Testing Configuration and Benchmarks Used

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To verify that the motherboard works as advertised, the board was run through our standard benchmark suite. In most cases, the results are presented for the motherboard under review as well as a different similar-class motherboard for performance comparison purposes. The benchmark tests used should give you a good understanding of the board’s capabilities for both office and gaming use so that you, the reader, can make a more informed purchasing decision.

Test System Setup

CPU

 Intel Core i7-4770K
(3.5GHz, 35 x 100MHz Base Clock)

Intel Core i5-3570K
(3.4GHz, 34 x 100MHz Base Clock)

Motherboards

 MSI Z87-GD65 Gaming
ASUS Maximus VI Extreme
MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming

Memory

 Intel Z87 Testing:
Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 modules
(1600MHz, 9-10-9-27-1T)

Intel Z77 Testing:
G.SKILL 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-2133 modules
(1600MHz, 11-11-11-30-1T)

Hard Drive

 Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA III HD

Sound Card

 Onboard sound

Video Card

 AMD Radeon HD 5870 1GB

CPU Cooling

 Laing DDC pump with EK-DDC X-TOP Rev 2 Plexi
Swiftech MCR320-QP Radiator
Swiftech Apogee HD water block

Video Drivers

 AMD ATI Catalyst 13.1

Power Supply

 Corsair 650w

Operating System

 Windows 7 Ultimate x64

Test Setup Explanation

The 64-bit Windows 7 based test bench used for Intel Z87 LGA1150 board testing includes an Intel Core i7-4770K CPU, 16GB of DDR3-1866 memory, an AMD Radeon 5870 1GB video card, and a Western Digital Black 1TB SATA hard drive. Using the selected components gives us the ability to demonstrate the motherboard’s capabilities rather than that of the components themselves.

The 64-bit Windows 7 based test bench used for Intel Z77 LGA1155 board testing includes an Intel Core i5-3570K CPU, 8GB of DDR3-2133 memory, an AMD Radeon 5870 1GB video card, and a Western Digital Black 1TB SATA hard drive. Using the selected components gives us the ability to demonstrate the motherboard’s capabilities rather than that of the components themselves. It was decided that the components used for the Intell Z77 testing originally were close enough for a valid comparison to the Intel Z87 platform performance.

Benchmark Tests used for evaluation:

  • SiSoft Sandra 2012
  • LinX Intel Linpack Benchmark v0.6.4
  • Handbrake video transcoder v0.9.8
  • Maxon Cinebench 11.5
  • FutureMark PCMark 7
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