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 | ECS Z97-Machine ASUS Maximus VII Formula MSI Z97 XPower GIGABYTE Z97X-Gaming G1-WIFI-BK ASUS Maximus VI Formula |
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 | Intel 730 240GB SSD Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD Intel 520 240GB 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 includes an Intel Core i7-4770K CPU, 16GB of DDR3-1866 memory, an NVIDIA GTX 570 1.25GB video card or an ASUS Poseidon GTX 780 3GB video card, and a Samsung 840 EVO 250GB or an Intel 520 or 730 240GB SSD drive. The differing video cards and SSDs exhibited similar performance across all benchmarks run, having negligible effects on the results numbers reported. 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
So if the board had a better
So if the board had a better location of the CMOS battery it would received a gold award? lol.
Anyway, I see the lack of SATA express and having only 4 sata ports very fitting for most value-minded buyers like me. Having an M.2 SSD is like a luxury compared to the cheaper 2.5″ SSDs
That baseclock issue may be remedied by a simple BIOS fix if the VRM hardware is up to par to similar performance boards.
Anyway, good write-up!
did you get m.2 ssd to boot? how?
One of the questions I always
One of the questions I always wait to see an answer for, is that you and the Manufactures, all talk about USB Ports on the Main Boards, But unless I miss it, it would great to know if the area single Chip per bank or a Chip per port, meaning if like this one, it has 4 USB 3.0 ports on the back, If I connect 4 USB 3.0 Drives, will I be getting the theoretical 5Gb/s on each port? I always made you when I buy 3.0 expansion card, the if it had 4 ports the total bandwidth was 20Gb/s. (there are very few out there)
Or I’m I to assume there best scenario for every board?, that “word” should I be looking for? Channels? Or should Still should be buying add-on cards?
If not, is there a Board out there that each port is a separate “channel”?
On the board, all USB 3.0
On the board, all USB 3.0 ports are controlled by the Z97 chipset and feed into a single root hub. According to the Intel spec, the Z97 USB 3.0 controller sits on the PCIe bus with a maximum bandwidth of 5 Gbps (which is equivalent to a single PCIe lane – x1). Since all ports go through a single hub, all connected devices share the 5 Gbps available bandwidth.
In my experience, the integrated Intel chipset control USB 3.0 ports always have better performance than those controlled via a 3rd party controller embedded in the board. This is most likely because the 3rd part controller has to share the PCIe bus and bandwidth with other devices/ports in the system.
If you went with a PCIe card for USB 3.0, the card would be limited by the bandwidth it is granted by the PCIe slot, which would most like also be x1 or 5Gbps. So if you added a USB 3.0 PCIe controller card, you would get another 5Gbps, shared between the ports on the card.
Hope that helps…
[quote]Hope that
[quote]Hope that helps…[/quote]
It helps me anyway! Thanks. Also appreciate all the photos; very useful.
Thanks for your response, I
Thanks for your response, I like to hear back from you after you view this link from the USB 3.0 Card I usually get and refer to on my comments. This are 4 dedicated and claim a total of 20 Gbps (4 x 5)
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_RocketU1144C.htm
I’m disappointed to find out the USB ports on most Motherboards are shared (I seen some with 2 Controllers, that may give me 2 channels, guess). I happy to report, that with the Highpoint above card, I get close to 80% of the USB 3.0 speed when using 3 USB drives at the same time (comparing it so a single drive in use on the same card), sadly I don’t have an new Motherboards with 3.0 ports yet to compare.
One of the biggest problem that this card solves for me, is that I often copy data between external drives and with this card I get much better performance in that scenario (I compared it to copying the date from one drive to the computer and then back out to the other drive, never mind the time to takes to do that).
Thanks again, please let me know your thoughts on the Highpoint cards.
Thanks
Thanks