Gigabyte Z77-HD4 Review
by Ian Cutress on May 19, 2013 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Gigabyte
- Z77
Gigabyte Z77-HD4 Conclusion
How much can $120 buy in a motherboard? If you want a simple single GPU system with a mild overclock, Gigabyte seem to have you covered. The Z77-HD4 is almost along the lines of a no-frills product: we have the base features of Z77 (overclocking, SATA 6 Gbps and USB 3.0), in a shortened board with additional PCIe, PCIe x1 and PCI ports as needed.
Performance-wise, the Z77-HD4 performs as well as any other Z77 motherboard on the market in terms of actual CPU and gaming performance at stock. All the CPU benchmarks and gaming benchmarks were in the mix – the only point at which we could consider the HD4 was not too good was in some of the IO, particularly DPC Latency where no matter what options we tried, the motherboard still spiked up to 561 microseconds without ET6 loaded and 871 with. USB performance however was decent enough and while power consumption seemed a little high under dual GPU testing, idle power usage was good.
The Z77-HD4 did well in our overclocking suite surpassing expectations. In terms of our bad CPU, it matched other boards we have reviewed recently, and although the voltages had to be increased more than I would like the temperatures were comparatively low compared to our other CPUs. Of course while the board may overclock like some of the big boys, an issue comes along with VRM temperatures at those high overclocks – with fewer phases and smaller heatsinks, you may find the hardware throttles earlier than some of the more substantial designs.
What the HD4 lacks most of all is functionality. Due to the price point we have no extra controllers on board, SATA ports sticking out of the motherboard and an x16 + x4 full length PCIe allocation which does not lend itself to multi-GPU gaming. However if one of the selling points of this motherboard is the inclusion of all four video outputs at the low price, then one could conceivably argue that this board should not be paired with a discrete GPU and more like a good RAID card or Sound card, or one should venture forth with Virtu MVP to get the best responsiveness.
Going up the Gigabyte range, the UD3H is currently on sale for $140, and offers a bit more in styling, eSATA ports, an mSATA port, and up to 3-way CrossFire with an x8/x8 + x4 PCIe lane setup. The in-box package also includes an SLI bridge as a point of differentiation.
For the future, I have had requests to have a look at some of these cheaper products, as well as B- and Q- series when time allows. Unlike some of the bigger boards that flesh out the $150+ range, these lower models can sometimes only differ in one feature, but be based on the same PCB design. So if you have any specific models, please let me know at ian@anandtech.com.
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lever_age - Sunday, May 19, 2013 - link
I also agree that a greater emphasis should be placed on these cheaper options. It's not always easy to be able to tell when too many corners have been cut.Particularly with power consumption going down the way it has, all the companies are rather overselling VRMs for overclocking. For a moderate 24/7 overclock on air, enough to satisfy say a gamer wanting to grind something out of the SC2 engine or somebody wanting to speed up some calculations, where's the cutoff point of quality in how low you can reasonably go? (Yeah, more phases and higher switching frequency can mean lower ripple, and lower temps and power losses are better, but how much of a big difference does that really make?) Of course, it's still hard to tell about longevity.
klmccaughey - Sunday, May 19, 2013 - link
Been using Gigabyte boards for ten years now almost exclusively. They're always good with decent overclock options. Never had a bad one yet.Wall Street - Sunday, May 19, 2013 - link
I feel like Ian is stretching when he critiques this board for not having onboard power/reset buttons and error code displays. I guess he assembles and disassembles systems all day long, but having these features on my current motherboard, I never use them (I only have them because I needed to replace my 1156 board and only high-end parts are still readily available when I ordered).I guess he has finally seen the light when it comes to overclocking though. The motherboard makers stretch as much as they can to justify the extra $50=$100 to up-sell enthusiasts. However, Intel has done an incredible job designing their chipsets and most users don't need 8+ SATA, 12+ power phases, or debug codes, and few use SLI/Crossfire.
Wall Street - Sunday, May 19, 2013 - link
And I forgot to mention "this board is probably aimed at the internet café market in China" is pretty shameful and below the belt Ian. As you have shown yourself, it is just as good at gaming as the $200+ boards unless extreme overclocking or multi-GPU. Go look at a Steam survey to see what actual gamers have installed - this board is quite capable of power a system in the top 1% of Steam users.A5 - Sunday, May 19, 2013 - link
Seriously. There are so few use cases that justify the $200+ boards.I know the $300 boards are more fun to review, but I think AT users are better served with reviews of these sub-$150 Z-series boards.
ForstAmt - Sunday, May 19, 2013 - link
What those guy said.I honestly don't know what the point of this review is. So having a HE GPU running in a PCIe x4 slot is not a good idea. Really? Well I don't think that in 2013 anyone needed a review to know that. Seems like that is the main focus of the review though.
For most people running PCs on hardware aimed at chinese internet cafes it would probably be much more interesting how well thought trough the layout is.
Are the fan connectors positioned in a way that makes sense? How about the slot layout: Can you use a graphics card (2 or 3slot) along with 2 or 3 other pci and/or pcie cards without problems? (and no, i am not talking about another gpu -.-).
But atleast the reviewer was honest at the beginning when he stated that he doesn't have a clue. And it shows. I really like anandtech but this review aggravated me enough to register and comment.
p.s.: I hope my chinese internet cafe hardware manages to send this comment in a way that makes it readable on you guys using the regular sniperelite and rog gaming elite stuff.
ForstAmt - Sunday, May 19, 2013 - link
Please excuse the typos.kmmatney - Sunday, May 19, 2013 - link
Well - the review was useful for me. These are the types of boards I buy, and I might have missed the fact that it uses a 4x slot for the second card. I effectively spent $59 for my My GA-Z77X-UD3H, but didn't think to look at what happens when you run 2 GPUs. Thankfully my board runs them at 8x/8x, which gives better performance, but I hadn't thought to even check that when I bought it. Not that I've ever used 2 GPUs...jonjonjonj - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
why the techpowerup article only shows a 5% difference between 3.0 x16 and 2.0 x4 with a 7970. terrible crossfire drivers?http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Ivy_Bridg...
Jambe - Sunday, May 19, 2013 - link
I agree but I'd also like to see reviews of boards with other chipsets, namely Z75 and H77.