Gigabyte P67A-UD7 – Blueprint

The matte black PCB gives the Gigabyte P67A-UD7 a unique expect, as does its all-black component design. The layout is very solid and the just possible issue nosotros can find is the placement of the DIMM slots and CPU socket which are a bit close.

The P67A-UD7 features a massive 24-phase power design which utilizes low core free energy loss Ferrite Core Chokes as well as Depression RDS(on) Commuter-MOSFETs. These components supposedly handle a higher current load and offer meliorate power efficiency along with lower operating temperatures. Each power phase of the motherboard has iii primary components: one asphyxiate, ane capacitor and one MOSFET.

Gigabyte has also included their Dual Ability Switching design which is intended to maximize the board'south lifespan. When Dual Power Switching is activated, two sets of 12 ability phases operate in tandem, automatically turning on ane prepare of 12 phases and powering down the other 12. This allows the inactive set up to rest and supposedly doubles the lifespan of the phases.

Gigabyte Dual Power Switching likewise has a unique characteristic that can automatically disable a grouping of 12 phases should it fail. With traditional motherboards, if 1 ability phase fails, the lath tin can't operate.

Cooling the 24-phase power pattern is a series of big heatsinks that are connected using a 6mm heatpipe. Like ECS and Asrock, Gigabyte has gone with gray or dark silverish heatsinks that alloy in nicely.

For those looking to add a few expansion cards, the P67A-UD7 provides a number of options with its four PCIe x16 slots, one PCIe x1 and 2 PCI slots. Unlike most Intel P67 motherboards, both the primary and secondary PCIe x16 slots provide the full x16 bandwidth when using two graphics cards. This is possible due to the implementation of the Nvidia NF200 scrap.

The NF200 fleck uses the native eight-lane configuration and doubles the bandwidth though information technology does non add together PCIe lanes. Rather it splits the existing lanes and increases the bandwidth. Although theoretically this should create 32 lanes of PCIe bandwidth, Gigabyte has only immune for a maximum of 3-way SLI. If they immune 4-way SLI, each card would be limited to 8x bandwidth and this could hurt functioning.

Given that the P67A-UD7 is designed for serious multi-GPU setups, the slot placement is important. Gigabyte has configured the lath starting with a single PCIe x1 slot, followed by the principal PCIe x16 slot which has the full x16 bandwidth. Next is a PCIe x16 slot limited to x8 bandwidth which sits betwixt the full x16 bandwidth primary and secondary slots. Then we accept a PCI slot followed past another PCIe x16 slot with x8 bandwidth and then a final PCI slot.

The I/O panel features a PS/ii port, six USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, dual LAN ports, two eSATA ports, two FireWire ports, optical S/PDIF, coaxial S/PDIF and six audio jacks. The Gigabyte P67A-UD7 is very well equipped, offering more USB 3.0 ports than any other board in our roundup.