3/09/2012 06:24:00 PM
dannzfay
Besides the Intel Z77 powered solutions we have seen so far, Gigabyte’s Ivy Bridge motherboard lineup also includes a series of H77 Express models, such as the micro-ATX GA-H77M-D3H the company had on display at its CeBIT booth this year.
The H77 chipset includes many features of the Z77 PCH, but it lacks the PCI Express flexibility offered by its older brother.
More specifically, the H77 chipset can’t split the 16 PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes available in Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors into dual x8 links, so this PCH isn’t compatible with CrossFireX or SLI setups.
This means that even though Gigabyte installed two PCI Express x16 slots in the H77M-D3H, only the first one of these can work at x16 speeds, while the latter is limited at PCIe x4.
The rest of the expansion slots include a PCI Express x1 slot as well as a legacy 32-bit PCI slot, while for storage purposes Gigabyte choose to rely on the six SATA interfaces available in Intel’s chipset, two of which run at SATA 6Gbps speeds.
Since we are dealing with an entry-level Ivy Bridge motherboard, the rest of its features list is rather unimpressive.
Furthermore, Gigabyte also decided that the H77M-D3H doesn’t require any sort of VRM cooling, which could prove to be a problem if you plan to run this motherboard overclocked.
Moving to the rear of Gigabyte’s creation, we get to see that the board includes four USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet jack, and the now usual D-Sub, DVI and HDMI video outputs.
No information regarding the price, or the availability of the H77M-D3H, was brought to our attention by Gigabyte.
However, considering the unimpressive features list of the H77M-D3H, we expect this motherboard to become one of the cheapest 7-series LGA 1155 solutions out there.
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