Gigabyte Z87-D3HP Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. Gigabyte Z87-D3HP: Packaging and Bundle3. Gigabyte Z87-D3HP: Board Layout and Features4. Gigabyte Z87-D3HP: BIOS5. Gigabyte Z87-D3HP: Overclocking6. Testing Methodology7. System: PCMark 88. System: 3DMark 119. System: 3DMark10. System: Unigine Heaven Benchmark11. Processor: SiSoft Sandra12. Processor: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit13. Processor: Super Pi14. Processor: MKV HD Performance15. Processor: Media Encoding - MediaEspresso16. Processor: Media Encoding - HandBrake17. Motherboard: SATA Performance18. Motherboard: USB 3.0 Performance19. Gaming: Battlefield 320. Gaming: Sleeping Dogs21. Gaming: Metro 203322. Technical: Power Consumption23. Closing Thoughts24. View All Pages

Situated towards the entry-level end of Gigabyte's Ultra Durable series of Z87 motherboards, the Z87-D3HP aims to provide a cheap-and-cheerful way for budget-conscious users to make the switch to Haswell.

Featuring six SATA 6Gb/s ports, CrossFire capabilities, Intel LAN, and up to ten USB 3.0 ports, Gigabyte's Z87-D3HP offers a good amount of features that will allure the budget-conscious gamer wanting to invest in an LGA1150 system.

With digital voltage control, dual BIOS chips, and Gigabyte's Ultra Durable 5 Plus technology, can the Z87-D3HP prove that it's worth a circa-£100 price tag?

Features:

• GIGABYTE Ultra Durable™ 5 Plus Technology
• IR Digital Power Design
• GIGABYTE UEFI DualBIOS™
• 15µ gold plated CPU socket
• Multi-GPU Support
• All solid capacitors
• GIGABYTE On/Off Charge™ for USB devices
• Intel^® LAN with high ESD Protection
• 10 USB 3.0 ports

Gigabyte ships the Z87-D3HP in the standard packaging for its Ultra Durable series of motherboards. A black box houses features and information about the motherboard, as well as an annotated image.

A user guide, warranty information sheet, driver CD, and case stick form the supplied documentation.

The Z87-D3HP motherboard's entry-level price point is proven by its concise bundle which consists of four latching SATA cables and the IO shield.

The Gigabyte Z87-D3HP motherboard conforms to a ‘compressed' ATX form factor which sees it measuring 30.5 x 22.4cm. Don't worry about case compatibility; the Gigabyte Z87-D3HP will fit in a case that is capable of housing a standard ATX motherboard. The only difference is that the right column of stand-off points is omitted.

Despite its entry-level price point, Gigabyte's Z87-D3HP maintains the attractive matte black PCB colour that is found on the company's higher-priced motherboards.

Four DIMM slots can hold up to 32GB of DDR3 memory at speeds of up to 3000MHz. We will test Gigabyte's memory frequency support claims with a 2933MHz set of G.Skill TridentX memory.

The 24-pin power connector is found in its usual location along the board's upper-right edge. Due to the sub-ATX width of the Z87-D3HP, plugging in the 24-pin power connector does result in a fair amount of bending to the motherboard's PCB.

Two outwards-facing USB 3.0 headers are found in the typical location that makes them easy to access for front panel cables. One header is provided by a Renesas uPD720210 USB 3.0 hub, while the other uses the Z87 chipset's ports.

Moderated by an International Rectifier CHiL 3564 digital PWM controller, four power phases are used to feed an LGA 1150 CPU through a socket that features 15 micron gold plating.

Covered by a basic heatsink sporting Ultra Durable branding, Gigabyte claims the VRM system's MOSFETs to have a lower RDS(on) resistance than the ‘traditional' transistors found on older motherboards. Solid capacitors are also used throughout the board to increase its operational lifespan.

An 8-pin power connector is found in its usual location and is positioned far enough away from the VRM heatsink to prevent awkwardness when attaching the cable.

A pair of 4-pin CPU fan headers is located in close proximity to the LGA 1150 CPU socket. Gigabyte's usage of two fan headers, rather than one, is a wise choice and one that users with dual-fan coolers will adore.

