Rather late to the party, Gigabyte reluctantly adopted the UEFI BIOS when they launched their LGA2011 motherboard while most of their previous boards on LGA1155 and AM3+ sockets where still under ”HybridEFI”, a workaround to its existing AwardBIOS code.

After this update however, Gigabyte proved to be innovative, combining the Dual-BIOS technology with UEFI to create Dual-UEFI, something that one can imagine being harder to implement on lower model due to the UEFI BIOS requiring higher-capacity EEPROM chips which would then stress component costs.

Gigabyte ‘ignored’ such ‘cautions’, so to speak, yet they don’t seem to have compromised anything as reveals their latest revision of the GA-H61MA-D3V (rev. 2.0), an entry-level socket LGA1155 motherboard based on the Intel H61 chipset.

Aside from the Dual-UEFI feature, the board also comes with Gigabyte’s Ultra-Durable 4 Classic component loadout, consisting of a new fiberglass fabric weave PCB that’s more resistant to humidity that causes short-circuits, high ESD-resistance ICs, anti-surge ICs located on critical circuits, low RDS (on) MOSFETs and a 100% high-grade solid-state capacitor design.

The CPU is powered by a 5-phase VRM and is wired to two DDR3 DIMM slots which support up to 16 GB of dual-channel DDR3 memory.

Expansion slots include one PCI-Express 3.0 x16 and three PCIe x1. Gigabyte has decided to leave the legacy PCI, which not only could prove to be progressive, but allows to save on the production cost of placing a PCI-PCIe bridge chip.

Storage connectivity includes two SATA 6 Gb/s ports from Marvell 88SE9172 (due to the H61 PCH lacking SATA 6 Gb/s) and four SATA 3 Gb/s ports from the PCH.

Additional connectivity includes 6-channel HD audio (Realtek ALC887), two USB 3.0 ports (EtronTech EJ168), gigabit Ethernet (Realtek 8111E) and a number of USB 2.0 ports. Display connectivity includes DVI and D-Sub

Expected for May, the GA-H61MA-D3V 2.0 will be price at around $50.

Source: TPU

We’re big fans of Asus here at eTeknix, and we don’t shy away from the fact, and will shout it from the roof tops. Asus make top quality, solid built products that do what they are set out to do, but when we look at their ROG products, it’s a completely different ball game, as they do what they are set out to do and more.

You’ve probably noticed that our test machines consist of a Crosshair V for AM3+, a Rampage III Extreme for X58, a Rampage IV for X79 and a Maximus IV Extreme-Z for Z68 and that’s because they are some of the best boards around. Now if we focus on the Maximus IV Extreme-Z, you’ll find it’s one of, if not the most popular Z68 board on the planet and is aimed at all types of users, whether you want a basic overclock, an extreme overclock or if you are just a hardcore gamer, or even a mixture of these types of consumers.

Well, with technology becoming faster, things are also getting smaller and that’s where Asus have given the Maximus IV Extreme-Z the Gene treatment by creating a small form factor version, much like they did with the Rampage III Gene and Maximus III Gene to name a couple

From a first glance, it seems Asus have tried to condense the Maximus IV Extreme-Z down into a small form factor Micro ATX board, without leaving out the vital components and features that make it a ROG board leaving ample support for your vital components.

Though we now have a cut down sized version, does that mean performance will be cut down as well? There’s only one way to find out, keep reading for more.

The Sapphire Pure Black 990FX is a full ATX sized board making full use of the features of the AMD 990FX and SB950 chipsets. Four dual channel memory sockets are provided capable of supporting up to 32GB. There are four USB 3.0 ports (two at the rear and two on a header supported by a high quality front panel kit) as well as eight USB 2.0 ports on the rear panel plus four more on headers.

Advanced connectivity is provided by Dual Gigabit LAN sockets plus Bluetooth with EDR (enhanced data rate). The board has eight SATA 3GB ports, featuring AHCI and RAID support, conveniently mounted on the edge of the board with right angle connectors and an additional SATA 3GB port brought out to the rear panel on an eSATA connector. The back panel also carries optical and SPDIF outputs as well as the standard I/O configuration for the on board HD 7.1 Audio.

Extensive expansion support is provided by six PCI-Express Gen2 slots which allow up to six single slot cards or three dual slot cards such as high end graphics cards in CrossFireX to be used. A standard 4-pin Molex connector on the edge of the board can be used to provide additional power when multiple cards are used.

