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Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 Z68 review – bargain mobo of the year

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) 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

At 4.6ghz the Core i5 2500k is a formidable processor and these results with the Gigabyte board are excellent.

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13 comments

  1. Wow, that might be a ugly looking board, but great performance ! ill direct my friend to this link he was on about a new mobo and system before christmas

  2. Great bargain. I have read an analysis before on x4 and it doesnt really make much difference for a second slot card. maybe 5% lower performance.

  3. It is a bit stripped down, but in the right places. such as not having 12 sata ports etc. who the hell needs all that anyway.

    Shame about the x4 secondary port, but ive looked at the 3dmark results and they seem pretty much on par with 2x x16 slots… very good quality board. I like gigabyte anyway.

  4. They are selling well, most places are sold out. companies need to release more sub £100 b oards like this, huge audience.

    Look at the results for instance. a 2500k and a board like this with cheap ass memory, performs well, and for gaming a 970/980/990x is a total waste of time.

    proved many times. nice article

  5. Gigabyte have good bios recovery systems, always found it with my older P67 board. I moved to asus Z68 and it sometimes craps out. has surprised me to be honest as I know they get the best name overall. ill move back to gigabyte in the next cycle.

  6. We sell 10 of these a week. excellent product. Never used one in Crossfire, so this is a good resource.

  7. I got one two weeks ago, but they are hard to find now in stock

    Ebay sellers have them

  8. Bought it, this week and am very happy. great review thanks.

  9. This website is remarkably interfering and winsome, unquestionably be affirmed b club in naval aft here in the expected! Thanks again!

  10. Hello Zardon, thank you for the very informative review but I just wanted to ask.

    How did you overclock the Z68AP-D3 without an option to change the Vcore? Which setting do I change to change my Vcore? Right now I have a 2600k and I’m hoping to go at least 4.2Ghz. I’d be really grateful if you’d email or post the solution here.

  11. The maximum selectable multiplier for me with this board is 41x. Is this a limitation of revision 1.0?

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