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Review: Intel Z77 chipset and Gigabyte Z77-D3H motherboard

by Tarinder Sandhu on 8 April 2012, 08:04 4.0

Tags: Gigabyte (TPE:2376), Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qabetj

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Power-draw and overclocking

It's been difficult to differentiate the Z77 and Z68 chipsets thus far. The Gigabyte board has a consistent advantage in the power-draw stakes when idling and running either CPU-intensive wPrime or graphics-based 3DMark Vantage on the IGP and GTX 680.

Overclocking

Using a stock Intel reference heatsink and dialling the voltage to 1.30V in the BIOS, which we consider safe, we managed a stable speed of 4.60GHz on both boards. Able to pass all of our benchmarks, the Gigabyte retuned a CINEBENCH score of 8.89, up from the default 7.08 marks.

Meanwhile, the 3DMark 11 score jumped from 9,177 to 9,415: Nice.