Gigabyte Z77-HD4 Review
by Ian Cutress on May 19, 2013 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Gigabyte
- Z77
Gigabyte Z77-HD4 Conclusion
How much can $120 buy in a motherboard? If you want a simple single GPU system with a mild overclock, Gigabyte seem to have you covered. The Z77-HD4 is almost along the lines of a no-frills product: we have the base features of Z77 (overclocking, SATA 6 Gbps and USB 3.0), in a shortened board with additional PCIe, PCIe x1 and PCI ports as needed.
Performance-wise, the Z77-HD4 performs as well as any other Z77 motherboard on the market in terms of actual CPU and gaming performance at stock. All the CPU benchmarks and gaming benchmarks were in the mix – the only point at which we could consider the HD4 was not too good was in some of the IO, particularly DPC Latency where no matter what options we tried, the motherboard still spiked up to 561 microseconds without ET6 loaded and 871 with. USB performance however was decent enough and while power consumption seemed a little high under dual GPU testing, idle power usage was good.
The Z77-HD4 did well in our overclocking suite surpassing expectations. In terms of our bad CPU, it matched other boards we have reviewed recently, and although the voltages had to be increased more than I would like the temperatures were comparatively low compared to our other CPUs. Of course while the board may overclock like some of the big boys, an issue comes along with VRM temperatures at those high overclocks – with fewer phases and smaller heatsinks, you may find the hardware throttles earlier than some of the more substantial designs.
What the HD4 lacks most of all is functionality. Due to the price point we have no extra controllers on board, SATA ports sticking out of the motherboard and an x16 + x4 full length PCIe allocation which does not lend itself to multi-GPU gaming. However if one of the selling points of this motherboard is the inclusion of all four video outputs at the low price, then one could conceivably argue that this board should not be paired with a discrete GPU and more like a good RAID card or Sound card, or one should venture forth with Virtu MVP to get the best responsiveness.
Going up the Gigabyte range, the UD3H is currently on sale for $140, and offers a bit more in styling, eSATA ports, an mSATA port, and up to 3-way CrossFire with an x8/x8 + x4 PCIe lane setup. The in-box package also includes an SLI bridge as a point of differentiation.
For the future, I have had requests to have a look at some of these cheaper products, as well as B- and Q- series when time allows. Unlike some of the bigger boards that flesh out the $150+ range, these lower models can sometimes only differ in one feature, but be based on the same PCB design. So if you have any specific models, please let me know at ian@anandtech.com.
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Grok42 - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
I am extremely proud of the Anandtech readers that commented here. I typed out what would have been the first post on this review and at the last minute canceled it. I thought it too harsh and possibly wasn't fair to post it on a specific review when in fact it was about the editorial leaning of Anandtech as a whole.Go read the About page and you'll see this site is dedicated to reviewing computers, phones and components from consumer to enterprise. However, as of late it seems that all the reviews on the consumer side are completely bent toward some stereo-typical gamer building water cooled overclocked triple GPU gaming rigs. While nothing wrong with these types of builds and they are fun to read and think about, there has to be some respect for those that want other builds. I just spent $1500 building a mITX gaming and workstation rig with a core i7 3770. It has a $300 GPU, $300 CPU, $350 SSD, $120 case and a $80 MB running a stock Intel cooler. I couldn't be happier and NEVER intend to overclock it. As strange as my choices are, I bet I'm closer to 90% of the readership than a $600-$900 dual or triple GPU and $200 MB rig that seems to be implied as required equipment around here.
The worst of it is that there is a huge movement to smaller, cooler and quieter rigs that doesn't seem to have a voice on the inside at Anandtech. A full ATX tower running 3 GPUs and 5 HDDs is no longer the sought after box for a growing base of enthusiasts. The small cool looking mITX that can also play games is what's hot.
jabber - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
Yes indeed, also quite a few of us here are over the age of 30 so a lot of the toys and whistles and flashing lights don't really appeal so much.We prefer durability, stability and value for money more.
I think a lot of the high-end manufacturers have forgotten that a lot of their consumer base has got a lot older. Buying boxes with dragons and wonderwomen on them doesn't have quite the appeal it might have 15 years ago.
Razorbak86 - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
LOL. Age doesn't have a thing to do with it. Money often does though. Remember, this site is oriented towards enthusiasts first. So don't hate because others like more expensive components than you can afford.kmmatney - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
It not about being able to afford the high end stuff - but why pay %100 more for maybe a 10% gain in performance. I like to see all the reviews - high and and low end, so this review was great. At the end of the day, the parts I buy will be whatever gives the best bang-for-buck, at the performance level (and noise level) I can accept. I don't hate the reviews of high end parts, but I want reviews like this to balance things out.Wall Street - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
It isn't even for a 10% gain in performance. I, and a many users like me, are not going to use more than one SSD, aren't going to use more than one GPU, aren't going to use more than a couple of USB 3.0 ports (I don't own a single USB 3.0 device), won't overvolt/aggressively overclock and I even use the digital audio out on top of that (although the analog audio on this board is very disappointing).In that case, $120 boards like this are nearly identical in performance to one of the top end offerings. I think that, in thinking this is a low end offering, Ian misses where the sweat spot of the market is entirely. $120 motherboards are solidly midrange. You can get a low-end motherboard for less than $70 on Newegg. Compared to what Dell uses in its desktops, this board is feature packed!
jabber - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
It does actually. When you get a bit older you find out.Enjoy your youth while you have it!
jabber - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
Oh and the PC enthusiast market is slowly diminishing. Sites like this need to diversify to appeal to types that don't think the peak of a good day is spent running Prime95 on a new PC for 24 hours.Rob94hawk - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
Anyone want to explain to me why they're still putting USB 2.0 and SATA 3Gb/s when everything's backwards compatible?lever_age - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
Every SATA 6 Gb/s and USB 3.0 port is handled by the Z77 chipset on that board. Actually, all the SATA 3 Gb/s and USB 2.0 are as well.If you want more of the faster SATA and USB, you need to pay for extra 3rd-party controller chips, which increases board costs. It's a legitimate form of product differentiation to leave those out on the cheaper products. But supposedly 8-series chipsets with Haswell (or at least most of them?) will support six SATA 6 Gb/s and six USB 3.0 natively.
jabber - Monday, May 20, 2013 - link
I find USB3 still isn't quite a solid in terms of "it just works" like USB2 does. I think the USB3 chipsets still haven't got bedded down in the OS as solidly as USB2.Give it another year or two and it should be...I hope.