GA-Q77M-D2H not being shipped to UK!?

[stonecircle]

I'm in the UK and would like to buy this motherboard.  Just been messaged by Gigabyte that it isn't being shipped to the UK.  Does anyone know why?

In my opinion the Q77 is Intel's most fully featured Ivy Bridge chipset.  Anyone who wants to run any kind of high-availability service (web, ftp, gaming, svn, etc) will benefit from vPro's out-of-band remote control (AMT), which gives you remote manageability at the BIOS level.  You can take control of a blue-screened machine and deal with the situation, PXE boot, change BIOS settings from anywhere with an internet connection, etc.  There's a reassurance in knowing that as long as you have an internet connection, your machine will always be manageable no matter where you are.  

The only omission vs Z77 is that PCI Express runs at 4x vs 8x in Z77 when AMD CrossFireX / NVIDIA SLI is used.  But the real world difference in SLI graphics performance is likely to be minimal, and if your graphics requirements are that great, it's better to buy a beefy one-card solution like the GeForce 690 anyway which both Z77 and Q77 will run at 16x.  SLI at 4x vs 8x certainly isn't worth the cost of losing vPro.

MB manufacturers are missing a trick by not emphasising the value proposition of Q77 and not having a broader range of Q77 boards.  Gigabyte have only one Q77 board with poor worldwide availability vs thirteen (!) Z77 boards.  Gigabyte is certainly losing my custom by not offering the GA-Q77M-D2H to the UK market.

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Bren

[Dark Mantis]

Hi

Yes it would seem to be the case. I agree that there must be a market out there for these boards and fail to understand why Gigabyte are not prepared to import them for the UK home market. If they are being produced anyway it wouldn't be difficult to bring a small number in to sell here.

[stonecircle]

I've heard from Gigabyte that this board is only being shipped to the US and Asia.  Asus, Intel and even ASRock are shipping their Q77 boards to Europe.  This is bad PR from Gigabyte, by this action it appears a minority player in the motherboard market.  I like Gigabyte boards, but they've made it difficult to be brand loyal.

Also if any product designers read these forums, in future please can we have dual bios chips on "professional" class motherboards like the GA-Q77M-D2H.  We value reliability.  I've bricked a couple of Asus boards during bios upgrades, don't want that experience again.