So far in our Intel Z77 journey we have experienced the might of ASUS, MSI, ASRock with their high-end offerings, and today in our first GIGABYTE review we are to report back on an entry-level M-ATX motherboard. It would be unfair really to compare (in this conclusion) what we have tested so far against the Z77MX-D3H as it is in a totally different league.

MX-D3H managed to hold up quite well against the other products we have had in for review this week. The performance benchmarks revealed that this motherboard can offer similar and in some cases, better performance. Overclocking as per other reviews identified some key advantages were video encoding and raw CPU processing power is concerned.



Overclocking realised a reasonable result – achieving 4.5GHz out of our Intel Core i5-3570K. This may not be as high an overclock as our other Intel Z77 motherboards but then this motherboard isn’t designed for this purpose. MX-D3H can be purchased for around £100inc. VAT making it quite an affordable piece of kit, though the Z77X-D3H can be bought for even less – has a stronger feature-set and looks to suit. Also around this price-range is ASRock’s Extreme4-M which is cheaper and has better aesthetics. It’s quite a battle at this price-point.

The things I don’t like about this motherboard are the aesthetics. It looks dated and lacks any flare. Compared to rival motherboards (even entry level) it looks cheap. I appreciate this is GIGABYTE’s entry level range but a colour-scheme alteration should be in order to spruce things up.

3D BIOS is another area that I think needs some slight improvement. Navigation during my experience was sluggish and with a laser gaming mouse – it was hit and miss if it worked.



Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.