ASUS Z87 ROG Motherboard Roundup: Enter Maximus VI

by Seth Colaner — Wednesday, October 02, 2013, 11:29 AM EDT

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Low-Res: Gaming Tests

For our next set of tests, we moved on to some in-game benchmarking with Crysis (DirectX) and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars (OpenGL). When testing processors with Crysis or ET:QW, we drop the resolution to 1024x768, and reduce all of the in-game graphical options to their minimum values to isolate CPU and memory performance as much as possible. However, the in-game effects, which control the level of detail for the games' physics engines and particle systems, are left at their maximum values, since these actually place some load on the CPU rather than GPU.

Low-Resolution Gaming: Crysis and ET: Quake Wars

Taking the GPU out of the Equation

The ASUS motherboards and the Gigabyte Z87X-UD4H posted scores within a few FPS of one another, but the G1.Sniper 5 and Z87X-OC Force took a nap on these tests. In Crysis, the difference is stark, as the G1.Sniper 5 came in about 5 FPS below the lead group, while the Z87X-OC Force was another few FPS below that. The gap isn't as pronounced in ET:QW, but the lower scores on two of Gigabyte's more high-end boards is odd.

Still, all of these motherboards are hitting no less than 174.01 FPS in Crysis and 291.32 in ET:QW with our test system components, which is superb performance all the way around.