What is the difference between these two boards?

[testudo_aubreii]

GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD4H LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

and

GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD3H LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Is the UD4H worth the extra cash?

Thank you!

 

[C12Friedman]

About the only difference I see is the UD4H board has better RAID configurations (that I am unsure of, having not compared the two manuals - got that from advertising hype) and two additional SATA III ports - for my uses, it wouldn't be worth it but if looking to set up a RAID configuration, it may be...

 

[testudo_aubreii]

Thanks for the quick response!
I am looking to game and work. I am a web developer, so I use all of the Adobe Creative Suite 5 software, many open at the same time, and multiple browser windows up, too.

 

[C12Friedman]

If you have and use hot swappable HDD's for your files, there may be a benefit to the additional SATA III ports, if not then I don't really see an advantage to the UD4H board for your uses

 

[testudo_aubreii]

No, I only use external drives for work files. So, the UD3H will be good for my needs?

 

[C12Friedman]

I would say the UD3H should work just fine for you, put the difference into ram or CPU

 

[testudo_aubreii]

I would say the UD3H should work just fine for you, put the difference into ram or CPU

What is UEFI BIOS and will that make a difference?

 

[C12Friedman]

Without going into the specifics of UEFI BIOS, I will only venture that the BIOS has become a little more user friendly with it by giving you a visual interface to BIOS as opposed to the 'line' interface (which is still available to use). There is more to it than that and many articles are out there about how it works and the other aspects of it but as far as users are concerned, that fairly sums it up I think.

 

[testudo_aubreii]

Thanks for you help! I really appreciate it.

 

[genz]

I would say the UD3H should work just fine for you, put the difference into ram or CPU

What is UEFI BIOS and will that make a difference?

UEFI BIOS is on both boards, just not prominently advertised on the latter. It is very useful if you overclock or need to go into complex hardware management.

 

[testudo_aubreii]

So, the UD3H is a pretty good board?

 

[genz]

So, the UD3H is a pretty good board?

Yup. If I still did your job I would get the UD4 becasue my external RAID Arrays would be connected by eSATA (which links each external HDD to a SATA port) so I could stream large bandwidth without the MTBF of SSDs, but nowardays most people use USB3 with similar performance so by all means the UD3 is probably just as good for you.

 

[testudo_aubreii]

So, the UD3H is a pretty good board?

Yup. If I still did your job I would get the UD4 becasue my external RAID Arrays would be connected by eSATA (which links each external HDD to a SATA port) so I could stream large bandwidth without the MTBF of SSDs, but nowardays most people use USB3 with similar performance so by all means the UD3 is probably just as good for you.

Cool. Yeah, the external HDD that I use is USB 3.0, but I don't have that on my current build. I think that I will go with the UD3H.