BIOS Walkthrough

Like previous boards before it, the Gigabyte Z77X-UP7 WiFi gets Gigabyte's new UEFI BIOS, which I've covered several times. The layout here is the same with all the basic options, and even the 3D preview has ben carried over from another board, and, no, it doesn't match the Z77X-UP7.


Going from tab to tab, I actually couldn't find much about the BIOS itself that I have not said before, other than that its sub-menus are slightly better optimized.


I have to commend Gigabyte for doing a good job of pushing all the necessary options to the forefront. I had no issues at all with this BIOS. In fact, most uEFI BIOSes are pretty good in that regard.


Voltages, clocks, and memory settings all get their own sections, which make finding the option you need for clocking straight forward. There are a ton of options here, including individual settings for different VRM sections.


Even its monitoring and fan options are diverse, although the fan settings are grouped into one section for the CPU fan header and another two sections for the other fan headers.


Some BIOS versions have overclocking specific options like the "legacy Benchmark Enhancement" option shown in the first image above. I was very glad to find these options since pushing the limits of what is possible is what this board is about.


All the onboard stuff for external devices is part of the same layout, making navigation pretty straight forward. I really like Gigabyte's uEFI in its current state.

I will mention, since this is a board all about tweaking when it comes to the BIOS, that not all BIOSes are ready to rock with every component, more specifically memory. As it stands at the time of writing, you need certain versions of the BIOS on your board for certain DIMMs, and trying to figure out which BIOS to run with high-end sticks is a complicated mess, but I was, although I had some issues, able to find one that suits my needs. This compatibility issue is the one area that I feel could use some improvement, but I know that Gigabyte is hard at work – right now – in an attempt to make things better.