Many user friendly features have been incorporated in the Sapphire Pure Black 990FX, such as digital debug display and a push button reset for the BIOS, as well as start and system reset buttons. These are especially useful for enthusiasts interested in performance tuning or overclocking. This is the first board to feature the Sapphire QBIOS – an easy to use UEFI BIOS with many overclocking features. The board has a Dual BIOS, allowing for experimentation and updates, and includes S_BIOS which allows the user to update and back up the BIOS from a BIOS screen – there is no need to boot from an external disk. For the hard-core enthusiast, voltage test pads have been brought out to the edge of the board for the critical voltages on the CPU and memory.

The build quality of the Sapphire Pure Black 990FX is high. It has a black multilayer PCB, and uses high quality gold plated connectors for USB 3.0 and LAN. It incorporates many of the high end features associated with the Sapphire brand, such as the use of high reliability solid capacitors throughout. The multi-phase PWM voltage regulation circuitry for both the CPU and memory modules incorporate the Sapphire Diamond Black chokes with coolers that have featured on Sapphire’s high end graphics cards. Low profile coolers on the PWM section give users a wide choice of CPU cooler without risk of obstruction.

Source: Press Release

After X79 proving to be a pricey upgrade this Christmas, a lot of users are still looking at what the famous Z68 platform has to offer, and with prices falling as we get closer to that special day of the holiday season, it’s the perfect time to upgrade it seems. Couple this fantastic value with a range of components that can really be pushed to their limits including the 2500k, 2600k and the newest 2700k processors and you have a system that will last the test of time, or at least until Intel bring out Ivy Bridge.

We recently took a look at the budget-friendly Z68AP-D3 from Gigabyte recently which offered the performance needed but for an extremely low price point. Today we see Asus doing something very similar with the new P8Z68-V LX budget board.

Though from a first glance we see a budget board, Asus have also tried to give all of the features you want and need including some that you would only assume to see on top high-end boards such as a UEFI BIOS, EPU/TPU features and multi-GPU support.

Priced at £78.82, this is one of the best priced Z68 boards on the market, and being released just before Christmas seems to be a great tactic by Asus, but has the performance been affected or can it keep up with its bigger brothers that are double the price? Let’s find out shall we!

Sandy Bridge saw the start of a BIOS revolution the old American Megatrends and Phoenix AwardBIOS style was replaced with a new wave of UEFI and Click BIOS technologies from the likes of ASUS and MSI. However, Gigabyte failed to join the revolution, maintaining the use of the older Phoenix AwardBIOS.

Gigabyte labelled its BIOS “Hybrid-EFI” even though no aspect of the UEFI BIOS was actually incorporated except the ability to boot from drives greater than 2.2TB in size on a standard BIOS. Next they addressed the need to have a more user friendly BIOS, the TouchBIOS program which runs within windows attempted to address this but it still dodged the problem of an actual BIOS.

But finally Gigabyte has addressed all the appropriate concerns with its BIOS, now introducing the 3D UEFI BIOS which has the intuitive interface of the TouchBIOS but the functionality of actually being a BIOS that appears when you press delete as the motherboard posts rather than one accessed within Windows. The 3D aspect means that all aspects of the BIOS you would normally expect are accessed by clicking on a 3D map of the motherboard with the appropriate settings, so if you want to tweak CPU multiplier settings or CPU VCore you click on the CPU socket area of the board.

Gigabyte is using an AMI UEFI backend, coupled with its own patented DualBIOS technology that protects against bad flashes. Props to Gigabyte for a truly GUI setup program. Expect to see it first on LGA 2011 motherboards.

Source: TechPowerUp, Anandtech

At the Asus LGA 2011 X79 event, we got a first hand look into Sabertooth and it’s unique features that make it a diverse product against its competitors.

This includes the flashing of your BIOS without a CPU or memory, and the ability to control the temperature from all around the board with different profiles and manual settings through use of the onboard sensors that are placed around the board.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Gigabyte is a great motherboard manufacturer, always has been in terms of mainstream market, these past months we’ve even seen their gaming side rise up, but everyone using their motherboards couldn’t help noticing their terrible problem: their BIOS.

