Gigabyte Z97-HD3 Intel Z97 Motherboard

UEFI BIOS:

The Gigabyte GA-Z97-HD3 has another feature-rich, nicely laid out AMI UEFI BIOS with Gigabyte's custom interface. From there are all of the standard overclocking and performance tweaking features expected. The motherboard supports the DualBIOS capability and there's the built-in Q-Flash for easily flashing the motherboard BIOS without having to boot into Windows or making a MS-DOS boot disk.

Linux Compatibility:

Overall, when using Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and other updated Linux distributions with a modern kernel, there shouldn't be any major compatibility issues with the Gigabyte Z97-HD3 or other motherboards using the new Intel Z97 Express chipset. Everything has been working out well in my tests for the two weeks so far of using the motherboard. There's only the usual caveat to report is that with the latest Linux kernel and LM_Sensors that the motherboard's hardware sensors go undetected.

Linux Performance:

For those curious about the GA-Z97-HD3 performance under Ubuntu 14.04 Linux, I uploaded some results comparing the Gigabyte Z97-HD3 to the ECS Z87H3-A2X EXTREME motherboard with the previous-generation Intel Z87 chipset. All testing was done with an Intel Core i7 4770K CPU, 16GB RAM, 120GB Samsung 840 Series SSD, and was running Ubuntu 14.04 with the Linux 3.15 kernel.

These performance results were done using the Phoronix Test Suite and can be found on OpenBenchmarking.org via 1405248-KH-INTELHASW44. These results indicate roughly the same performance but in a few areas are some minor speed-ups with this new Intel Z97 Express motherboard.

Conclusion:

Overall, if you're looking for a Linux-friendly motherboard that has all core functionality for Intel Z97 motherboards while not costing too much (just over $100 USD), the Gigabyte Z97-HD3 is a very worthwhile contender. In the coming days and weeks will be more Linux reviews of other Intel Z97 motherboards.