart Quick Boost presets and the newer Auto Tuning feature. The Quick Boost feature is super simple; you just select one of the three overcloking presets, the system reboots and the automatic overclock is applied. Obviously, we went straight to the Extreme preset, and as you can see below, it worked!

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From 3.9Ghz to 4.5Ghz in the time it takes to reboot is very impressive if you ask us. The preset even managed to recognize our memory kit's XMP profile and set the appropriate memory frequency as well as timings.

Voltage-wise, the results are mixed. The CPU core voltage ranges from between 1.265V under single-threaded workloads to a quite high 1.377V when all the cores are fully loaded. This is to be expected from a preset setting that has to account for both good and bad overclocking processors. Users can easily manually decrease that a few notches at will. Most importantly of all, the system passed our stability tests so clearly it was a stable overclock.

Both the excellent result and the stability are two things that are often lacking when attempting an auto-overclock, so kudos to GIGABYTE for getting it right. The one tiny little niggle is that you need to actually manually power off the system, and not just automatically reboot, the for new memory settings to take effect.

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The second auto-overclocking feature is the new Auto Tuning functionality. It is also software-based, but it does not utilize presets, and thus takes quite a bit longer (5-20 minutes). Within Windows, Auto Tuning slowly increases the system frequencies and does some stress testing at each level until it finds the limit, reboots, and voila! The overclock is set.

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The software once again achieved a very impressive auto-overclock, but the vCore it applied was far too high. The overclock was stable during SuperPI, wPrime, and 3DMark but it would obviously start overheating and throttling during any heavier stress tests. Also, with this much voltage on air cooling you are risking some potential CPU degradation. We definitely think that users should err on the side of caution when using this feature.


Manual Overclocking

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As you can see, during our manual overclocking attempt we were able to achieve another pretty solid result. The 4.8GHz core clock, 4.6GHz uncore, and DDR3-2400 memory speeds are exactly the same overclocks that we attained on the UD5H. Remember, you do need a high-end heatsink - preferably one with two fans - if you plan on pushing Haswell chips this far. Low ambient temperatures certainly help too!

On the memory front, we simply tighened up the timings a bit from the stock 10-12-12-31-2T instead of pushing much higher above the G.Skill TridentX F3-2400C10D-8GTX kit’s DDR3-2400 rating. The limiting factor is the kit itself though, or more accurately our self-imposed 1.65V voltage limit, since we've never been able to get stable over about DDR3-2420 on any motherboard.

Overall, as was the case with the UD5H model that we reviewed earlier, the Z87X-UD4H proved very amenable to our overclocking ministrations. No weird issues or random reboots, perfect system recovery when we did push things too far, and a mature bios with all the overclocking settings we needed. The new Quick Boost presets are great for those looking for an easy overclock or just a great starting point for further tweaking. Having said that, we do obviously recommend that users avoid using the Auto Tuning feature since the overly high voltage issue is a potential serious one, no matter what type of CPU cooling is being used.

 

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System Benchmarks

System Benchmarks

In the System Benchmarks and Gaming Benchmarks sections, we will show a number benchmark comparisons utilizing the Core i7-4770K and GIGABYTE Z87X-UD4H at default clocks, with the Quick Boost Extreme preset applied, and using own our manual overclock. This will illustrate how much performance can be gained by overclocking the i7-4770K using this motherboard. For full comparisons of i7-4770K versus a number of different CPUs have a look at the Intel Haswell i7-4770K & i5-4670K Review.

SuperPi Mod v1.9 WP

When running the SuperPI 32MB benchmark, we are calculating Pi to 32 million digits and timing the process. Obviously more CPU power helps in this intense calculation, but the memory sub-system also plays an important role, as does the operating system. We are running one instance of SuperPi Mod v1.9 WP. This is therefore a single-thread workload.

wPRIME 2.10

wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions, with f(x)=x2-k, where k is the number we're sqrting, until Sgn(f(x)/f'(x)) does not equal that of the previous iteration, starting with an estimation of k/2. It then uses an iterative calling of the estimation method a set amount of times to increase the accuracy of the results. It then confirms that n(k)2=k to ensure the calculation was correct. It repeats this for all numbers from 1 to the requested maximum. This is a highly multi-threaded workload.

