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BIOS
Here’s the correct laydown on BIOS. We’ve seen it reported that the GIGABYTE Z170X Gaming 7 was shipped with only the F2 MIT BIOS and GIGABYTE was concentrating on MIT and dropping UEFI. The information is correct in one sense, the board shipped to reviewers with the F2 MIT BIOS and it was very immature at the time.
The GIGABYTE Z170X Gaming 7 comes with Easy BIOS a kind of rudimentary UEFI BIOS selection Screen for the inexperienced. The Gaming 7 also has old school MIT BIOS for people who can’t grasp UEFI, or prefer, MIT BIOS, then it has UEFI BIOS and it has HD UEFI. The settings in HD UEFI are identical to the settings in 1024 UEFI but HD UEFI gives system information around the sides of the screen. All told you are looking at 4 different BIOS with something like 60 pages. That’s pretty unmanageable for a review format. Rest assured all the BIOS’s contain all the same settings, just displayed differently.
If you choose peruse our F5a BIOS Gallery because as a special treat we left it at the 4700MHz OC settings with the Ram at 3000MHz (overclocked from 2666MHz) and the settings may help you with the Z170X Gaming 7 or other similar boards.
We chose BIOS F5a and in the HD UEFI version for our BIOS Gallery, the HD BIOS gives the same options and 1024 but has system information around the edge of the screen and is a more eloquent iteration of GIGABYTES BIOS. More companies need to follow this elegant design and provide current system settings, speeds and monitoring on every BIOS screen as it’s a much evolved and ahead of its time design.
Hey! Great Info. I just got one. Running on 360 Predator AIO.
You mention,
” We played with the cache speeds keeping them at 4.1 and setting them equal to the CPU speed. ”
Where on earth are you setting that in the BIOS? I can find nothing for cache speeds?!
Thanks for any clarification
I am wishing I had spent more and had gone with ASUS. Lots of weird power-related and graphics-related glitches with the Gaming 7. I think I finally solved the problem of the computer restarting itself every time I shut it down. Sometimes the machine turns itself off when it’s supposed to be in standby. I use the onboard graphics, and sometimes only one of my two monitors will display anything when coming out of standby, starting up, etc. You’d think getting basic power and display functions right would be important. Hopefully BIOS updates will solve some of these issue, but I’m not terribly optimistic about that happening.
The feature list is really nice, and I really wanted the native Thunderbolt support, but I wish I had chosen differently.
Excellent in depth review which made my mind up to by this motherboard over the Asus Hero motherboard… and yes I made the right decision… Excellent straight out of the box. The sound is exceptional with the Soundblaster 3d sound and the OP AMP feature. The intel based 3.1 USB controller also makes a difference. I have used a Samsung SM951 M.2 NVme SSD with is nothing short of incredible.
Looks are subjective but I liked the white and red theme. The metal shroud over the PCIE slots actually make a difference by keeping my Palit 1070 straight…no sag at all.
Overclocking was a breeze with 4.5 achieved without even trying… will go further later. Overall a well priced high spec z170x motherboard… I would recommend this to anyone who wants something a little different from Asus with a bit more value for the money..