Testing Configuration and Benchmarks Used

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)
Motherboards EVGA Z97 Classified
GIGABYTE Z97X-Gaming G1-WIFI-BK
MSI Z97 Gaming 7
ASUS Z97-Deluxe
MSI Z87 XPower
Memory Stock Testing
Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 modules
(1600MHz, 9-10-9-27-1T, 1.525V)

Z97 Overclock Testing
Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-2400 modules
(2400MHz, 11-13-13-31-1T, 1.65V)
Hard Drive Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA III HD
Sound Card On-board sound
Video Card NVIDIA GTX 570 1.25GB
ASUS Poseidon GTX 780 3GB
CPU Cooling Corsair Hydro Series™ H100i Extreme Performance CPU Cooler
Video Drivers NVIDIA 335.23
Power Supply Corsair HX750
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 NVIDIA GTX 570 1.25GB video card, and a Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD drive. For the Z97-based board testing, an ASUS Poseidon GTX 780 3GB video card was used for testing – both it and the GTX 570 had no effect on the benchmark tests run. Using the selected components gives us the ability to demonstrate the motherboard's capabilities rather than that of the components themselves.

Benchmark Tests used for evaluation:

  • SoftPerfect Research NetWorx Speed Test
  • LanBench v1.1.0
  • ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.47
  • SiSoft Sandra 2012
  • LinX Intel Linpack Benchmark v0.6.4
  • Maxon Cinebench 11.5
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