GIGABYTE P67A-UD7-B3 Motherboard Review

Overclocking the GIGABYTE P67A-UD7-B3 Motherboard

Overclocking greatly varies due to what hardware is being used and who is doing the overclocking. Always remember that no two pieces of hardware will perform the same, so our results will differ from what you might be able to get.

Overclocking with the new Sandy Bridge processors has been simplified, at least in part. Adjustments to the Bclck have been almost done away with and overclocking is almost completely done through increasing the multiplier. When overclocking we used to run out of room on the Bclck or cooling. Now we are going to be limited by the Multi-wall. The Sandy Bridge processor just isn’t capable of going any faster; it’s all dependent on the piece of silicone that you get when you purchase your processor.

The Intel Core i5 2500K utilizes a bus speed of 100MHz, though the GIGABYTE P67A-UD7-B3 is picking it up at 100.3MHz. Under full load the Intel Core i5 2500K uses a multiplier of x33 to achieve the final clock speed of 3.3GHz. Since we are using a K series processor which has an unlocked multiplier we will be able to increase the default x33 multiplier to achieve our overclock today.

Leaving all of the GIGABYTE P67A-UD7-B3 BIOS settings on auto we wanted to see just how far we would be able to push the Intel Core i5 2500K. We were able to boot into our Windows 7 at 4.7GHz but we would get the notorious B.S.O.D. when we tried to do anything. 4.6GHz was slightly more stable, but not near enough to call it a day. Once we backed the Multiplier to x45 we were golden. 1.2GHz improvement on auto settings is nothing to shake a stick at. Of course we weren’t going to leave it at that. We wanted to push the Intel Core i5 2500K as far as we could.

We were able to push the GIGABYTE P67A-UD7-B3 and our Intel Core i5 2500K further than we have before. Our previous best is 5050MHz on the MSI P67A-GD65. Today though, we stand with a new champion! The GIGABYTE P67A-UD7-B3 was able to bring our Intel Core i5 2500K to 5141.7MHz! We were able to increase the multiplier to x51 and the Bclk to 100.8MHz (101 in the BIOS). We had to tweak a few settings in the P67A-UD7-B3 BIOS and you can find our settings here and here.