Z97 Motherboard Round Up: EVGA, MSI, Gigabyte
Test Setup and PCMark 7
Test System Configuration Notes: When configuring our test systems for this article, we first entered their respective system BIOSes and set each board to its "Optimized" or "High performance Defaults". We then saved the settings, re-entered the BIOS and ensured the memory speed to DDR3-1600, or DDR3-1333 on the Intel systems and DDR3-1866 on the AMD systems (their maximum, officially supported speeds).
The solid state drives in the test systems were then formatted, and Windows 7 Ultimate x64 was installed. When the Windows installation was complete, we fully updated the OS, and installed the drivers necessary for our components. Auto-Updating and Windows Defender were then disabled and we installed all of our benchmarking software, performed a disk clean-up, cleared any prefetch and temp data, and ran the tests.
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| System 1: Intel Core i7-4770K (3.5GHz - Quad-Core) Asus Z87-Deluxe Z87 Express Chipset) GA-Z97X-Gaming G1 GA-Z97X-SOC Force GA-Z97X-UD5H EVGA Z97 Classified MSI Z97 Gaming 7 2x4GB G.SKILL DDR3-1866 (@ 1600MHz) GeForce GTX 280 On-Board Ethernet On-board Audio OCZ Vertex 3 MaxIOPS Windows 7 x64 |
System 2: Intel Core i7-3770K (3.5GHz - Quad-Core) MSI Z77A-GD65 (Z77 Express Chipset) 2x4GB G.SKILL DDR3-1866 (@ 1600MHz) GeForce GTX 280 On-Board Ethernet On-board Audio OCZ Vertex 3 MaxIOPS Windows 7 x64 |
System 3: Cntel Core i7-3690X (3.33GHz - Hex-Core) Intel Core i7-3820 (3.6GHz - Quad-Core) Asus P9X79 Deluxe (X79 Express Chipset) 4x4GB G.SKILL DDR3-1866 (@ 1600MHz) GeForce GTX 280 On-Board Ethernet On-board Audio OCZ Vertex 3 MaxIOPS Windows 7 x64 |
System 4: AMD FX 8350 (4GHz Eight-Core) Asus CrossHair V Formula (AMD 990FX Chipset) 2x4GB G.SKILL DDR3-1866 (@ 1866MHz) GeForce GTX 280 On-Board Ethernet On-board Audio OCZ Vertex 3 MaxIOPS Windows 7 x64 |
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The PCMark test is a collection of workloads that measure system performance during typical desktop usage. This is the most important test since it returns the official PCMark score for the system
Storage
- Windows Defender
- Importing pictures
- Gaming
Video Playback and transcoding
Graphics
- DirectX 9
Image manipulation
Web browsing and decryptingThe Entertainment test is a collection of workloads that measure system performance in entertainment scenarios using mostly application workloads. Individual tests include recording, viewing, streaming and transcoding TV shows and movies, importing, organizing and browsing new music and several gaming related workloads. If the target system is not capable of running DirectX 10 workloads then those tests are skipped. At the end of the benchmark run the system is given an Entertainment test score.
The Creativity test contains a collection of workloads to measure the system performance in typical creativity scenarios. Individual tests include viewing, editing, transcoding and storing photos and videos. At the end of the benchmark run the system is given a Creativity test score.
The Productivity test is a collection of workloads that measure system performance in typical productivity scenarios. Individual workloads include loading web pages and using home office applications. At the end of the benchmark run the system is given a Productivity test score.
There was a small (about 1%) variance between all of the Z97-based motherboards we tested in PCMark, which is to say they performed similarly. The Z97 boards also performed similarly to the Z87, though technically all of the Z97s did come out slightly ahead.