Yet, word is that Gigabyte will feature their first UEFI BIOS in their upcoming X79 boards, which still is a long way to go, and according to the pictures sent by Gigabyte to LegitReviews, the GUI isn’t pretty, but it isn’t the worse out there, and at least we get the mouse controlled BIOS, which is better than nothing, true, but still, after all the main motherboards manufacturers adopted it, we would have like Gigabyte to follow the pace a little faster.

One of the reasons Gigabyte didn’t necessarily need the update urgently was their “HybridEFI”, which allowed the past platforms to boot with drives larger than 2.2TB, which is only possible on current UEFI BIOS for most systems, but Gigabyte had the right idea, unfortunately the slowness of the drives just showed an bad application of the concept.

Here are some pictures (taken by Gigabyte and sent to LegitReviews, since they didn’t allow them to take their own):

Source
Photos from LegitReviews 

Gigabyte, whilst still creating motherboards, slightly fell behind in this department and an eagerly awaited Touch BIOS was rumoured for quite some time.

Today, Gigabyte has announced the Touch BIOS Utility and BIOS download available to obtain from their Microsite.

Many motherboards are supported (all on the Z68 platform) and will open a whole new realm of usability and function including a bit of eye candy to go with it with the new “Hybrid EFI technology.

The full list of motherboards that support this new functionality is listed in the picture below:

You can download the BIOS from the Gigabyte microsite here.

Gigabyte’s Colin Brix also explains the Touch BIOS briefly:

Click here to view the embedded video.

NiBiTor is the original and defenitive BIOS tweaker that supports the latest NVIDIA graphics cards. NiBiTor allows graphics card enthusiasts to have full control over advanced features and functionality found on firmware of supporting cards.

And this to gain some extra performance, enable certain hidden features and get extra stability on the NVIDIA based graphics cards.

Detailed BIOS information output:

- Device ID
- BIOS Version
- BIOS Date
- Vendor
- Core/Memory Clock display

- 2D Core/Memory Clock
- 3D Core/Memory Clock
- Throttling Core/Memory Clock
- Core Voltage display

- 2D Voltage
- 3D Voltage
- Throttling Voltage
- Memory Timings display
- Product Identification
- Ability to modify the several BIOS Parameters

- Core Clock defined within the BIOS
- Memory Clock defined within the BIOS
- Core Voltage defined within the BIOS
- Memory Timings defined within the BIOS
- Temperature Settings defined within the BIOS
- Fan Speed Settings defined within the BIOS
- Specific Boot Settings

- Graphics Card OEM and Advanced Signon Message
- Monitor Specific Parameters
- Graphics Card Initiation Settings
- TV Mode Selection (NTSC/PAL)
- Ability to check BIOS Integrity

- BIOS Checksum Checking
- BIOS Structure Checking

What’s New in This Release:

· Added GeForce GTX 550 Ti
· Added GeForce GT 440
· Added GeForce GT 330
· Added GeForce GT 130
· Added GeForce G 100
· Added Quadro 600 (Fermi)
· Added GeForce GTX 470M
· Added GeForce GTS 425M
· Added GeForce GTS 350M
· Updated GeForce GTX 460M

You can download this release here!

Radeon 6950′s have generally followed the same stock, reference design but this cut down version of the top selling graphics card from AMD includes a central fan as well. Specifications include a 800MHz GPU clock, 1408 stream processors, 5000MHz memory clock and a 256-bit memory interface. The main selling point of this card is that it features 1GB of memory, giving users more value for money over the initial 2GB model.

One thing that we’ve noticed from the pictures, is that the switchable BIOS seems to have been disregarded, meaning users hoping to unlock this to a 6970′s performance may be faced with some issues.

Connection wise will see two DVI ports, HDMI and two mini DisplayPorts and will feature AMD’s patented Eyefinity for multi display configurations as well as the ability of AMD CrossFireX for users wanting to run a multiple graphics card configuration of which the 6900 series has superior scaling.

Even though these cards have started cropping up in retailers, there is no news on pricing or availability for the HIS version but with the GTX 560 Ti release imminent, it makes sense to get this card out as soon as possible.

Sometimes even the most novice user to the most hardcore overclocker will at some point need to reset CMOS.

The most common way to reset CMOS, is using the JBAT7 jumper, this has been the same procedure for many years.

In this video, we show you the typical ways of resetting CMOS, and also some more advanced ways, depending on your motherboard.

Enjoy!

Click here to view the embedded video.