Super frustrated with Gigabyte Z270X Gaming K7

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I've been trying to do some OCing on my new 7700k, but even before I do OCing, I was just trying to understand how my board responds to LLC modes and the how the different vcore modes work, and through it all I've found this board to be absolutely frustrating:

1. I'm struggling to understand DVID+Normal mode on Gigabyte's boards. It's not well documented and even our favorite friends at Hard call Gigabyte's Vcore adjustments totally inadequate. For instance, Asus' website has tons of guides including forum posts, blog posts, and videos, explaining Offset Mode, Adaptive Mode. Not to mention the popularity of Asus boards means that there's tons of support out there. Everyone talks about Adaptive mode, but Gigabyte doesn't seem to have anything like that.
   
   
2. In trying to understand LLC I went and did some tests and uncovered 2 potential bugs along the way. It makes Normal+DVID mode pretty much unusable unless you want to suffer from massive Vdroop or you want to risk the baseline voltage changing on you because sometimes settings don't stick after saving and rebooting. It's funny because I saw other posts on forums talking about settings not sticking until a full power off and I laughed thinking there's no way that can happen until it happened to me.

I'm not a professional overclocker, but I've done my fair share (i7 930, Athlon 64 on the infamous DFI NF4 Ultra-D board) that I should be able to handle this. Is it just me doing things wrong or not being patient enough or are Gigabyte boards just that problematic? On one hand I'd be willing to wait for BIOS updates, but at the same time is it right for me to have to constantly watch forums after I buy a new system until things smoothen out? This is a fun hobby but at the same time I'm getting older and I have less and less of a desire to have a half-working system plagued with issues.

Would love some advice here from some more experienced builders. The more I read, the more I'm on the verge of just buying an ASUS board and sending this one back.

 

[vailr]

Did you try using any of the official Gigabyte motherboard overclocking utilities?
Latest bios: F5a
http://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-Z270X-Gaming-K7-rev-10#support-dl

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Did you try using any of the official Gigabyte motherboard overclocking utilities?
Latest bios: F5a
http://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-Z270X-Gaming-K7-rev-10#support-dl

I have Easy Tune installed but I've never been a fan of Windows Motherboard apps, and I'm pretty sure most overclockers feel that way. It doesn't look like things have changed much for the last 10 years honestly. These apps have been around but the apps themselves are unreliable or a handful of settings are missing.

I do remember using it before though for doing 20 min benches at different settings while I was at work. This was during my last build though and being able to RDP home and change some settings lets you test a solid set of clock speed/vcore combinations so you have more data.

With that said the latest F5a bios just came out yesterday and it looks to be a beta. Also the note does say you can't revert to older BIOSes? I do understand sometimes bleeding edge betas do work fine, but I'm also the type to say "As a product owner do I really have to be signing up for betas to get a working product?" My preference would be to wait for a final F5 version before jumping.

 

[vailr]

Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU)?
Question: can the backup bios still be manually selected (via Ctl-F10 at boot-up)?
My Gigabyte Z170 board has lost that ability after updating to the F20 KBL bios.