Board Software

When looking at the included software, the first thing I have to touch on is the ease of installation that is present here on the Gigabyte X99-Ultra Gaming. A big part of why is because Gigabyte has rolled all the tools into a single interface called "APP Center." It contains all the tools you may need, and you simply click the button to start the tool you want. I won't focus too much on individual tools, but will instead look at those that stand out to me. Most of these are hold-overs from past platforms, anyway.


Since there are so many users with varied opinions about LEDs on products these days, I decided that I must look at the LED controls to see exactly what is offered. With this simple control panel, you can easily turn off the lights if you like, or adjust how they are displayed and what color is shown. You can even have it dynamically change colors.


The other tool worth a mention is 3D OSD, which offers the option to display pertinent system information by way of an overlay in 3D apps. This is immensely useful to me, and I know that many users like that sort of display, and here with the Gigabyte X99-Ultra Gaming, you don't need a third-party tool for such functionality. You will also find the standard KillerNIC control panel. In the past, we've delved into how to replace said software with some standard QUALCOMM stuff on our forums (thanks to an avid reader), and that seems to eliminate the issues some users have qualms about when it comes to KillerNIC LAN controllers. It might be nice to see some OEMs do something similar, but that's not the case yet, so you'll have to do some software tweaking if the KillerNIC software is not to your liking.