Test Setup and Procedures
First off, here’s the rig I’ll be using to test out this motherboard:
| Processor | Intel Core i7 2600K (LGA1155) |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte Z68X-UD3-B3 |
| Ram | G.Skill Ripjaws X 2133MHz 2x2gb kit |
| Graphics Card | Sapphire Radeon HD 5830 |
| Hard Drive | Western Digital Blue 500Gb SATA |
| Optical Drive | LG x24 DVD-RW Re-writer SATA |
| CPU Cooler | Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme (TRUE) |
| Power Supply | Silverstone Strider 1000w |
| Chassis | InWin Ironclad Full Tower |
| Network | Onboard Gigabit Ethernet |
| Monitor | 22″ HP w2207h (1680×1050) |
| OS | Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit |
For performance testing, I’ll be using the following benchmarks and test programs:
| Program Name |
Use |
| CPUID CPUz | CPU, RAM, and Motherboard speeds and information |
| Lavalys AIDA64 | Detailed motherboard and RAM information |
| 3dMark Vantage | CPU and GPU benchmark |
| PCMark05 | Whole-system benchmark |
| Cinebench 11.5 | CPU benchmark |
| MaxxMem | Memory benchmark |
For comparison purposes I’ll be using my Gigabyte P67a-UD4-B3, it is a higher end motherboard aimed at a slightly different market, and uses a different slightly older chipset. We’ll see if this Z68X-UD3-B3 can keep up with it’s more expensive older brother!
The first round of testing was done at 100% stock speeds, I loaded “Optimized Defaults” in the BIOS and selected the memory’s XMP profile, everything else was left untouched.
The results are a slightly over spec baseclock of 100.3mhz (100.0 is the official rating). Realistically speaking this has very little effect, most manufacturers do it to ensure that users won’t buy a 3.4GHz CPU and discover it’s running under it’s spec speed. Intel’s Turbo, EIST, and C1E technologies were enabled, so under load the CPU automatically overclocks itself based on the number of cores being used, and underclocks itself down to 1.6GHz if the CPU isn’t being utilized much to save power. For the CPUz screenshot of the CPU speed I placed a 100% load across all four cores.
CPUz CPU and Motherboard Tabs
Not really much to see here, it’s a standard i7 2600K. Only thing of note is that bus speed being 100.3, that ensures the CPU is at or over it’s rated speed. Due to a bug in CPUz the “Core Voltage” box actually lists vccio/vtt.
This page is somewhat more interesting, it lists the chipset, revision, southbridge (PCH), revision, plus the IO chip (where you get your temp and voltage readings and such), as well as the bios version and data.
Lastly, it lists the interface the GPU is using, as well as the current PCIe lanes and maximum supported lanes. It’s worth checking this page when you first build/buy a computer to make sure that your GPU is getting as much bandwidth as possible.
Now, onward to the benchmarks!
