GIGABYTE Hidden Gems competition enters final 24 hrs

The GIGABYTE Hidden Gems competition has been running since mid-June, and we’re pleased to see hundreds of our fans and followers submit photos and videos and of their old GIGABYTE PCs, make comments and get involved with voting. It’s been fantastic. But the final 24 hours are now upon us.

All those GIGABYTE Gems will themselves soon be frozen in cyber-based amber, with submissions, votes and comments closing tomorrow, July 31st at 12am midnight- (Pacific Standard Time).

So this is your last chance to submit and share with us your old GIGABYTE build. Your last chance to vote and chip in with a comment.

Remember however that even though you don’t have the oldest motherboard, and of course it’s probably too late to drum up a thousand votes, there remains hope for you yet. The ‘Team GIGABYTE Prize’ – a Z77X-UD3H no less – will be chosen entirely at the whim of our GIGABYTE team here in Taipei.

In short, there is still time for you do something incredible, something astounding or even damn right silly to clinch a great prize. What are you waiting for?

Here’s the link: http://event.gigabyte.com/hidden_gems/index.aspx

Detailed review and analysis of the Z77X-UP5 TH (Ultra Durable 5) from sin0822

Motherboard power guru, sin0822, has posted his in depth review of GIGABYTE’s latest Ultra Durable 5 technology as part of his Z77X-UP5 TH review. As always he explores the PWM and VRM zone in a lot of detail with special attention to the new IR PWM chip, IR PowIRstages and high-current (60A) rated chokes.

He looks at everything from the bundled goodies…

…to the anti surge ICs next to the onboard power connector.

Not to mention the dual Thunderbolt ports.

It’s really quite incredible how much attention he pays to the onboard components, and this is why we at GIGABYTE love sin’s reviews:

 

Besides looking at all the onboard chips and layout, he also looks at the BIOS and compares various benchmarks, so if you’re looking for performance information be sure to read all the way to the end of the review.

If you are interested in the CPU VRM on your motherboard and would like to find out more, then I suggest you shoot over to sin0822’s website for a look at his extensive VRM list. It includes most current motherboard models and is good for:

Z77X-UP7 Gets Photo'd and Fed Some Serious Power

 

This has been a busy week for our new baby, the GIGABYTE Z77X-UP7. Not only have photos of the final design including its new black and orange paint job been published for the first time (Facebook, PCPowerPlay, NinjaLane, TonymacX86), but we have also spent the past few days trying to find out how much actual power the Z77x-UP7 can handle with its 32 CPU power phases and Ultra Durable™ 5 design. Watch the video to fine out just how much total power the UP7 was able to handle (hint: it’s enough to power 25 Intel Core i7 3770K CPUs)!

If you’re in India, you could win a GIGABYTE motherboard

GIGABYTE India has just announced their GIGABYTE mobo Comment Contest where you can win a GA-Z77M-D3H motherboard. Contestants need to comment on GIGABYTE mobo features or specs and the wittiest most liked comments will be considered for the prize.

GIGABYTE’s latest technologies can be found at the following links:

GIGABYTE Ultra Durable 5 Technology

GIGABYTE 7 Series Motherboards

 GIGABYTE G1-Killer Gaming Motherboards

GIGABYTE B75 Series of Small Business Motherboards

 GIGABYTE X79 Series Motherboards

 GIGABYTE A75/A55 Series Motherboards

 GIGABYTE Ultra Durable 4 Technology

Do you like going to your local gaming LAN event?

GIGABYTE is very involved in gaming side of things these days with some awesome products from motherboard, VGA and peripheral product teams. I’ve been going to a few LANs over the years and it’s really unique to see guys grabbing their PCs and spending a few days with friends who share the same passion.

Do you guys go to your local LAN? Why do you like going and what would you like to see change in future if anything? Do you like bigger or smaller LANs and do you notice companies that sponsor them?

Here’s a cool timelapse from one of Australia’s LANs up in sunny Queensland.

