Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH Review And Benchmarks

Thunderbolt technology was first seen as I got my hands on the P8Z77-V Premium from ASUS. I knew it would not be long until we saw Thunderbolt equipped boards rolling out from other manufacturers, and that they have and even better in some cases. Gigabyte decided to forego the standard Thunderbolt port in favor of 20Gbps of dual Thunderbolt power.

That is correct today we have the Z77X-UP4 TH motherboard which offers not just Thunderbolt but dual Thunderbolt ports for a total of 20Gbps bandwidth for storage or external Thunderbolt devices. On top of that the new PowerStage VRM components come together to really reinvent Gigabytes solutions for Z77, so lets see what exactly this board has to offer and makes it worth the meager $184.99 current street price. Lets see if it a solid value and worthy of your money and attention.

The Accessory bundle for the Z77X-UP4 TH is quite basic, it covers the connectivity of the board and installation and it includes the following.

-          IO Shield

-          Installation Disc

-          User Manual

-          SLI Bridge

-          SATA Cables

This covers all of the basic connectivity and even the SLI Bridge if the need to run dual card arises. One thing I would like to see is 6 SATA cables due to the fact that there are 6 ports on the board.

 

Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH Basic Features

The Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH is a Z77 based motherboard based upon the standard ATX form factor. It has four DIMM slots for dual channel operation with a capacity up to 32GB.  This really does not differ from any other motherboard in the Z77 lineup regardless of maker as very few if any vary from this spec if any.

The 4 pin of the M3 is gone and I could not be happier as the Z77X-UP4 TH uses a full 8 pin so that squashes one of the main points I didn’t really care for on the M3 and shows that Gigabyte listens and is coming to the plate swinging with the Z77X-UP4 TH.

The 4 pin on the mATX Sniper M3 may be enough for some scenarios if not most but I don’t know if its just the feel you get or what but 8 pins have always been on Overclocking board so I am definitely happy to see its return on the Z77X-UP4 TH.

The Chipset cooler for the Z77X-UP4 TH is large, and connected via heatpipe.  The Z77 PCH does not output a lot of heat so seeing a fairly large chunk of cooler in that position is awesome because the heat can be transferred from other critical components to the larger array for quick dissipation of heat.  Notice that where there would normally be a Northbridge chipset on previous gen boards there is a heatpipe connected small heatsink there.  We have seen this many times where it was just there and likely providing extra surface area, but that is not the case here as the Gen 3 PLX chip resides under this small bit of cooler and is one of the things that makes the PCIe slot expandability possible.  One thing worth nothing is that all of the heatsinks are screw down type which is excellent since push pin style coolers just leave far too much to chance, while screw down cooler mounting simply allows for a much more secure and reliable contact area for the cooler.

Here we see the SATA Ports on the Z77X-UP4 TH and it is pretty standard fare for the Z77 chipset with both the 4 native SATA3G ports at the lower edge along with the dual SATA 6G ports which are white in color. One thing to note as the red sticker notes is that a SATA 3G port (Port 5) will be rerouted to the mSATA slot located mid board if a drive is installed in that location. At that point the SATA 5 port will no longer function from the port located at board edge.

The slot configuration is quite nice and similar to others I have seen as well. Since Z77 natively supports 16 PCIe lanes it only makes sense that most boards will be ideally configured for 2 Way SLI or Crossfire GPU configurations. Well Gigabyte was pretty proactive in this effect being that there are many manufacturers employing triple slot coolers on their highest end GPU’s and therefore Gigabyte wanted to ensure they cover that configuration by offering triple slot spacing for the GPU PCIe slots.

There is also a duet of PCIe x1 slots for newer NIC or audio card usage and lastly there is a standard PCI slot. Once again the Legacy is nice as I am sure there are some users that may use some older devices but at some point we need to cut the cord and realize that these devices are well outdated and soon need to be dropped.

The IO portion allows for connectivity for most any type of display but Displayport is omitted this time around as it is covered by the included Thunderbolt ports which we will discuss further in the advanced features section. But once again I feel the point needs to be made that the DVI/D-Sub block is very large and other manufacturers have omitted these connections on some boards, but I would really like to see for instance a DVI with an included adapter in case D-Sub was needed. The whole reason I even bring this up is that connectivity is king, especially with so many devices being plugged into PC’s these days I feel like you really struggle to have enough connectivity and next thing you know you have hubs upon hubs. Its not really a major thing more just I would like to see more focus on expandability rather than legacy display ports when in reality now days VGA is sparsely used. The combo PS2 Mouse/KB port is nice but once again with legacy many have chosen to omit this connector as it takes up space and is rarely used now days. USB3.0 ports a plenty on the UP4 TH as the IO has 6 and there is also the gigabit LAN port and Dual thunderbolt ports. Lastly is the analog audio block which also carries and optical SPDIF connection.

 

Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH Advanced Features

Advanced features are more of an in-depth look at what this board offers that is not standard fare for Z77 boards in general. So lets dive in and see what the UP4 TH has to offer under its silicon hood.

The previously mentioned mSATA connection is located mid board where previous generations would find their North Bridge chipset. This is mapped from the SATA port 5 as mentioned before so it has full 3Gbps performance available directly from the native PCH ports.

The Advantages of having an mSATA port is that the whole OS and related programs up to whatever size SSD you install. Presently the maximum size mSATA SSD I could find would be 256GB but that’s plenty for an OS and some other programs such as games or whatever you want. And this means no SATA Cables coming from the board which could really make for a clean and wire free install.