A pair of x16-length PCI-E slots is found above and below two connections of the x1 variant. The uppermost slot receives a full sixteen lanes from the Haswell processor, while the lower connection is limited to PCI-E x4 bandwidth. The Z87-D3HP supports dual-card CrossFire, but SLI compatibly is omitted to cut costs.

An ITE IT8892E bridge chip provides the pair of PCI slots from PCI-E connections. While many people groan at the fact PCI is still present on mid-range motherboards in 2013, I believe the slots to be a necessity on a model that aims to make users' upgrades as cheap as possible.

Gigabyte's decision to waste the uppermost slot space is one that irritates me. It would have been wiser to position the uppermost PCI-E x1 slot above the primary graphics lane to prevent it from getting blocked by a dual-slot video card.

Front panel connections are found in the typical – bottom edge – section of the Z87-D3HP motherboard. A 4-pin fan header is also placed towards the motherboard's bottom edge – ideal for users with side panel fans.

Six outwards-facing SATA ports provided by the Z87 chipset operate at 6Gb/s connection speeds. The outwards-facing configuration increases the complexity of cable management, but it also helps to reduce costs.

The primary and redundant BIOS chips are situated beneath Gigabyte's low-profile PCH heatsink.

Six USB 3.0 ports are located on the rear IO panel, all of which are provided by the Renesas uPD720210 USB 3.0 hubs. Onboard audio is provided by a Realtek ALC892 chip. An Intel controller provides the gigabit LAN connection.

Gigabyte gives each USB ports its own dedicated fuse, as opposed to the previous implementation of one fuse per set of USB ports. This design helps to prevent a faulty fuse rendering all of the USB ports useless.

Motherboard rear ports:

• 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port
• 1 x D-Sub port
• 1 x DVI-D port
• 1 x HDMI port
• 6 x USB 3.0 ports
• 2 x USB 2.0 ports
• 1 x RJ-45 port
• 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector
• 5 x audio jacks (Center/Subwoofer Speaker Out, Rear Speaker Out, Line In, Line Out, Mic In)

Circled above are the locations of the five 4-pin fan headers. Gigabyte's header positioning is very wise, making sure to place the connections in the vicinity where they are likely to be required.

Motherboard slots and connectors:

• 1 x 24-pin ATX main power connector
• 1 x 8-pin ATX 12V power connector
• 6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors
• 1 x CPU fan header
• 3 x system fan headers
• 1 x CPU_OPT fan header
• 1 x front panel header
• 1 x front panel audio header
• 1 x S/PDIF Out header
• 1 x S/PDIF In header
• 2 x USB 3.0 headers
• 2 x USB 2.0headers
• 1 x serial port header
• 1 x Clear CMOS jumper
• 1 x Trusted Platform Module (TPM) header

Firstly, we are pleased to report that our Leetgion Hellion mouse worked to its usual standard in the Gigabyte Z87-D3HP motherboard's UEFI BIOS. This is a positive point as we have experienced problems when using certain mice in the UEFI BIOS of other motherboards in the past.

The main page of Gigabyte's UEFI BIOS is packed with information regarding system speeds and voltages. Boot device priority can also be quickly edited from this page, although doing so requires a mouse that functions correctly in the interface.

Up to six profiles can be customised to suit an individual's preferences. The options that can be displayed include voltage, speed, and timings settings.

A memory multiplier of up to 29.33x can be set on the Z87-D3HP motherboard. Timings can also be configured in their own section.

Gigabyte includes a ‘memory upgrade' tool which allows specific RAM kits to be precision tweaked to pre-defined settings. One of the profiles is customised by professional overclocker HiCookie.

A performance boost can be applied to the system to provide a quick and easy speed increase. We will outline some of the automated overclocking settings later in the review.

Power control is given its own section of the interface. Settings such as load-line calibration and VRM switching frequency can be edited.

Voltage control has its own subsection, from which the settings can be easily changed. Gigabyte gives overclockers plenty of flexibility with the Z87-D3HP motherboard; a CPU VCore of up to 1.800V can be set, as well as 2.100V for the DRAM.

