Verdict and Conclusion
I have to say the Gigabyte X79-UD3 is one of the better motherboards I have ever used. While this is not the top of the line board from Gigabyte it certainly ranks up there as far as features and what you can do with the board. The 3D bios sure is cool to boot.
Hardware-wise this Gigabyte X79-UD3 is loaded. The one thing that disapointed me is the fact that it does not have an LED to display that power is applied to the board. It would also be nice for an (almost) $300 motherboard to have base clock adjustment buttons on the board. That isn’t a huge deal though for the huge majority of people who would buy this motherboard.
When it comes to the layout of the board, it would have been nice to have a more open cpu socket area for those of us who do extreme cooling and it would not hurt to have the ram slots slightly farther away for people with large air heatsinks since it causes many issues with ram that has large fins.
Throughout writing this review Gigabyte came out with what felt like a billion updated bios versions which is good and bad. On one hand they had a ton of things to fix and on the other they fixed issues in a prompt manner. At first the bios was pretty unstable, but with the most current F8 bios everything was rock solid. A very welcome change from the first couple days of using the board.
Throughout my testing I did not focus on benchmark scores because lets face it, most boards on a chipset will perform within a percentage or two across the board. What most people are paying a price premium for are features. Those features mean the difference between buying a board with just the bare minimum features and a board that is loaded with 15 sata ports, 40 usb ports,etc.
The Gigabyte X79-UD3 is a nice compromise between tons of features that people look for on top of the line boards, but it does not add a bunch of stuff people will never use. The ability to use 4-way SLI/Crossfire on an entry level board is great if you want to go that route, spacing is sufficient so you can use dual-width cards and still have space.
Pros:
- 4-Way SLI/Crossfire
- 10 SATA ports
- PCI slot
- Intel NIC
- Latest bios is rock solid
Cons:
- Ram slot location
- Older bios are hit and miss
- No power LED
Final Verdict:
If you are looking for a solid X79 motherboard this is a solid choice. It overclocks very easily and comes with a bunch of features. You miss out on a few features but you also do not pay the price premium for them. Overall, it is a great board with the latest bios version and was rock solid through testing.
8.5/10