Here we see the new single package VRM design that integrates the full package of drivers and MOSFETs into a single IC. These MOSFETs are referred to by Gigabyte as PowerStage components and for the most part it looks like they can handle up to 60A each so that means some serious power to your CPU. This in turn will lead to lower thermals, better efficiency and performance, which is a basic blanket understanding that cooler components run better and more efficiently.  This all leads to the common goal of saving power in day to day computing and of course, and on the extreme end it can push some serious power for strong clocks when overclocking.

We have seen Thunderbolt implementations on the P8Z77-V Premium board previously. This is thunderbolts big debut into the PC market with these initial boards so to say we were surprised to see a board with dual Thunderbolt ports was a surprise would be an understatement. Thunderbolt is the next gen of hot swappable super fast transport interfaces. Each Thunderbolt interface offers a Bi Directional 10GB/s link which means no matter if your talking storage or media devices there should be no bottleneck here. Also did I mention it supports daisy chaining which means a cable goes in and another can go out to yet another device for up to 6 devices on the chain all fed from a single motherboard output. On top of all of that the Thunderbolt interface support Displayport level video which explains why the IO did not have a Displayport connection as the board has two onboard already. As you see from the slide from Gigabyte the Thunderbolt interface passes both Data and video through the same port and cable so that even at the end of 6 daisy chained storage or media devices a monitor can be put in line as a 7^th device ending the chain.

Here we see that the dual ports are supported by the Intel DSL3510L chipset which is native PCIe supported so no bridge chips are needed to enable this controller.

Here is a good representation of the speed you will see from the Thunderbolt ports in comparison to other storage interfaces previously used and even presently used. The Thunderbolt ports are 100% faster than the runner up USB 3.0 as Thunderbolt offers up to 10Gbps and USB 3.0 offers up to 5gbps. This then moves to eSATA 3Gbps and from there it drops precipitously to the bottom end which is USB 2.0 which is still employs today at 480Mbps or .48Gbps. This is a pretty clear statement that there is some serious throughput capability here just waiting to be tapped.

Here we can see a visual representation of the type of device configuration available with 6 devices per port + a display at the end of it. Not bad since that means two cables from the board can feed these fourteen devices.

Here is a pretty good mention, which is the ability to run 3 displays onboard using the dual Thunderbolt ports and either the D-Sub or HDMI port. Any Mini Displayport connector can be used to connect a Displayport display device to create this triple monitor array fed by the iGPU

Here is the Ultra durable 5 setup which includes multiple features such as the PowerStage MOSFETs, Super strong Ferrite core chokes, complete solid state capacitors and lets not forget the glass fabric PCB for better moisture resistance and the 2X copper PCB to ensure optimal signal transfer.

 

Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH Overclocking

Running Ivy Bridge to the edge can be done with relative ease with extreme cooling methods and some time and skill. But for the sake of most users being able to play the game we run it at a speed that requires minor voltage adjustments which enables most good coolers to keep it nice and cool. For this reason we run our testing at 4.6GHz.

Ivy Bridge chips can vary greatly from one or the other especially when trying to find the limit. Recent test show this as our friend was running some liquid nitrogen tests on a 3770K and as you see above 6.6GHz was perfectly benchable with the more than capable cooling method. Not all chips have had the same luck as some can barely hit 6.2GHz and also you can get an amazing chip and be able to push upwards of 6.9-7GHz+ but those are considered golden chips and are not very common. The Z77X-UP5 TH was delightful to overclock as it pulled up to 4.6GHz with merely some setting changes in the BIOS. Even 5 GHz only required minor tweaking to get us there but as you scale upward Ivy Bridge CPUs really begin to climb in temps so we stuck at 4.6GHz for testing.

Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH BIOS Features

The BIOS for the Z77X-UP4 TH is very similar to the other Z77’s we have seen from gigabyte. One thing to note is that the mouse movements are not jumpy like we had seen before which is a huge plus as previously that was a big complaint. After exiting the visual or 3D BIOS we see a BIOS that is very much what we are used to seeing in the Gigabyte boards of yesterday in the standard Award layout, which simply works and navigates well with a mouse or keyboard.

The BIOS is all standard layout from Gigabyte from as far as I can remember for quite some time now. Overall I can say the BIOS is about the same as we have seen before from Gigabyte but without the jumpiness which is enough to make me happy as it works and works well. Add to this additions such as the “Legacy benchmark” setting which enables a special mode to enhance performance in benchmarks such as SuperPi or 3Dmark2011 which both can see nice improvement from efficiency tweaks such as this.

Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH Test Setup

Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH Performance Results

Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 TH Final Thoughts

Gigabyte is the first to come out with a board with dual thunderbolt ports. Add to that the fact that the new VRM shows some serious promise with the new PowerStage components and the nice price simply wraps up an overall attractive package that is hard to pass up at this price point. Warranty and support are handled very well at Gigabyte and this area rarely get touched upon, but it is an important factor nonetheless as lets just face it folks, hardware sometimes breaks down and then support becomes the all important factor.

Yes Thunderbolt is very new but new devices are showing up all the time and much like USB before it there is some major potential here and by adopting a Thunderbolt board such as this unlocks come serious possibilities that I think will lead to some very cool storage configuration possibilities. The possibilities do not stop there, as content professionals will also love some of the specialized video and other equipment, which is or will soon be available with the super fast interface to ensure a new Era in productivity. If overclocking is your game, the Gigabyte Z77X-UP4 offers a lot of headroom and for those looking for the so-called Future-proof motherboard this may just be you’re “A “ticket and just what the doctor ordered.