Test Setup and Procedures
First off, here’s the rig I’ll be using to test out this motherboard:
| Processor | Intel i7 4770K |
| Motherboard |
Gigabyte Z87X-UD4H |
| Ram | 8gb Patriot Viper 2400 MHZ |
| Graphics Card | Gigabyte HD 7790 |
| Hard Drive | Seagate 120GB SATA HD |
| Optical Drive | Samsung 8X DVD-RW |
| CPU Cooler | Thermaltake NiC5 Untouchable |
| Power Supply | Corsair CX 600w |
| Chassis | N/A |
| Network | N/A |
| Monitor | 22″ LG |
| OS | Windows 7 Professional 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 sake of consistency, and to get an accurate picture of how much better this board is from the previous one, we’ll be using similar settings. This board actually underclocks the BCLK by about .29 volts, so I’ve made proper adjustments to let the chip match up to our standards.
CPUz CPU and Motherboard Tabs
Something I thought was weird: the Haswell actually downclocks the BCLK by about .20 mhz. After checking the manual I found out that’s normal, but I’ve made proper adjustments to make sure it meets our standards.
Now, onward to the benchmarks!
3Dmark Vantage
Most of you are probably familiar with Vantage at this point. Many other reviewers use it on a general basis, but avid overclockers like to post high scores with high clock speeds, and that’s pretty much what we want, so let’s see how this chip does at a steady 4.0 ghz.
Look at that! We broke the 30,000 mark and we’re just getting started.
MaxxMem
MaxxMem is just what it sounds like: a tool for testing the quality and stability of RAM.
At 2400mhz we can already see a good amount of potential, but at higher speeds we’ll surely beat that.
Cinebench 11.5
Cinebench 11.5 essentially tests the CPU’s ability to render a pre-packaged 3D “image” much like you’d do with something like Blender, so it’s a decent metric for those of you who dabble in modeling.
And again we’re off to a good start gaining almost a whole entire point above the server-grade Opteron CPU.
Wprime
Ah Wprime. If you’ve done any overclocking then you know what this entails. Heat, patience, and stress. So you can think of it as unpaid overtime for your CPU.
The stability test (1024M) wasn’t quite as good as I hoped for, but the speed test (32M) pretty much gave me what I wanted.
Superpi
This benchmark tests single-threaded performance by counting iterations of pi.
Now that we’ve gotten the preliminaries out of the way, let’s get to the part we know you’ve been waiting for.