Fan settings can be accessed via the PC Health Status page. The Manual mode allows the fan speed response with temperature to be set, i.e. the gradient of a temperature against fan speed curve.

Up to eight specific overclocking profiles can be saved to the board. The profiles can be transferred to and from a USB flash drive.

SATA settings are accessible via the Peripherals section.

Hitting F2 allows users to revert to Gigabyte's old style of BIOS. This is a thoughtful addition to its motherboards by Gigabyte, as it allows users who are experienced with the company's old style of BIOS to once again use their skills rather than learn the new interface.

Overall, we were very impressed by the attractiveness of Gigabyte's UEFI BIOS. The interface features a fresh, high-resolution design which brings it in line with the modern day.

Unfortunately, the interface can be awkward to use and feels a little muddled at times. As proven by the screenshot of the interface's Home page, a feeling of information overload is quickly instilled in many users, let alone an entry-level buyer who wants to conduct some simple overclocking. Moving swiftly over to the performance page will help to ease the burden of a screen full of unknown readouts and options.

Thankfully, the parameters and settings that the Home page displays can be selected and removed by the editor tool.

Automatic CPU Overclocking:

Selecting from the drop-down list of Gigabyte's performance boost settings gives an instant system overclock.

We opted for the ‘Turbo' mode which resulted in a CPU overclock to 4.50GHz and a memory speed of 1866MHz. The CPU VCore selected by Gigabyte was a very high 1.4V – a level that we wouldn't feel confident using on a daily basis. A voltage this high will result in high-90's CPU temperatures with a high-end cooler such as Corsair's H100i.

We didn't like the fact that our 2133MHz memory was forced to operate at substandard speeds, either.

We backed down to the ‘High' setting which gave a 4.4GHz CPU speed, but this also used a CPU VCore of 1.4V, which is way more than our chip requires. The voltage level had an adverse affect on temperatures, so much so that we would call this automatic overclock setting unusable and impractical for 24/7 usage.

If it's automated overclocking you're after, be prepared invest heavily in CPU cooling, as even the lowest frequency boost to 4.3GHz utilises a 1.4V CPU VCore.

Manual CPU Overclocking:

To aid our overclocking efforts we tweaked some settings in an attempt to obtain as much speed from the processor as we could. These adjustments consisted of; 1.350V CPU VCore, 1.200V CPU Ring Voltage, 39x Uncore multiplier, 1.900V VRIN Voltage, and LLC set to Extreme (to maintain a constant 1.350V CPU VCore).

We managed to hit 4.6GHz with the above settings, but as we have seen from the other Z87 motherboards that have been tested with this particular chip, stability was not present.

Backing down to the tried-and-tested frequency of 4.5GHz gave us perfect stability, just as it did with Z87 motherboard from ASRock and MSI.

Given the Z87-D3HP motherboard's entry-level price point and design, it was impressive to see that the board's power delivery components were capable of delivering the same stable overclock as much higher-priced options.

Our 4.5GHz frequency validation can be viewed here.

2933MHz Memory Testing:

While a system’s response to memory frequency may be heavily swayed by the CPU’s individual memory controller, the motherboard’s performance can also help to obtain higher speeds, especially when XMP settings are taken into account.

We switched to our 2933MHz set of G.Skill Trident X F3-2933C12D-8GTXDG memory to test the Gigabyte Z87-D3HP motherboard’s ability to function with high speed memory modules. These sticks feature an XMP profile for 2933MHz, although we’ve only tested one board to date that will boot with the XMP settings – ASRock's Z87 Extreme9/ac.

The Gigabyte Z87-D3HP was unable to post with the G.Skill Trident X F3-2933C12D-8GTXDG memory kit installed. We couldn't even get to the BIOS to manually configure the settings. This is where a function similar to Asus' MemOK button would come in very handy by allowing the system to post with stable memory settings.

We don't see this as a major disappointment because the likelihood of a user pairing an entry-level Z87 motherboard with extreme memory geared for hardened overclockers is very unlikely. Support for memory around the 2133MHz mark will suffice for the Gigabyte Z87-D3HP motherboard as it is one of the current memory ‘sweet spots' for price vs performance.

