This is just my opinion, but Gigabyte’s new firmware GUI has become nearly useless to enthusiasts. Fortunately, a click of the keyboard’s F2 key brings up all the familiar settings of “Classic Mode”.

Switching from our locked Core i7-4790 to an unlocked Core i7-4770K gives us all the options we need to reach 4.5 GHz at 1.25 V core. There are, of course, several menus to jump through.

The board also supports our DDR3-2800 samples, even at 4 x 8 GB. Primary, secondary, and tertiary timings are adjustable in dual-channel (manual mode) or per-channel (advanced manual mode) arrangements.
If you’re like us, you might be tired of jumping through submenus only to find that the Advanced Voltage Settings menu is nothing more than a list of submenus. But we’re almost through!
Leaving other settings at motherboard defaults, we found our 1.25 V CPU core and 1.65 V DRAM core voltage targets approximated at 1.22 and 1.62 volts, respectively. The actual DRAM voltage was measured at 1.644 V, but the Z97X-Gaming 5 only supports increasing that setting in 20mV increments. The 1.64 V setting pushed our RAM to nearly 1.67 volts!
- Gaming Raises The Mainstream
- ASRock Z97 Extreme4
- Z97 Extreme4 Software
- Z97 Extreme4 Firmware
- Asus Z97-A
- Z97-A Software
- Z97-A Firmware
- Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 5
- Z97X-Gaming 5 Software
- Z97X-Gaming 5 Firmware
- L337 Gaming Z97-Machine
- Z97-Machine Software
- Z97-Machine Firmware
- MSI Z97 Gaming 5
- Z97 Gaming 5 Software
- Z97 Gaming 5 Firmware
- Test Hardware And Benchmark Configurations
- Results: 3DMark And PCMark
- Results: SiSoftware Sandra
- Results: 3D Games
- Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Results: Adobe Creative Suite
- Results: Productivity
- Results: File Compression
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- Overclocking
- Picking A Value Leader










What I found lacking is the reviewing of those features like software (audio, fan control etc.), VRM quality, "other stuff".
Now what is this "other stuff" really? Which motherboard has the best "other stuff"? I didn't get it from the review.
Apart from the very simple introduction to the software and hardware, I can't really make what's better between Gigabyte and MSI, the one's I'm interested in. MSI has better UEFI, I understood but how is the software? How many VRM phases and their quality? Is MSI's audio suite better than GB's?
These are what make the products apart in the same price range but finding the value leader with good explanations for why was not possible from this article despite it's title.