Gigabyte's P67A-UD4 Sandy Bridge Motherboard Preview

[Buckeye]

Gigabyte's P67A-UD4 Sandy Bridge Motherboard
Early next January these boards and the rest of the new line will be released, most likely at CES.


I recieved today a sample from Gigabyte to run through it's paces and give it a good testing.

So let's start of with the unboxing of this new board.
The front and back of the package.





Opening the box we find the usual assortment of parts & manuals.



Included in the bundle is:
Motherboard
Driver CD
User manual
Quick installation guide
Four SATA cables
I/O shield
2-way SLI connector

Gigabyte's P67A-UD4 Features
Industry’s leading 12 phase power design for maximum power delivery.
Onboard SuperSpeed USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps to deliver impeccable data transfer speeds.

GIGABYTE Ultra Durable™ 3 design with 2x Copper PCB to provide the stability, reliability and longevity essential to meet the power needs of high-end processors and other components running today’s most demanding applications and games.

Unique GIGABYTE 3x USB Power design with On/Off Charge USB ports to offer faster battery charging for iPhone, iPad and iPod devices.
New Matte Black color PCB offering a stylish new outlook that blends itself to decoration and case mods.

CrossFireX™ and Nvidia® SLI™ support for ultimate graphics performance
GIGABYTE patented DualBIOS™ technology delivering the highest level of failure protection.

Motherboard Pictures


For additional pictures please go >Here<


Now about heat sinks.
It would have been nice if Intel had decided to not come up with a new heat sink mounting hole pattern but it's not the case. How ever heat sinks like the Mega Shadow and a little fugging around will fit as you can see by these photos. The bad news is others that have a more rigid mounting system will not, like Corsairs H70 which I tried to fit, but it would not. So for the most part I think we will need to wait for adapter kits.




And as you can see here there is plenty of space to mount two fans on the Mega Shadow.


Some addition pictures of the test setup.
You can also see that there is plenty of space between a graphic card and the heat sink for added sound cards if wanted.






Special thanks to Gigabyte for sending this sample !

[crash5s]

WTF is with the position of those ram slots.

[Nintendork]

I wonder how funny it will look if that "Ati Crossfire X" logo(below pci-e slot) change to you know what.

I like the box art.

[Johnny87au]

Using push/pull looks like your gonna lose out on 2x dimm slots, Thanks for the post havent seen the UD4 as of now

[tiro_uspsss]

the cooling on the mobo is so..minimal.. just one heatsink & a rather obscure one at that! (oh ok, & the mosfets blahblahblah)

& yeah, the ram slots need to be pushed away from the cpu a lil maybe

[Boogerlad]

perfect cooling, just the way I like it.

[Buckeye]

The RAM slots are no different than many motherboards. When you go to two fans on these large heat sinks this often happens. You can drop the second fan for max load out, or get larger capacity DIM's.

Either way I don't think dropping the second fan will make a super lot of difference.

[Buckeye]

Yeah looks like I have those DIM's in incorrect.
I have been running to many AMD setups lately LOL

They go Slots 1,2,3,4
If 2 sticks are used they go in Slot 1,3 or 2,4

It's running now in 3,4 tho LOL

[danielkza]

Any idea on launch prices?

[jurc_podgurc]

Double post...sorry

[jurc_podgurc]

Here is the weird thing about the P67A-UD4: all its memory sockets are black. If you have two memory modules, you will have to install the first module in the first memory socket and the second module in the third socket in order to enable dual-channel architecture. Since all sockets are black, users may think that they can install memory modules in any two sockets, which is not the case. This is a serious mistake coming from a tier 1 manufacturer. Hardwaresecrets

Price for P67A-UD4 170-180€ in EU...

[EagleRock]

Yeah looks like I have those DIM's in incorrect.
I have been running to many AMD setups lately LOL

They go Slots 1,2,3,4
If 2 sticks are used they go in Slot 1,3 or 2,4

It's running now in 3,4 tho LOL

did they fit? it looks very tight :/

[PatRaceTin]

NO FUN FOR RAM Overclocker ???? Only max 2133Mhz @ BCLK100Mhz

BCLK Suck!!!

[bamtan2]

Here is the weird thing about the P67A-UD4: all its memory sockets are black. If you have two memory modules, you will have to install the first module in the first memory socket and the second module in the third socket in order to enable dual-channel architecture. Since all sockets are black, users may think that they can install memory modules in any two sockets, which is not the case.

for most of history the slots were the same color. it doesn't matter because you can install memory wherever you want and the real world performance doesn't change.

you have been tricked by marketing designed to sell you more low density memory sticks.

[bamtan2]

the cooling on the mobo is so..minimal..

think it matters? no. ALL fancy cooling is just for looks. it is like a magazine cover they are trying to sell more product to anyone they can trick.

have a look at a much better, much higher power motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813182174

p67 probably doesn't need two thimbles of aluminum for its heatsinks.