Edit: We have received confirmation from Gigabyte that the above memory functions correctly when using the Z87-D3HP motherboard's newest – F5g – BIOS. The BIOS update can be downloaded here.

To test the Gigabyte Z87-D3HP, we paired it with an Intel Core i7 4770K processor and 8GB of 2133MHz memory from Patriot. We will be outlining the Gigabyte Z87-D3HP motherboard's performance with the Core i7 4770K CPU at its stock frequency of 3.5GHz and when overclocked to 4.5GHz.

We will be comparing the Gigabyte Z87-D3HP motherboard's performance to that of MSI's Z87 XPower and ASRock's Z87 Extreme9/ac. All motherboards are partnered with identical hardware and software, so the results are directly comparable.

By default, the Gigabyte Z87-D3HP motherboard forces the 4770K to a constant 3.9GHz. This will be displayed as the ‘stock’ setting.

One performance aspect that we need to mention is the Z87-D3HP motherboard's insistence on setting the Patriot memory timings to 9-11-11-30, rather than the XMP profile's configuration of 11-11-11-30. Luckily, this didn't affect system stability as our Patriot memory could handle the slight overclock. With a different set of memory, system stability may have been affected.

Motherboard Test System:

• Processor: Intel Core i7 4770K 3.50GHz.
• Memory: 8GB Patriot Viper Xtreme Division 2 2133MHz.
• Graphics Card: nVidia GTX 760 2GB.
• System Drive: 500GB Samsung 840 Series SSD.
• CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i.
• Case: NZXT Phantom 630.
• Power Supply: Seasonic Platinum 1000W.
• Operating System: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit.

Compared Z87 Motherboard(s):

• Gigabyte Z87-D3HP (BIOS F4 – newest non-BETA).
  
• MSI Z87 XPower (BIOS v1.0).
• ASRock Z87 Extreme9/ac (BIOS v1.70).

Settings:

• Gigabyte Z87-D3HP BIOS F4.
• GeForce 320.49 VGA drivers.
• Intel 9.4.0.1017 chipset drivers.

Software Suite:

• 3DMark
• 3DMark 11
• PCMark 8
• Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0
• SiSoft Sandra 2013 SP4
• Cinebench 11.5 64 bit
• Super Pi
• VLC Media Player 2.0.7
• CyberLink Media Espresso 6.7
• HandBrake 0.9.9
• ATTO
• Battlefield 3
• Metro 2033
• Sleeping Dogs

PCMark 8 is the latest version in the popular series of PC benchmarking tools. Improving on previous releases, PCMark 8 includes battery life measurement tools and new tests using popular applications from Adobe and Microsoft. Whether you are looking for long battery life, or maximum power, PCMark 8 helps you find the devices that offer the perfect combination of efficiency and performance for your needs.

Right on the word ‘go', Gigabyte's Z87-D3HP proves that it isn't afraid of competing with enthusiast-geared motherboards from MSI and ASRock.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

3DMark 11 gives Gigabyte's Z87-D3HP a narrow performance win.

3DMark is Futuremark's latest benchmark. It can be used to benchmark and compare everything from mobile devices, such as smart phones, tablets and laptops, to high-end gaming systems. The benchmark is available for Windows, Windows RT Android and iOS.

With 3 separate tests, each of which is intended to be used alongside a specific classification of hardware, 3DMark is a very versatile benchmark. Ice Storm is intended to be used with mobile devices, Cloud Gate is good for use with laptops and home PCs, and Fire Strike can be used to push the performance of gaming PCs.

We used the ‘Fire Strike' benchmark which is designed to be used on gaming PCs. We opted for the Normal setting, NOT the Extreme mode.

3DMark also favours Gigabyte's entry-level Z87 motherboard, albeit by a very small margin.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

Unigine's Heaven benchmark also shows preference towards the Gigabyte Z87-D3HP motherboard. The trend of narrow performance victories in graphics-heavy benchmarks could indicate that Gigabyte's option suffers less from latency increases than MSI's and ASRock's PLX PEX8747-equipped motherboards do.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

Performance between all three motherboards is close enough to call the stock result a tie.

