Sure, you can buy a budget motherboard, drop in one high-end graphics card, and get pretty good performance for single-screen gaming, even if you’ve got a super-high-resolution 30-inch monitor. But there’s always going to be a small cadre of well-heeled (some would say “off-their-rocker”) gamers for whom single-card system configurations just won’t cut it, and for whom “good enough” performance just isn’t enough.
Sitting at the high end of Gigabyte’s line of P67-chipset motherboards, the GA-P67A-UD7-B3 aims for those no-compromise PC builders. It’s a well-equipped enthusiast board targeted at users who want to run multiple graphics cards without the performance compromises that normally come with dropping two or three cards into a P67-based motherboard.
By including Nvidia’s bandwidth-boosting NF200 chip, Gigabyte makes this board a better-than-most pick for use with multiple graphics cards. You can configure the P67A-UD7-B3 with two or three graphics cards in SLI or CrossFireX mode, and two of the cards will run at the fastest-possible PCI Express (PCIe) x16 bandwidth, with the third card running at PCIe x8 speed. Not all motherboards can do this, by a long shot; many motherboards that have more than one physical PCIe x16 slot lack the actual plumbing to run more than one card at full speed.
If you want to build a rig with the ability to run today’s most-demanding game titles at the highest possible detail and resolution settings (think a six-LCD array, or a trio of $1,000, 30-inch monitors), the P67A-UD7-B3 is a great foundation. With a full complement of SATA and USB ports, as well, it’s a good building block for an extremely high-end system.
The Chipset
Based on the B3 revision of Intel’s P67 Express chipset, the P67A-UD7-B3 provides all the basic glue to connect a Socket 1155 second-generation Core processor to the rest of a system, and it handles PCI Express (PCIe), SATA, Intel HD Audio, USB 2.0, and Gigabit Ethernet functionality.
As we note in our overview of nine Sandy Bridge motherboards we reviewed, including this one, there are few major differences between Intel’s P67 Express chipset and the newer Z68 Express. The P67 chipset doesn’t support the built-in video features of the Sandy Bridge Core processors; you’ll need to use this board with a dedicated video card, and the video connectors on your card are all you’ll have your disposal. Likewise, this chipset keeps you from making use of the hardware-based video-transcoding acceleration (Intel’s Quick Sync Video) on the CPU.
The P67 chipset also lacks support for SSD caching with Intel’s Smart Response technology. (There’s more on Smart Response in our nine-board overview.) That said, we don’t think this will be a big loss for most buyers of this high-end board. Why? If you’re building a system with the additional graphics cards needed to take full advantage of the P67A-UD7-B3’s capabilities, we suspect you can probably budget for a large-enough SSD that the lack of the caching feature won’t matter. And given the likelihood that this board will be used with multiple video cards, the lack of Z68 video features likely won’t matter to the intended buyers.
Design
Gigabyte has eschewed the garish blue motherboards of years past with the P67A-UD7-B3. This board features a black circuit board and slots, as well as dark-grey heat sinks with classy gold trim. The overall effect looks high-end and a bit edgy. If you’re building a system to show off, the P67A-UD7-B3 will most certainly look good in a case with a window.
The P67A-UD7-B3’s layout is a mixed bag, however. Overall, everything’s logically placed, but if you plan to take advantage of its ability to host three video cards, you may run into issues with the expansion-slot placement. Seeing as most high-performance graphics cards block the slot next to them because of the thickness of their cooling hardware, any standard ATX board will have little, if any, room for more expansion cards once you’ve installed three video cards. Inserting three double-width cards in an SLI or CrossFireX configuration will usually block the remaining PCI Express (PCIe) x8 and PCI slots.
In theory, on this board, that would still leave the PCIe x1 slot open for a sound card, TV tuner, or other device. However, the large heat sink for the NF200 chip sits directly behind the PCIe x1 slot and will block just about all traditional expansion cards. Only very short cards that don’t extend more than about a centimeter behind the slot connector will fit here. On the flipside, if you’re only installing two video cards, you’ll still have a PCIe x8 slot available for high-speed expansion cards, which isn’t the case with most boards. The constrained PCIe x1 slot only comes into play if you install three video cards.
The heat sinks surrounding the LGA 1155 CPU socket are far enough from the socket that you shouldn’t have problems installing even today’s most hulking CPU coolers. And except for the heat sink that blocks the area behind the PCIe x1 slot, the remaining heat sinks and capacitors are low-profile and shouldn’t be obstacles for installing expansion cards, either.