[Movieman]

Nice review and as usual GB has a good looking board..

[Buckeye]

Marketing slide info for your enjoyment.

[zalbard]

Not sure how I missed this... Lots of slides, some good info here. Thanks, my friend, and well done!
Nice looking board, by the way. Not as good as UD7, seems to pack a lot of tech goodies being a budget board. Good colour scheme, too.

[Buckeye]

Not sure how I missed this... Lots of slides, some good info here. Thanks, my friend, and well done!
Nice looking board, by the way. Not as good as UD7, seems to pack a lot of tech goodies being a budget board. Good colour scheme, too.

You didn't miss this Zal buddy. I just put it up

[Oliverda]

Driver Mosfer.... MSI have been using DrMOS for years. Good morning dear Gigabyte.

The other "new" feature is the Gigabyte Auto Dual Power Switching which is the copy of MSI's Active Phase Switching.

So, are these Gigabyte's innovations?

[sin0822]

Driver Mosfer.... MSI have been using DrMOS for years. Good morning dear Gigabyte.

The other "new" feature is the Gigabyte Auto Dual Power Switching which is the copy of MSI's Active Phase Switching.

So, are these Gigabyte's innovations?

Wrong Gigabyte has been using DrMOS for many many years, and they use a better brand than MSI, they do not post this publicly. Driver Mosfets are on all of their x58 boards, and have been on many other boards. MSI just advertises it, Gigabyte does not.

Active phase switching has been around the same period of time, gigabyte uses better components, and MSI(1+MHz switching)MOSFET equal to 4 mosfets of other companies???? Gigabyte's outputs teh same power but uses 8-24 phases, MSi uses 8 or 6 some small number. Gigabyte advertises in a different way.

Gigabyte has two types of phase switching, MSi is not innovator.

[Oliverda]

Wrong Gigabyte has been using DrMOS for many many years, and they use a better brand than MSI, they do not post this publicly. Driver Mosfets are on all of their x58 boards, and have been on many other boards. MSI just advertises it, Gigabyte does not.

Orly? Which was Gigabyte's fist DrMOS equipped mobo?

Active phase switching has been around the same period of time, gigabyte uses better components, and MSI(1+MHz switching)MOSFET equal to 4 mosfets of other companies???? Gigabyte's outputs teh same power but uses 8-24 phases, MSi uses 8 or 6 some small number. Gigabyte advertises in a different way.

Gigabyte has two types of phase switching, MSi is not innovator.

Similar question. Which was Gigabyte's fist active phase switching supported mobo? And please tell me about that "better components" and that 24 phases (marketing) PWM. I'm all ears...I mean eyes.

[sin0822]

The count on the Driver MOSFETs, I am unsure of which was their first, but all X58 board have Driver Mosfets which is DrMOS. It has to do with the output on the driver MOSFETs. Gigabyte uses a seperate iTE chip for phase gearing and switching. What were the first MSI boards? DrMOS was used instead of old fashioned highside and lowside mosfets with a separate driver.
The PWM is just the controller for the phases, the VRm is the phase design, so the MOSFETs are part of the VRM, not PWM. Rensas is what MSI uses on their newest board, Gigabyte Vishay made MOSFETs output the same amperage, and on top of that you can actually go and multiply single MOSFET output by number of MOSFETs. MSIs 6 phase +1 is one MOSFET per channel, Gigabyte uses 4 MOSFETs per channel, but each of gigabyte's mosfets are equal to MSI's in output, so in reality if MSi can multiply their phases by 4 than gigabyte can too.

That is all I am going to say, FYI gigabyte makes their own boards as well, which almost no OEMs do anymore. Foxconn and ECS are their makers now, You want more info read my review ont he X58A-UD5 or P67A-UD7 skip to VRM design on both boards, you will learn a lot.

[Hondacity]

buckeye

checkout the thermalright archon....do you think it will let ram fit?

[Oliverda]

The count on the Driver MOSFETs, I am unsure of which was their first, but all X58 board have Driver Mosfets which is DrMOS. It has to do with the output on the driver MOSFETs. Gigabyte uses a seperate iTE chip for phase gearing and switching. What were the first MSI boards? DrMOS was used instead of old fashioned highside and lowside mosfets with a separate driver.

Sorry but you're wrong.



UD7

I can't see DrMOS on the above X58 mobo. If I'm not mistaken then the first and only (so far) Gigabyte mobo which uses DrMOS is the UD9.

"Having said that, Unlocked Power is not solely about phases. Gigabyte have replaced their traditional motherboard power design and are now using more modern integrated Driver-MOSFET chips, which differ from standard MOSFETs in that they feature a 3-in-1 design with the Driver IC, top MOSFET, and bottom MOSFET all in one package. Among other things these new MOSFETs have faster transient response, provide more stable the power to the CPU, and more efficient."

source

MSI uses DrMOS (and APS) since the mid of 2008. MSI's first DrMOS equipped mobo was the P45 Diamond. Check this short presentation.