Sandra's memory bandwidth test shows Gigabyte's Z87-D3HP motherboard out in front. This is due to the board's incorrect memory timings configuration which results in improved performance for our system, but could represent instability with a different RAM kit.

CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all – it’s completely free.

Cinebench shows the Z87-D3HP losing out by 0.03 and 0.04 points to MSI's Z87 XPower and ASRock's Z87 Extreme9/ac, respectively.

Super Pi is used by a huge audience, particularly to check stability when overclocking processors. If a system is able to calculate PI to the 2 millionth place after the decimal without mistake, it is considered to be stable in regards to RAM and CPU.

We used Super Pi's '32M' benchmark setting.

Super Pi proves that the Gigabyte board is perfectly capable of competing with higher-priced options, thanks in large to its aggressive turbo frequency that the more expensive motherboards also feature.

The Matroska Media container is a very popular, open standard multimedia container which is usually found as .MKV files. It is a very popular format in enthusiast circles and can be played directly in VLC or Windows Media Player with suitable codecs installed.

We played our 1080P MKV rip of The Dark Knight using the latest version of VLC Media Player.

The CPU usage required by Gigabyte's Z87-D3HP is in line with that of ASRock's Z87 Extreme9/ac.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 4.4GB 720p MKV file (1h:58mins) to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power.

Hardware acceleration is disabled to provide an accurate interpretation of the CPU performance.

The Z87-D3HP steals a slim victory in MediaEspresso, albeit by a futile number of seconds.

HandBrake is a fantastic free program that can be used to convert video files to many common formats for portable devices. HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multi-platform, multi-threaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.

We used the latest V 0.9.9 version.

For our testing today we are converting a 4.4GB 720p MKV file (1h:58mins) to MP4 format, using HandBrake's ‘Normal' profile, for playback on High-Resolution devices. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power.

Handbrake also favours the Gigabyte board over MSI's and ASRock's offerings, although the performance difference is still diminutive.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously.

Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

Our testing uses a Kingston HyperX 3K SSD.

Despite the best efforts of our increasingly fatigued Kingston HyperX 3K SSD, the Gigabyte Z87-D3HP motherboard's SATA 6Gb/s ports operating from the Z87 chipset have no problem providing ample bandwidth to a fast drive.

With its emergence as the new standard for high-speed portable devices, USB 3.0 performance on a modern motherboard needs to be good to ensure that data transferral bottlenecks aren't created.

We tested USB 3.0 performance using an ADATA SP300 SSD connected to an Icy Box IB-223StU3 USB 3.0 enclosure (ASMedia ASM1051 controller). ATTO was the benchmark used.

Gigabyte's Z87-D3HP doesn't use any type of UASP-activating software to unleash an additional 25%-or-so of performance from a USB 3.0 device that is fast enough. The performance of our ADATA SP300 SSD was capped around the 200MB/s mark instead of the circa-250MB/s it would have achieved on a board that supports the UAS protocol.

According to EA, Battlefield 3 garnered 3 million pre-orders by the day of its release. It is unknown at present whether these figures are worldwide or just for the US. The pre-order total makes it “the biggest first-person shooter launch in EA history”, according to the publisher. The engine is beautiful on the PC and very demanding of the partnering hardware.

We used the game's demanding ‘Ultra' setting and a 1920 x 1080 resolution to push today's gaming hardware.

Battlefield 3 performs best on Gigabyte's basic Z87 motherboard. This result gives further implication that the lack of a latency-increasing PLX PCI-E switch is helping to give Gigabyte's Z87-D3HP motherboard small graphics-related performance victories over the MSI and ASRock products.

Sleeping Dogs started development as an original title, but was announced in 2009 as True Crime: Hong Kong, the third instalment and a reboot of the True Crime series.

As a result of the game’s high development budget and delays, it was cancelled by Activision Blizzard in 2011. Six months later, it was announced that Square Enix had picked up the publishing rights to the game, but the game was renamed Sleeping Dogs in 2012 since Square Enix did not purchase the True Crime name rights.

