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Gigabyte GA-P67A-UD4 review

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Verdict

A solid board, but it fails to stand out thanks to a lack of unique, interesting features

Review Date: 17 Jan 2011

Reviewed By: Mike Jennings

Price when reviewed: £127 (£152 inc VAT)

Overall Rating

Features & Design
4 stars out of 6

Value for Money
4 stars out of 6

Performance
4 stars out of 6

The launch of Intel’s Sandy Bridge processors has kicked off 2011 with a bang, and it’s now the turn of motherboard manufacturers to take the baton, with a flood of products bearing Intel’s new chipsets and sockets.

Gigabyte’s new ATX board, the GA-P67A-UD4, is its first with the required combination of P67 chipset and socket LGA 1155, and it sits firmly in the middle of the firm’s range of offerings. Its four DIMM sockets cater for up to 16GB of DDR3 RAM in a dual-channel arrangement.

There are two PCI Express x16 slots and, although one is limited to x8 speed, that should be enough to see significant gains from a dual-graphics setup. Meanwhile, a trio of PCI Express x1 slots and pair of PCI sockets provide plenty of room for other types of expansion board.

Storage is catered for with a pair of SATA 6Gbits/sec connectors, now handled natively by the Intel P67 chipset rather than by a third-party chip and four SATA 3Gbit/sec ports. A pair of eSATA connectors is sited on the motherboard’s backplane, next to two USB 3 ports, eight USB 2 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, optical and co-axial S/PDIF connectors, plus a PS/2 socket and the usual six audio jacks.

As befits this board’s mid-range standing, however, there’s a lack of enthusiast features. There’s no sign of on-board power or reset buttons, for instance, no LED POST display or CMOS button, and there’s also no sign of the mouse-driven EUFI software that’s beginning to replace the traditional BIOS – instead, you’ll have to navigate familiar blue option menus with your keyboard.

Still, a decent number of useful connectors are dotted around the board. The bottom edge provides three USB 2 headers alongside one for USB 3, and there are also connectors for S/PDIF out, Serial, and four fan connectors, including two with PWM.

The GA-P67A-UD4 isn’t a bad board, but it offers nothing truly outstanding and the price feels a touch over the odds. With a wave of P67 boards set to crash into the market in coming weeks, we’d wait and see what rivals have to offer before taking the plunge.

Author: Mike Jennings

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Comments

User comments

The first motherboard supporting LGA 1155 and P67, except for: MSI LGA 1155 Intel P67 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard P67A-GD53, and the ASUS LGA 1155 P67 SATA P8P67.

You really should check with Google before you write this stuff Mike. I would still go for the Gigabyte board though.

By stokegabriel on 18 Jan 2011

@stokegabriel

You missed out the Intel DP67BG as used by PCPro to test the processors.

By tirons1 on 18 Jan 2011

Why make it unique?

I'd rather buy a mobo that has nice standard & well known features than one with obscure & generally worthless features.

By SKINHEAD1967 on 18 Jan 2011

Read it again!

"Gigabyte’s new ATX board, the GA-P67A-UD4, is its first with the required combination of P67 chipset and socket LGA 1155" - that's ITS first, not THE first.

By nelviticus on 18 Jan 2011

"Finally, what's going on with on-chip graphics? I thought all the new processors had graphics controllers built in, but this board does not seem to have the necessary monitor connectors"

John,I think you'll find that there are 2 versions of the 1155 coming out. P67 Chipsets without graphics ports and H67 with HDMI/VGA Etc.

By Jaberwocky on 18 Jan 2011

Read it again... again!

Derect your browers to the homepage where this article is linked off and read "The first motherboard capable of supporting Intel's latest super-powerful processors touches down" - This is the comment being refered to =)

By Kiebz on 19 Jan 2011

Chipset's?

As already mentioned who needs PS2, USB2, SATA 3 or for that matter any chipset that does not "fully" support the CPU and whilst no doubt a good motherboard it seems to me about £30 to £40 to expensive.

I'll wait until the Z68 arrives round about April.

By dholbon on 20 Jan 2011

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