Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD4 Motherboard Review

The new Intel P67 chipset lies at the heart of the Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD4, and Gigabyte has utilized it to great advantage with full support for Intel's SandyBridge Processors. While the GA-P67A-UD4 sits in the middle of Gigabyte's P67 lineup, there is no shortage of innovation and design. As part of the Ultra Durable 3 series, the GA-P67A-UD4 uses 50,000 hour solid capacitors and a 2oz copper circuit board used in conjunction with 12 phase power design for cooler board temperatures and longer life. Gigabyte's 333 design incorporates USB 3.0, 6Gbs SATA 3 and 3X typical USB power, now adding Turbo XHD to its SATA 3.0 options. Turbo XHD offers automatic setup for RAID 0, offering 4X the speed of a conventional SATA 2.0 HDD. The 3X USB power incorporated in the GA-P67A-UD4 offers 1500mA to USB 2.0 ports and 2700mA to USB 3.0 ports. This means faster charging for peripherals (such as cell phones and mp3 players) and many times relieves the need for external power or USB Y-connectors for higher powered USB devices. Power to the USB ports is always present on the GA-P67A-UD4 regardless of the computers boot state making USB charging always readily available.

Overview

With the release of the new 32nm Intel Sandy Bridge processors, including the Core i3, i5 and i7, many users are interested in finding out more about the new P67 Express Chipset motherboards, which can push the latest K series processors to unbeliveable frequencies. The GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD7 motherboard we just reviewed was designed for Extreme Gamers, Film and Video Editors and Overclocking Enthusiasts, providing the users with features that only a smaller percentage of users actually need, though the ones that do are sure to appreciate them. In this review, we'll take a look at the GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD4 motherboard, which is more suitable for enthusiast users who don't want to push their hardware to stratospheric levels.

While the UD7 will be the most reliable and stable motherboard of GIGABYTE's P67 lineup, the GA-P67A-UD4 will fit perfectly for those looking at upgrading their older Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad or even recent Nehalem-based i3, i5, and i7 processors. It will also be a good board for users transitioning from AMD based motherboards. The P67A-UD4 motherboard offers plenty of features that enthusiasts and gamers are looking for, like USB 3.0, SATA III, SLI and CrossFire X support, as well as excellent high-quality PCB and component design with overclocking features that will make applications fly using the latest Core i5 and i7 LGA1155 socket Sandy Bridge processors. The Sandy Bridge K-series processors combined with high end P67 motherboards like the GIGABYTE P67A-UD4 provide excellent overclocking features while maintaining a low power consumption and low temeprature output.

GIGABYTE still continues to include the same features that brought their products such acclaim, like the Ultra Durable 3 design, ON/OFF Charge and 333 Onboard Acceleration. With the new P67 Chipset Motherboards, GIGABYTE has also upgraded their VRM design by using Driver MOSFET packages over regular MOSFETs. These Driver MOSFETs deliver higher power transfer rate and increase efficiency at higher switching frequencies. The Driver MOSFET's also provide lower power loss, lower temperatures, and a smaller footprint over regular MOSFETs

Current Intel chipsets support PCI-Express 2.0 at a lower 2.5GT/s, which limits each direction of a lane to a maximum of 250MB/s. With USB 3.0 and 6Gbps SATA interfaces connected to PCI-Express x1 slots, devices connected to these interfaces will be limited to the 250MB/s speeds. A nice change on the P67 lineup of motherboards allow the PCI-Express slots to operate at a stunning 5GT/s, providing up to 500MB/s of bandwidth in each direction. This adds up to 1GB/s bidirectional bandwidth.

Another very nice improvement on the P67 Express Chipset with the proper BIOS allows users to take advantage of 3TB hard drives in their systems, as opposed to the 2TB-2.2TB limitation from X58 based motherboards. The GIGABYTE P67A-UD4 motherboard updated to the latest BIOS supports 3TB hard drives.

Also, some manufacturers like ASUS are slowly making the move to the UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) BIOS instead of the traditional 32-bit BIOS on their P67 motherboards. The UEFI provides a GUI (Graphical User Interface) for the BIOS, making it possible to not only use the keyboard, but also the mouse to adjust system settings. This is also easier on the eyes, especially for users not used to the DOS like systems. Unfortunately, at the moment GIGABYTE does not offer support for UEFI.

The P67A-UD4 has full overclocking potential when paired with the appropriate unlocked K-Series processor, including an unlocked memory multiplier. The H67 architecture motherboards unfortunately have a locked memory multiplier, but can take advantage of Intel's integrated graphics that are built into all Sandy Bridge CPUs, whereas the P67 boards cannot. This is why there are several video outputs on the H67 lineup of motherboards and none on the P67. Right now it seems that there will not be a hybrid solution for the Intel Sandy Bridge built-in GPU to work together with dedicated video cards, but this is not definite and could change in the future.

The GIGABYTE P67A-UD4 will be running for an affordable MSRP of $199.99, not the $239.99 MSRP that we first expected. While it is not the cheapest motherboard on the market, it sounds like a fair price for its features and quality.

Thank you for AcousticPC.com for providing us with a quiet, jet powerful water cooling setup to test out the overclocking portion of the board.