Thunderbolt: three GIGABYTE motherboards featured on Intel’s Thunderbolt website

We are pleased to announce that GIGABYTE’s Thunderbolt certified motherboards are featured on Intel’s Thunderbolttechnology.net website. They appear to be the the only boards there with 2 Thunderbolt ports, and the Z77MX-D3H TH also appears to be the only Micro-ATX form factor option at the moment. Here’s a shot of the Z77MX-D3H TH:

The Z77X-UP5 TH and Z77X-UP4 TH can also be found on the official Thunderbolt website.

GIGABYTE factory tour in Taiwan gets a new voice over from OC-TV

Trouff and Xyala from Overclocking-TV finally bowed to the pressure and remastered their famous GIGABYTE factory tour video with a native English voice over. The previous version achieved a remarkable 202,477 hits at the time of writing this blog entry.

Remastered edition of the famous GIGABYTE Nanping factory tour in Taiwan

Made in Taiwan: Like the motherboards from this GIGABYTE factory, both the video and the new voice over (by yours truly) are made in Taiwan. What’s more is that both of these videos now have subtitles in 12 different languages, including:

• Bulgarian
• Czech
• English
• French
• Korean
• Polish
• Portuguese (Brazil)
• Romanian
• Russian
• Serbian
• Thai
• Chinese (Traditional)

Hope you enjoy watching and that you can find a language that you can understand if the audio is not suitable.

GIGABYTE Classic Challenge competition under way at HWBOT!

HWBOT.ORG just put up a new competition which is going to prove to be very interesting no doubt. It’s made up of two parts, 4.5GHz low clock 32M SuperPi challenge and second is 3DMARK01 all out competition.

Prizes are pretty nice too with the X79S-UP4 and UP5 up for grabs as well as the new F2A85X-UP4 if someone manages to take out both stages!

Competition page link here!

 

On a related note, congrats to Christian Ney, splmann and der8auer on finishing in top 3 in last month’s competition and picking up some nice Z77X-UP boards!

GIGABYTE Hidden Gems: Video submissions worth a look

The GIGABYTE Hidden Gems competition has been running for a few weeks now, and it’s great to see so many submissions, especially video submissions. Here’s a quick look at a few of the videos that have caught my eye in the last few days.

Above we have a video from Carl Venzon De Vera from the Philippines who is showing us his GIGABYTE 1975X-C motherboard. It might no be the oldest board submission but it’s simply a brilliantly done video. Carl creates a Star Wars inspired intro to explain the background to this build – basically he saw the board in a PC magazine in 2005 and spent the next year saving up for it! Classic… Good luck to Carl who has garnered 27 votes and 32 comments. Harnessing the power of Social Media Carl…love it!

Next we have a brilliant submission from Seth Hanzik  in the United States who gives us the low-down regarding his GIGABYTE 6VTXE  motherboard, which as you can see from the his video, is well and truly still alive and well. Seth has this rig running an Intel Pentium 3 at 1.2 GHz (Tualatin core) paired with 1 GB of RAM and a Voodoo 5 5500 PCI card. Watch it boot to XP..reeeaallly slowly. Seth only has 2 votes so far, so maybe help him out, eh guys? He’s made a sterling effort!

Finally, we have Mr Brian Healy from Scotland and his GIGABYTE 71IXE board. Brian claims he’s been using this board for 12 years so it’s another great ad for Ultra Durable philosophy. It runs a Socket A 700MHz Athlon CPU and as you can see, still runs Windows 2000 a treat. Once again Brian isn’t doing too well in the votes department, so feel free to head on over to the Hidden Gems competition page and make your thoughts clear.

The GIGABYTE Hidden Gems Competition. Take a peek…it just might stoke your nostalgia…

GIGABYTE 7970SOC “a WHOLE new way to look at GPU cooling”

Atomic Magazine from Australia got a world’s first sneak peak at the new GIGABYTE 7970SOC graphics card sporting a new looking heatsink design. The card heatsink was raising some eyebrows recently when the new cooler design was recently unveiled and one of the questions on people’s minds was how loud it is and if it indeed cools effectively being configured in air pull configuration. Atomic answers those questions and more.