Cinebench R11.5

Cinebench R11.5 64-bit
Test1: CPU Image Render
Comparison: Generated Score

The latest benchmark from MAXON, Cinebench R11.5 makes use of all your system's processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene using various different algorithms to stress all available processor cores. The test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects containing more than 300,000 total polygons and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights and shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. This particular benchmarking can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. The result is given in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.

Sandra Processor Arithmetic and Processor Multi-Media Benchmarks

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. The software suite provides most of the information (including undocumented) users like to know about hardware, software, and other devices whether hardware or software. The name “Sandra” is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means "defender", "helper of mankind".

The software version used for these tests is SiSoftware Sandra 2013 SP4. In the 2012 version of Sandra, SiSoft has updated the .Net benchmarks and the GPGPU benchmarks have been upgraded to General Processing (GP) benchmarks, able to fully test the new APU (CPU+GPU) processors. The two benchmarks that we used are the Processor Multi-Media and Processor Arithmetic benchmarks. These three benchmarks were chosen as they provide a good indication of three varying types of system performance. The multi-media test shows how the processor handles multi-media instructions and data and the arithmetic test shows how the processor handles arithmetic and floating point instructions. These two tests illustrate two important areas of a computer’s speed and provide a wide scope of results.

MaxxMem Benchmark

Created by MaxxPI², the MaxxMem benchmark tests your computer’s raw memory performance, combining copy, read, write and latency tests into one global score. This memory benchmark is a classic way to measure bandwidth of a memory subsystem.

MaxxMem uses continuous memoryblocks, sized in power of 2 from 16MB up to 512MB, starting either writing to or reading from it. To enable high-precision memory performance measurement, they both internally work with multiple passes and averages calculations per run.

Further, the main goal was to minimize (CPU) cache pollution on memory reads and to eliminate it (almost completely) on memory writes. Additionally, MaxxMem operates with an aggressive data prefetching algorithm. This all will deliver an excellent judge of bandwidth while reading and writing.

 

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Gaming Benchmarks

Gaming Benchmarks

Futuremark 3DMark (2013)

3DMark v1.1.0
Graphic Settings: Fire Strike Preset
Rendered Resolution: 1920x1680
Test: Specific Physics Score and Full Run 3DMarks
Comparison: Generated Score


3DMark is the brand new cross-platform benchmark from the gurus over at Futuremark. Designed to test a full range of hardware from smartphones to high-end PCs, it includes three tests for DirectX 9, DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 hardware, and allows users to compare 3DMark scores with other Windows, Android and iOS devices. Most important to us is the new Fire Strike preset, a DirectX 11 showcase that tests tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Like every new 3DMark version, this test is extremely GPU-bound, but it does contain a heavy physics test that can show off the potential of modern multi-core processors.

Futuremark 3DMark 11

3DMark 11 v1.0.5
Graphic Settings: Performance Preset
Resolution: 1280X720
Test: Specific Physics Score and Full Run 3DMarks
Comparison: Generated Score


3DMark 11 is Futuremark's very latest benchmark, designed to tests all of the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. At the moment, it is lot more GPU-bound than past versions are now, but it does contain a terrific physics test which really taxes modern multi-core processors.

Futuremark 3DMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage v1.1.2
Graphic Settings: Performance Preset
Resolution: 1280X1024

Test: Specific CPU Score and Full Run 3DMarks
Comparison: Generated Score

3DMark Vantage is the follow-up to the highly successful 3DMark06. It uses DirectX 10 exclusively so if you are running Windows XP, you can forget about this benchmark. Along with being a very capable graphics card testing application, it also has very heavily multi-threaded CPU tests, such Physics Simulation and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which makes it a good all-around gaming benchmark.

Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark

Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark
Resolution: 1680x1050
Anti-Aliasing: 4X
Anisotropic Filtering: 8X
Graphic Settings: High
Comparison: Particle Performance Metric

Originally intended to demonstrate new processing effects added to Half Life 2: Episode 2 and future projects, the particle benchmark condenses what can be found throughout HL2:EP2 and combines it all into one small but deadly package. This test does not symbolize the performance scale for just Episode Two exclusively, but also for many other games and applications that utilize multi-core processing and particle effects. As you will see the benchmark does not score in FPS but rather in its own "Particle Performance Metric", which is useful for direct CPU comparisons.

X3: Terran Conflict

X3: Terran Conflict 1.2.0.0
Resolution: 1680x1050
Texture & Shader Quality: High
Antialiasing 4X
Anisotropic Mode: 8X
Glow Enabled

Game Benchmark
Comparison: FPS (Frames per Second)

X3: Terran Conflict (X3TC) is the culmination of the X-series of space trading and combat simulator computer games from German developer Egosoft. With its vast space worlds, intricately detailed ships, and excellent multi-threaded game engine, it remains a great test of modern CPU performance.

 

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Voltage Regulation / Power Consumption

Voltage Regulation / Power Consumption

Our voltage regulation testing will focus on the various voltages and the differences encountered between what is selected in the BIOS and what is measured by a digital multi-meter (DMM). Thanks to the onboard voltage measurement points we didn't have to go poking & prodding everywhere, since all the voltage read points are located in one convenient spot. Users can either take their measurements straight from the voltage read pads, or by attaching the DMM leads to the voltage headers via cables.

Now that we have established where the read points are, let’s have a look at the results. These measurements were taken at stock system speeds and with C1E, C-STATE, Enhanced SpeedStep, and Turbo Boost enabled in the BIOS. Just to clarify, the VRIN (LLC) section is the CPU VRIN External Override voltage with Load-Line Calibration enabled and set to Extreme mode. Here are our findings:

As you can see, the Z87X-UD4H has exceptionally good voltage regulation output. What you set in the bios is pretty much exactly what the board outputs, whether idling or under full load. The only exception to this is the VRIN, where there is a very minimal amount vDroop under heavy workloads. The droop is well within reference specifications, and you basically eliminate it by enabling Load-Line Calibration (LLC) and setting it to Extreme mode.

At this point, we would usually see how the vCore behaves with and without Load-Line Calibration (LLC) enabled. However, Intel made a considerable number of changes when it comes to Haswell’s architecture, one of the most notable is the fact that addition of an on-die voltage regulator module (VRM). This tiny VRM controls voltage rails for every part of the CPU, and it also more efficient and less prone to ripples than a traditional motherboard VRM. As a result, a new voltage rail has gained importance. The CPU VRIN External Override, or just VRIN for short, is the voltage that the motherboard VRM provides the CPU. No longer can you apply LLC directly to the vCore, but you can do so to the VRIN, which will subsequently have an effect on the vCore. So what we are interested in here is how much of an effect the different VRIN LLC modes have on the vCore rail. This was done with a one-hour OCCT run, using all eight threads, and with our Core i7-4770K overclocked to 4.30Ghz at 1.25V (in the BIOS).

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Basically, the actual rippling of the vCore line under full load is non-existent on this motherboard. When you set LLC to Extreme mode, the most aggressive option, there are slightly more little spikes than with either the AUTO or Normal settings, but they are really insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Personally, I recommend that you just keep this setting on AUTO.

Power Consumption

For this section, every energy saving feature was enabled in the respective BIOSes and the Windows Vista power plan was changed from High Performance to Balanced. For our idle test, we let the system idle for 15 minutes and measured the peak wattage through our UPM EM100 power meter. For our CPU load test, we ran Prime 95 V27.9 64-bit In-place large FFTs on all available threads for 15 minutes, measuring the peak wattage via the UPM EM100 power meter. For our overall system load test, we ran Prime 95 In-place large FFTs on all available threads for 15 minutes, while simultaneously loading the GPU with OCCT v4.4.0 GPU DX11 stress test at 1680x1050 with a 300 FPS Limit.