As is becoming the norm, the internal SATA ports are mounted horizontally to the motherboard, which lets you route cables away from the board, though this style of port can be hard to access in a tight case. We recommend connecting all necessary SATA cables to the motherboard before slotting in the bulkier components.
Along with dedicated power and reset buttons on the board, Gigabyte also incorporated a button for clearing the CMOS settings. That’s an addition that anyone who’s ever reached into a crowded system with a pair of needle-nose pliers to move a CMOS-reset jumper will heartily welcome. Also onboard is a two-digit LED that displays power-on self-test codes—very handy for troubleshooting system-boot issues.
Expansion & Ports
In its vanilla form, the P67 chipset levies some bandwidth restrictions if you install multiple graphics cards. When you run two video cards together, they only run at PCIe x8 bandwidth, and even if your motherboard has an actual slot that can take a third card, it will run at a noticeably slower x4 speed, if it works at all. The P67A-UD7-B3 works around this by including Nvidia’s NF200 chip onboard, which allows full three-way SLI and CrossFireX operation. The board has four physical PCIe x16 slots, two of which operate at full x16 bandwidth, and two that support x8 bandwidth. You also get two PCI slots, and the marginally useful PCIe x1 slot we mentioned earlier. The latter is mostly blocked by the NF200’s cooler, as you can see in the image at right.
The board includes an impressive six USB 3.0 ports on the back panel, as well as two motherboard USB 3.0 headers, each of which supports adding two ports, for 10 in all. You’ll also find four USB 2.0 connectors on the back panel (two of which double as eSATA connectors), and two motherboard pin headers for adding four more USB devices. One quibble on the USB front: Gigabyte doesn’t bundle any back-panel USB brackets with the board, to allow you to add more USB ports around the back of your PC using the wealth of headers. These brackets are inexpensive, and you’d think Gigabyte would bundle a couple with such a high-end board. (For a primer on board slots and ports, check out our video primer on motherboard technology and buying.)
There’s a further aspect to the USB ports we did like, however. With its USB connectors here, Gigabyte includes fast USB-charging capabilities for high-draw devices such as the Apple iPad. The boosted charging capabilities offer up to three times the power of stock ports.
As for internal drive connectors, the board includes two SATA 6Gbps ports on a Marvell controller, as well the stock Intel connectors: two SATA 6Gbps ports, and four SATA 3Gbps connectors. Also present are the pair of combo eSATA/USB 2.0 ports on the back panel we just mentioned; these both offer SATA 6Gbps performance when connected to eSATA drives or devices that support the 6Gbps spec.
Audio connectivity also abounds. You get both coax and optical digital-audio outputs, in addition to the typical six analog surround-sound connectors. A single PS/2 mouse/keyboard connector is included for legacy devices, and we were surprised to see abundant support for fading FireWire, with the possibility of up to three ports: two physical ones on the rear panel, and one via a header on the board.
Other Features
In keeping with the advanced nature of this board, Gigabyte also outfitted it with an advanced BIOS. The P67A-UD7-B3 uses what the company calls “Hybrid EFI Technology” for its BIOS settings. Entering the BIOS screen, you see a traditional, text-based Award BIOS with the ultra-detailed timing settings that enthusiasts expect from Gigabyte’s boards. Though it’s not full UEFI firmware, it acts like it, in some crucial respects.
For one, the BIOS supports 3TB hard drives without additional tweaking, and Gigabyte offers a utility on its Web site that enables usage of these monster drives even on 32-bit operating systems like Windows XP. The board doesn’t include the Windows Touch BIOS utility found on Gigabyte’s newer Z68-based models, but it does include Windows utilities for easy automatic overclocking and for teaming the two Ethernet connectors for faster network transfers.
The P67A-UD7-B3 also uses a dual BIOS setup, which comes in extremely handy for frequent tweakers. If you run into trouble flashing a BIOS update or paint yourself into a stability corner when overclocking, you should be able to easily revert to the previous version using this feature.
Conclusion
If you’re looking to maximize your video performance with multiple graphics cards, or you want to use multiple high-bandwidth PCI Express cards, the P67A-UD7-B3 is well-equipped for the task. And with its extensive selection of ports, support for a whopping six SATA 6Gbps devices, and easy overclocking, it’s an excellent high-end board overall.
If you don’t plan to use multiple video cards, however, Gigabyte offers similar P67- and Z68-based models, such as the Z68X-UD5-B3, that don’t include the NF200 chip and cost a bit less. We recommend looking at one of those if you won’t take advantage of all that this premium board has to offer.
Source:http://computershopper.com/components/reviews/gigabyte-ga-p67a-ud7-b3