That is, they are ‘pulling’ air through the GPU block instead of ‘pushing’, which is usually the most efficient cooling method.

The reason Gigabyte chose to pull air was to stop hot air pockets forming underneath the card, in-between the motherboard and the heatsink. In order to stop that, GIGABYTE’s had to make a choice: either set the fans to pull, and sit them on top of the card as it has done, or use them in push mode and mount them on the bottom of the heatsink near the PCI slot. However, there’s very limited room, and that option would likely have impacted airflow more severely than the choice GIGABYTE finally went with.

Given the rather enormous four-piped vapour chamber, this card’s heatsink can dissipate an enormous amount of heat. Running the standard 1080MHz core clock on this card, the AMD reference heatsink would be sitting on roughly 85C, if not higher. GIGABYTE’s design managed to keep the card under 64C while benching at these clocks, and even cooler when playing less demanding games like Heroes of Newerth or League of Legends; around 53C, in fact.

Idle temperatures were very comfortable, sitting on 36C with the fans not making more than a small whisper. Using software, we were actually able to turn the fans completely off, and the temperature never went above 48C while running 2D applications and web browsing.

Good to hear one of the sceptics found the answers and was pretty happy with the outcome. I have to get my hands on one of those and freeze it! Visit Atomic for the full story and a gallery.

VIDEO: Another 10-year old GIGABYTE board still kickin’

Here’s a really interesting entry that I’d like to share with you all from our Hidden Gems competition. As I’m sure you all know, we’ve invited our Facebook fans to share with us their old GIGABYTE motherboard builds, preferably ones that are still humming away. People get to vote for the board that best stokes their nostalgia with three eventual winners walking away with a GIGABYTE 7 series motherboard.

Here one entry that caught our eye; it’s a ten year-old GA-586T2 board submitted by Victoria Chudinova in the Ukraine. What really makes this one stand out however, apart from the the fact that’s it’s a ten year GIGABYTE old board that still kicks, is that Victoria has produced such a brilliantly creative video in which  to showcase the board. Check it out…

And please, please…if you haven’t been to our Hidden Gems page to check out the submissions, then make sure you do. So many great submissions to check out. You’ll love it!

Link: http://event.gigabyte.com/hidden_gems/competition.aspx

Thunderbolt: interview with Intel’s Jason Ziller, Director of Thunderbolt Planning/Marketing

At Computex this year we showed off three new motherboards featuring dual Thunderbolt ports. We were fortunate enough to catch up with Jason Ziller, Intel's head of Thunderbolt Planning and Marketing, for a brief description of what makes Thunderbolt unique, the differences between the dual port and the single port options, as well as how things are progressing with the new top speed connectivity standard.

Brief introduction to Thunderbolt technology from Jason Ziller, Intel's head of Thunderbolt Planning and Marketing

Of course, we have announced Intel Thunderbolt certification for these three models since this video was taken and you can find out more about our Thunderbolt offerings at he following links:

1. GIGABYTE Thunderbolt motherboards micro site: http://www.gigabyte.com/microsite/306/images/thunderbolt.html 

2. Press release: GIGABYTE Launches World’s First Fully Certified Dual Port Thunderbolt™ Motherboards http://www.gigabyte.com/press-center/news-page.aspx?nid=1140 

3. Press release: GIGABYTE Ultra Durable™ 5 Technology Earns Best of Computex 2012 Award from Tom's Hardware http://www.gigabyte.com/press-center/news-page.aspx?nid=1134 (two of our Thunderbolt boards have GIGABYTE Ultra Durable™ 5 technology)

4. Press release: GIGABYTE to Unveil New Motherboard Technologies at Computex 2012 http://www.gigabyte.com/press-center/news-page.aspx?nid=1125 

5. Youtube video demo at the GIGABYTE Computex VIP suite:

Introduction to GIGABYTE Thunderbolt motherboards by motherboard product manager, Alex Huang

6. Youtube introduction to the Promise Pegasus R6 Thunderbolt RAID Storage:

Tyler Sander from Promise introduces the new Pegasus R6 super performance external RAID storage device

Multiple 10-12 year old systems entered into the GIGABYTE Hidden Gems competition–gives new meaning to ‘Ultra Durable’!