As expected since both models feature the same power design and basic components, the Z87X-UD4H features very similar power consumption numbers as the UD5H. There is no runaway wattage draw on these models, and the overall numbers are very much inline we what would expect from a fully featured motherboard such as this one.

 

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Conclusion

Conclusion

Gigabyte's Z87X-UD4H is an excellent all-round motherboard which has a long list of strong features and a relatively palatable price. Granted, there are other less expensive options but for an optimal combination of cost, enthusiast-friendly additions and expansion capabilities, this is one of the better products currently available.

The overall layout of the UD4H is great but you are going to have to pay special attention to the clearance levels between the CPU cooler and memory modules. As we demonstrated in the 'Hardware Installation' section, depending on the size of your heatsink, the orientation in which it is installed, and which side of the heatsink the fan(s) is located, you can potentially run into clearance issues with memory modules with tall heatspreaders...which is seemingly most of them nowadays. It should be mentioned that this isn't an issue that is isolated to this model and we encounter it consistently due to our particularly bulky heatsink / RAM combo.

Usability-wise, the onboard backlit power button is a nice touch for those users whose systems aren't confined within a traditional case. The voltage measurement points are a great help when it comes to serious overclocking endeavours, as is the venerable LED POST code display. The onboard BIOS switcher is useful for those who like to run multiple BIOS profiles and a lifesaver when something unexpected happens. The well-rounded assortment of VGA, DVI, HDMI, and DisplayPort ports guarantee that you will be able to output a video signal to any device. When it comes to connectivity this model has up to ten USB 3.0 ports and eight SATA III ports, so your storage or peripherals needs are well cared for.

Unlike the Z87X-UD5H, which has unique gold accents to its otherwise all-black aesthetic, the Z87X-UD4H features a more conventional black and red colour scheme. This will obviously make it much easier to colour coordinate the motherboard to your other system parts, if that's your thing. But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

The stock performance of the Z87X-UD4H matched that of its higher-end sibling, which is to say that it was slightly slower than the ASUS Z87 Deluxe in single-threaded workloads, but slightly faster in multi-threaded benchmarks. We were once again able to achieve some sizeable performance increases by overclocking our i7-4770K to 4.8Ghz, which this motherboard handled with flawlessly. Overclocking on it happened without a hitch and we didn't experience any flakiness or random reboots. System recovery meanwhile worked perfectly when we pushed things too far, and the UEFI BIOS had all the overclocking settings we needed and then some.

We once again have some concerns about the auto-overclocking Auto Tuning feature in the overhauled EasyTune utility though. While it does a very good of overclocking the processor, it is far too aggressive when it comes to core voltage. In our case, the vCore was set to 1.542V which is far too high given all the enthusiast concerns about Haswell overvoltage degradation. Furthermore, and perhaps mostly importantly, there's no way to air cool a chip with that much juice going through it. The thermal output is off the charts under load and it will overwhelm most cooling solutions. Therefore, for now, stay away from Auto-Tuning, and just use the very good Smart QuickBoost Extreme preset. This feature overclocked our chip to 4.5GHz in the time it took to do one reboot, and it set reasonable voltage levels. Obviously, if you can, we recommend just taking the overclocking efforts into your own hands, and in that scenario, this motherboard definitely won't let you down.

In conclusion, we are quite fond of GIGABYTE's Z87X-UD4H. It offers strong performance, expansive storage connectivity options, good power consumption numbers, a worthwhile new BIOS mode, a nice mix of manual and automatic overclocking capabilities, and at $185 it also offers pretty good Bang for the Buck. Therefore, if you are in the market for a Z87 motherboard, the GIGABYTE Z87X-UD4H should definitely be on your shortlist.