Gigabyte Z87X-UD5 TH Thunderbolt Motherboard Review

Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD5 TH - Z87 Chipset
Intel Core i7 4770K (3.5Ghz) Quad Core 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache
Thermaltake Water 2.0 Performer
1x nVidia GTX 770
2x Corsair Dominator PC2133 4GB DDR3 (9-11-10-27)
Micron C300 128GB SSD
HP dvd1260i Multiformat 24x Writer
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1050 Watt PSU
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit SP1

ASRock Z87 OC Formula - Z87 Chipset
Intel Core i7 4770K (3.5Ghz) Quad Core 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache
Thermaltake Water 2.0 Performer
1x nVidia GTX 770
2x GSKill RipjawsX PC2133 4GB DDR3 (9-10-9-28)
Micron C300 128GB SSD
HP dvd1260i Multiformat 24x Writer
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1050 Watt PSU
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit SP1

EVGA Z77 FTW - Z77 Chipset
Intel Core i7 3770K (3.5Ghz) Quad Core 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache
Thermaltake Water 2.0 Performer
1x nVidia GTX 580
2x GSKill RipjawsX PC2133 4GB DDR3 (7-10-7-27)
Western Digital VelociRaptor 150gb SerialATA 10000RPM
LG 20x Super Multi GSA-H55L
Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1050 Watt PSU
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit

Our motherboard testing suite has been compiled to subject the system to a variety of different scenarios that help uncover some of the subtle differences in motherboard design.  Normally these differences are driven by the processor and BIOS programming but with the advent of an IMC and PCI Express moving to the CPU we have discovered that raw performance numbers are virtually identical across the systems.  

Our new approach is to look at total system performance and minimize the variances.  The results will tell us how the system responded as a total package and also give us something to use in our comparisons.