GIGABYTE Z87X-UD3H Intel Z87 ‘Haswell’ Motherboard Review

Battlefield 3

Battlefield 3 (BF3) is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts. The game was released in North America on October 25, 2011 and in Europe on October 28, 2011. It does not support versions of Windows prior to Windows Vista as the game only supports DirectX 10 and 11. It is a direct sequel to 2005’s Battlefield 2, and the eleventh installment in the Battlefield franchise. The game sold 5 million copies in its first week of release and the PC download is exclusive to EA’s Origin platform, through which PC users also authenticate when connecting to the game.

Battlefield 3 debuts the new Frostbite 2 engine. This updated Frostbite engine can realistically portray the destruction of buildings and scenery to a greater extent than previous versions. Unlike previous iterations, the new version can also support dense urban areas. Battlefield 3 uses a new type of character animation technology called ANT. ANT technology is used in EA Sports games, such as FIFA, but for Battlefield 3 is adapted to create a more realistic soldier, with the ability to transition into cover and turn the head before the body.

Benchmark Results: On the low settings the Intel Z87 systems struggle to run Battlefield 3 at 1920×1080 as they averaged between 29 and 30 frames per second, the GIGABYTE Z87X-UD3H was a fuzz ahead of the ASUS ROG Maximus VI Hero, but in a benchmark using FRAPS that difference is almost to close to call a win either way. Looking at the performance of the MSI ‘Ivy Bridge’ system it’s pretty apparent that the Haswell systems are significantly faster. The Ivy Bridge system averaged 21.863 frames per second at 1920×1080 while the GIGABYTE Z87X-UD3H averaged 29.67 frames per second. A performance increase of 35.7%! At 1280×1024 the Z87X-UD3H averaged 43.882 frames per second, a jump of 35.5% over the average of 32.381 frames per second on the Intel Z77 system!

Battlefield 3 – ASUS NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II

Benchmark Results: With the ASUS GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU II plugged in, we don’t see much of a difference in the systems. The MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming motherboard came out on top by ~1%, well within this Id10T’s margin of gaming error. With that being said and noted, the GIGABYTE Z87X-UD3H was able to average 107.563 frames per second at 1280×1024 and 76.722 frames per second at 1920×1080.