Sleeping Dogs shows very little performance difference between the three Z87 motherboards that we have compared.

Metro 2033 is a first-person shooter video game with survival horror elements, based on the novel Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. The game is played from the perspective of Artyom, the player-character. The story takes place in post-apocalyptic Moscow, mostly inside the metro system, but occasionally missions bring the player above-ground.

We used the game's built-in benchmark set to ‘Very High' quality to offer an intense challenge for the gaming hardware while also making playable frame rates a possibility.

Metro 2033 seems to favour the low-cost Gigabyte motherboard. As we mentioned earlier in the review, this may be due to the fact that it doesn't feature the latency-increasing PLX controllers that the MSI and ASRock boards do.

We measured the power consumption with the system resting at the Windows 7 desktop, representing idle values.

The power consumption of our entire test system is measured at the wall while loading only the CPU using Prime95's Small FFTs setting. The rest of the system's components were operating in their idle states, hence the increased power consumption values (in comparison to the idle figures) are largely related to the load on the CPU and motherboard power delivery components.

Thanks to its minimalistic design and lack of an array of add-on controllers, Gigabyte's Z87-D3HP motherboard is able to deliver remarkably-low power consumption figures when idling.

Increasing the load and applying an overclock clearly boosts the rate at which power is consumed, but these levels are still around 20 Watts lower than the controller-heavy ASRock Z87 Extreme9/ac and MSI Z87 XPower motherboards.

The Gigabyte Z87-D3HP is a solid entry-level Z87 motherboard which delivers very good overclocking results and sports many worthwhile features.

Despite its modest four phase power delivery system to the CPU, the Z87-D3HP was able to push our particular 4770K to its realistic day to day limit of 4.5GHz. In doing so, Gigabyte's motherboard showed no signs of instability. Using the Z87-D3HP to overclock the 4770K by 1GHz was as simple as increasing a few voltages, upping some multipliers, and pressing F10.

Automated overclocking on the other hand was nowhere near as effective. Gigabyte's pre-defined settings used CPU VCore levels which were far higher than required and, inevitably, resulted in load temperatures which were too high to be considered safe. Not only was the VCore level too high, but the memory multipliers were edited to configurations that resulted in fast RAM operating well below its rated speed.

Given the entry-level price point of the Gigabyte Z87-D3HP motherboard, it is fair to assume that many of its buyers will not be fully confident overclockers. That suggestion alone proves the requirement for a well-implemented, fully stable set of automatic overclocking profiles. Gigabyte needs to fix the CPU ‘performance boost' modes so that the applied configurations are realistically stable for the Z87-D3HP board's target audience.

Gigabyte has managed to equip the Z87-D3HP with features that will appeal to entry-level Z87 buyers, while still maintaining a low asking price. Ten USB 3.0 ports and six SATA 6Gb/s connections provide users with plenty of storage options. Factor in the pair of CrossFire-compatible x16-length PCI-E slots, and the Gigabyte Z87-D3HP motherboard can be used to build a powerful gaming and general usage system.

Gigabyte's revamped UEFI BIOS is very attractive and features plenty of information and adjustable settings. To novice users, the sheer number of controllable parameters and displayed settings can be a case of information overload. Luckily, a simple push of the F2 key allows users to revert to Gigabyte's tried-and-tested BIOS layout of old – one which can be easier to understand.

Currently priced at £102.98 from Aria, the Gigabyte Z87-D3HP motherboard's competitive price and solid feature set allow it to shine in circa-£100 Z87 territory.

Pros:

• Competitive price.
• Solid set of features (ten USB 3.0 ports, CrossFire support, Intel LAN).
• Good overclocking performance.
• Low power consumption.
• Attractive, feature-rich UEFI BIOS.

Cons:

• Very bad automatic overclocking profile settings.
• UEFI BIOS could be difficult for novice users at first.

KitGuru says: With its solid overclocking ability and good feature set, if you're in the market for a cheap upgrade to Haswell and Z87, Gigabyte's Z87-D3HP motherboard is a great choice.

Become a Patron!