Displaying items by tag: GIGABYTE

With all of the excitement surround a CPU launch from both AMD and then Intel some of the smaller products have been overlooked. These are parts like the A75 chipset and the Llano CPU. We have had one of these up on the test bench for a while now. Mostly to run the performance tests and see where this hardware falls in terms of real performance, but also to try it out and see just what it is like to use.  After all this is a platform that AMD was putting a good deal of stock in for future sales and market share. We wanted to see what it would be like to actually use one. We have already taken a look at the design philosophy and features So without any further preamble we bring you the second half of our Gigabyte A75-UD4H motherboard review.

We all know that Intel is launching a new CPU in the next few months to replace the 1366 socket and the X58 chipset. There is not a whole lot of detail around on this, but we can gauge the time of launch by the number of companies that are currently “launching” X79 motherboards.  If history is any indication we are within about 3 months of seeing a new CPU from the Blue Team.

Still things are a little different this time; when we saw the P55 and P67 launches the boards were flowing to the review sites and we had previews, unboxings, and everything in-between. We even had a stack of P67 motherboards about a month before the CPU arrived on our doorstep.  This time companies are being a little more… careful in how they send products out. I was not the only one to get buried under an avalanche of boxes right up to the actual launch date.

Now instead of flooding the sites with pre-production boards we are seeing the manufacturers themselves conducting the photo shoots and writing up the details. These are what the press has to talk about (unless you are lucky enough to get invited to a launch event at a company headquarters).  Still that is what we have to go on so that is what we will talk about now. So far we have heard from two of the larger competitors. Asus has pushed out their Rampage IV Extreme and shown it off to a select group of journalists. These lucky few got to see a board that while containing a complete BOM (Build of Materials) was not likely to work. Some have even been able to actual take a closer look at the board in person but those have been few and far between.

Next up we have a whole line of boards from Gigabyte. Not content to just launch one Gigabyte is showing off a total of four. These boards range from their top end gaming board the G1 Assassin 2 to their more mainstream X79-UD3 (stopping along the way to pick up the crazy overclocker on the X79-UD7).  

We really are looking forward to each and every one of these products. They are bringing a new socket, a new memory specification (not really but sort of) and much more. As we find out more about the X79 and Intel’s next generation CPU we will be sure you let you know. One thing we can tell you now, it is certainly not going to be boring.

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AMD has been throwing the term Fusion around since the early days of the AM2 CPU. We heard rumors of AMD “fusing” the GPU and the CPU together, integrating the MCP (media control processor) into the CPU and a bunch of other stuff. Each of these rumors was dismissed by AMD one at a time. AMD continued to state that Fusion was not a single thing but a platform (of course the media was not going to let that happen). It was only last year when we finally found out what AMD was talking about. It was a CPU with and APU (auxiliary processing unit) that is there to assist in complex tasks that the core CPU was not able to deal with. Interestingly enough this was not a new idea but was actually a return to some of AMD’s roots. AMD began their CPU debut with the purchase of a company called Nexgen. Nexgen CPU did not include a math co-processor (at least the original ones). If you wanted one you could buy one and attach it as an… you guessed it APU. Well many years have passed since that time and we are sure the APU is a little more than a simple math co-processor.  Fortunately for you, we have an AMD A6 3650 and a Gigabyte A75-UD4H motherboard to play with. So let’s take a look at this new motherboard from Gigabyte and while we are at it the AMD Llano A6 3650 CPU…

After a look into the design and features of the Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H we are now diving into how well it performs. Unlike the MSI Z68A-GD80 we do not have any indications that we will run out of PCIe lanes, however we are still a little concerned about how well the Z68X will perform when we drop in the HD5870. We are also more than a little curious to see how the touchBIOS will work on the real world. So, let’s dive in and get to testing the Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H.

We have taken our walk around of the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 and found we like the design and many of the features packed into the system. In the second half of our test we will be diving into what you can get out of it when you put in under the stress of rendering, gaming and general purpose computing. We do have concerns with this new product as it has really been built with a newer CPU in mind (one that is not ready as of this writing). Still one of the things that AMD has always worked on is backwards compatibility. With that in mind we are breaking out our Phenom II 1100T and getting ready for some testing.

Now that the AMD Llano CPU with its Fusion architecture is out and we have seen some of what it can do you knew it would only be a matter of time before the call to overclock this new CPU was put out.

Gigabyte is partnering up with HWBot for their A75 OC Challenge. This new overclocking contest is simple; Gigabyte wants you to push this new CPU+APU to it limits using any Gigabyte A75 Based motherboard.




There will be 5 stages you will have to submit clocks and scores for,
Stage 1 – 3DMark11 Performance Preset
Stage 2 – 3DMark Vantage Performance Preset
Stage 3 – PCMark 7
Stage 4 - Unigine Heaven DX11
Stage 5 – UCBench 2011

This contest will continue through the month of August. For more information check out the full PR

Discuss and talk tactics on our Forum

AMD is a company that not too long ago was on top. They had done something that no one thought possible; they were able to outperform Intel clock for clock.  But they had a problem; they had a winning CPU but had to rely on others for a solid platform to run on. This prompted AMD to buy ATi (one of the companies that had a good chipset for AMD) which gave them a GPU business and a chipset business. The problem has been paying the bill on that particular purchase. This has prevented them from putting a lot of money into R&D and has also led to some, well unimpressive products (on the CPU side not the GPU). We have worked through several CPUs and chipsets; each one improving a little over the other but never really catching up to what Intel has on the market.  Now things could be different; nVidia has allowed SLI on an AMD chipset and AMD is making good strides in terms of what their chipsets can do (with limitations from the CPU and IMC). We have their latest chipset in the form of the Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5. This is a Three-Way SLI AMD motherboard with lots to offer. We are going to look at the design, layout, and cover some design philosophy and features along the way.

The Z68 has been touted as “cougar point done right” and many other things. I have been asked if the Z68 is going to replace the X58 and many other things beside that ever since it came onto the scene. We have taken a theoretical and design look at one Z68 and now we are going to take a look at another. This one is from Gigabyte; the Z68X-UD3H-B3 (we are getting back to the long names again). This board has a more than its share of selling points. It features the new TouchBIOS (also called Hybrid EFI), the usual compliment USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports and of course SLI and crossfire. But there is more to the Z68X-UD3H than just this. We also see that it comes complete with the new VirtuGPU technology from Lucid Driver MOSFETs, and much more. So let’s see what we can find digging into the design and features before we get to the performance numbers in part II.