Just cruising through the Hidden Gems competition entries this morning I came across a number of really old PCs that are still in use today. Have a look at this old 12 year old PC (well, in its 12th year) that is still running the original GIGABYTE GA-6VX7-4X motherboard, and is being used to play old dos games or as a test bed. It apparently used to be a fileserver and CD/DVD sharer. Today it can be found on page 13 of the ‘Detailed List’ in the ‘Competition Voting’ section:

Or check out this old beauty using a GIGABYTE GA-6VTXD motherboard (today it can be found on page 18 of the ‘Detailed List’: 

Here is another dual socket server board from the turn of the century, this time the GA-6VXDC7, that is still running today. It can be found on page 21 of the ‘Detailed List’:

Not to mention this GA-5AA motherboard based system that is also still being used to play older games. The first BIOS for this model was released in January 2000, so it is a real grand daddy in this competition. It can be found on page 22 of the ‘Detailed List’:

By the way, if you’re wondering how to estimate the age of a motherboard we suggest you look at the date of the first BIOS release. This can be found in the downloads section of the motherboard home page. Here’s a screenshot of the BIOS download section for Richard de Kock’s system above:

Keep in mind that the competition is not only about the oldest system; there are also prizes for the system that gets the most votes and the system that is judged to be most worthy of an upgrade. Hope you enjoy this little trip down memory lane, and please cast your vote for the system that impresses you most.

Take the GIGABYTE Summer Survey and Win a G1.Sniper M3 motherboard

GIGABYTE wants to ask you all a few questions. We want to know what wonderful ideas and opinions you have when it comes to motherboards. So in an effort to gain a deeper level of understanding, we’ve put together a quick survey on our Facebook page; introducing the GIGABYTE Summer Survey.

The great things is that we’re offering a GIGABYTE G1.Sniper M3 motherboard as a prize for most inspirational and earth shattering suggestion.

Taking part is simple. Visit the Summer Survey page and start answering those questions. Here’s the link: http://www.facebook.com/GIGABYTEmotherboards/app_140144849426314

CPU magazine investigates GIGABYTE Ultra Durable 5

Computer Power User magazine in the USA published a white paper about our Ultra Durable™ 5 technology featuring IR’s 3550 PowIRstage ICs, 2x copper PCBs and high current (60A) rated chokes. The power stage ICs are also rated at 60A.  You can read the article on their online e-zine.

GIGABYTE-sponsored Sim Racing Team claim 3rd place

The world Sim or Simulation Racing has a new up and coming team, the GIGABYTE team. In it’s first competitive race on the 24H Ultimate Race Track, drivers Valentino Adams, Joeri Blootacker, Ron Bartsch and Ludo Bleys were unlucky not to clinch 2nd place due to late blown tire, but to be fair a 3rd place finish is not bad at all. Go to http://beracing-fxx.com for the full story.
Check out these awesome rendered images of the GIGABYTE car. Looks great in our signature G1.Killer green!




Our boss, Tim Handley (a regular contributor to these blog pages) did an interesting interview with Beracing-FXX which you can check out here.

Vivi from South Africa does a series of YouTube videos on overclocking (guides), a must watch!

Vivi, a well known overclocker from South Africa, did some cool videos recently to give people an introduction into subzero overclocking. He covered different aspects of testing and seems to have a never ending stream of videos continually updating at his youtube channel. Make sure you subscribe to it!

His weapon of choice is GIGABYTE Z77X-UD5H and 3770K. Check out a few videos he put up overnight. Good stuff Vivi!