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-UD4H |
| Ram | 8gb Patriot Viper |
| Graphics Card | Asus GTX 580 Matrix |
| 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:
| ProgramName |
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 |
For the first round of testing was done at 4ghz, since different board makers decide to overclock the baseclock slightly in one direction or the other. We also set the memory to 1866mhz with 9-11-9 timings, everything else was left untouched aside from disabled sound and NIC.
CPUz CPU and Motherboard Tabs
Since boards like to overclock the baseclock slightly we set the board to 4ghz in the bios. Well, it looks like Gigabyte ever so slightly raises the bclk over the stock 100mhz.
Lastly are the settings for the memory that will be used in this review.
Now, onward to the benchmarks!
3Dmark Vantage
While 3Dmark Vantage is generally seen as a benchmark for video cards, it can also be used in order to determine processor performance by running the CPU tests only. It gives you a great idea of performance since Vantage takes advantage of extra processor cores and hyper threading.
Over 28000 is always a good start with a slight overclock.
MaxxMem
MaxxMem is a memory benchmark, it is primarily influenced by memory speed and timings and secondarily by cache size and speed.
Memory performance is quite good for running at stock speeds. Things should improve when cpu frequency is raised.
Cinebench 11.5
Cinebench 11.5 is a CPU benchmark, it doesn’t care much about memory speed, it doesn’t care all that much about cache size or speed, it case about getting data into the CPU and calculating it. Hence it is a good test of how efficient a motherboard is at doing just that: Crunching data.
Being able to top a 12-core processor is quite a feat for a quad-core chip.
Wprime
This benchmark is a great indicator of processor performance. It can be set to any amount of threads so multiple cores and hyperthreading helps huge amounts in Wprime. Clock speeds are also a great indicator for improvements in Wprime.
Times are not bad at all for a quad-core chip, they are in line with previous boards tested.
Superpi
This benchmark tests single-threaded performance by counting iterations of pi.
Lets turn things up a notch and raise the frequencies a bit.
