Gigabyte Z170X-Ultra Gaming (LGA1151) Motherboard Review

CPU & GPU Performance

Cinebench

When running the CPU at its stock configuration, the motherboard posts impressive Cinebcnech scores and competes exceptionally well with products costing significantly more.

Once overclocked, the Gigabyte Z170X-Ultra Gaming excels and almost manages to take the top spot. Saying that, the single core performance isn’t the greatest on record but it’s within an acceptable margin of error.

WPrime

In WPrime. the motherboard completed the pi calculation in a very respectable time and defeated the majority of Z170 models available today.

Unfortunately, Gigabyte Z170X-Ultra Gaming couldn’t uphold this higher tier position after being overclocked and attained a mid-table position. Despite this, it’s still worthy of praise and there’s very little to choose between motherboards during the overclocked benchmark.

SiSoft Sandra

For some bizarre reason, the motherboard didn’t fare well when tackling the Sanda Arithmetic test and struggled to match a large number of rival products. This is surprising given the extraordinary performance figures in both Cinebench and WPrime.

This performance deficit remains quite significant compared to other Gigabyte creations such as the Z170X-UD5 TH while operating at the 4.8GHz frequency. To clarify this, I re-ran the benchmark but the results didn’t change. Please remember it’s been some time since I reviewed a Z170 product, so perhaps a software issue is contributing to the weak scores.

3DMark

The Gigabyte Z170X-Ultra Gaming is able to utilise the test bench’s GTX 980Ti to its full potential and attain a marvellous Firestrike score. On the other hand, you would expect it to surpass motherboards using an older NVIDIA driver. Honestly, your choice of motherboard doesn’t make a huge difference in games or synthetic 3D applications providing the same chipset and processor are being compared.

Tomb Raider

Evidently, the recent driver updates have made a monumental difference when playing Tomb Raider on the Ultimate preset and I was mesmerised by the performance increase. This is a wonderful result and showcases the importance of optimisation at a driver level.

Bioshock Infinite

In direct contrast to the previous data, the motherboard’s frame-rate isn’t substantially higher than other products tested with older drivers. Nevertheless, it’s still a strong showing but it looks unlikely that anything will threaten the ECS Z170-Claymore’s unusually high frame-rate.