The Gigabyte Z68X-UD3P-B3 is an affordable Z68 motherboard for LGA 1155 socket processors. It comes with a great packaging and bundles, as well as a clean a flawless PCB design, although is lacks fancy features such as leds/buttons. O the top of that, the Z68X-UD3P-B3 offer a number of Gigabyte’s exclusive technologies. The Touch BIOS utility is a very useful Windows-based tool for quick and easy accessing and adjusting BIOS settings. It's Gigabyte's response to the UEFI BIOS found in competitive motherboards. The utility works well, although we prefer the manual BIOS setup in demanding cases such as overclocking.

In addition, the EZ Smart Response utility allows you to quickly configure their system for Intel Smart Response Technology, without having to perform a complicated install process.

On the other hand, the Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3P-B3 does not have video outputs and therefore you cannot take advantage of your CPU's integrated graphics. It lacks Lucid's Virtu switchable graphics software, which would harness the capabilities of Intel Quick Sync Video for faster video transcoding and the performance of the latest NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards. The Virtu graphics virtualization engine works in conjunction with Intel Quick Sync Video and promises to deliver up to three times faster and smoother video transcoding and playback. This is achieved by instantly switching between integrated Sandy Bridge graphics and a discrete graphics card on demand.

At default CPU clock speeds, the performance figures were decent although sometimes lower than some other P67 motherboards. But don't forget that the Z68X-UD3P-B3 is available at the same price range of a P67 motherboard.

We easily got our Intel i5-2500K processor running at 4.5GHz and we even pushed it further up to 4.7GHz, after making some manual adjustments through the BIOS (Voltage etc). However, the system did not got any further, at least with our CPU cooling system.

For sure, it is recommended to spend some extra cash in order to get an SSD and take advantage of the Intel Smart Response technology and enjoy a significant performance boost.

+ Positive

• Very good build quality & clean PCB layout
• Stable operation and potential for high overclocking
• SATA2 & SATA3 ports
• Supports X.M.P memory profiles
• Two USB3.0 ports at the back
• Dual Bios offers the possibility to run two bios and eliminate flashing issues
• Good retail price
• Intel Smart Response Technology
• Touch BIOS utility

- Negative

• No buttons on the PCB (reset/power)
• EasyTune6 software seems confusing, better master BIOS
• Lacks Virtu GPU modes
• Performance at stock speeds could be higher