Test Setup and Procedures
First off, here’s the rig I’ll be using to test out this motherboard:
| Processor | Intel i7 3770K |
| Motherboard |
Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H |
| Ram | 8gb Corsair Dominator GTX8 |
| Graphics Card | Gigabyte Radeon 7970 |
| Hard Drive | Adata 120GB Pyro SSD |
| Optical Drive | Samsung 8X DVD-RW |
| CPU Cooler | Water Loop |
| Power Supply | Antec 1200w |
| Chassis | Navig Benching Station |
| Network | Asus wireless |
| Monitor | 24″ Dell 2407FP |
| OS | Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit |
For performance testing, I’ll be using the following benchmarks and test programs:
| Program Name |
Use |
| Superpi | Single-threaded benchmark |
| Wprime 1024m | Multi-threaded CPU benchmark |
| 3Dmark Vantage | Only CPU test heavily threaded |
| Cinebench 11.5 | CPU benchmark, heavily threaded |
| MaxxMem | Memory benchmark |
The first round of testing was done at 100% stock speeds, I loaded “Optimized Defaults” in the BIOS and set the memory to 1866mhz with 9–9-9 timings, everything else was left untouched aside from disabled sound and NIC.
CPUz CPU and Motherboard Tabs
Booting in without changing anything you get a healthy dose of turbo boost. Almost 4ghz out of the box is nice.
Testing for this board was done with the latest bios at the time of writing, F9.
Lastly are the settings for the memory that will be used in this review.
Now, onward to the benchmarks!
