Asus Sabertooth Z77 Motherboard Review (with OC GTX680)

The ASUS UEFI BIOS is our favourite, especially when it comes to overclocking. We hope that the Sabertooth Z77 will be as good as other ASUS motherboards we have tested in recent months.

The main home page shows the processor installed and the clock speed, in this case a 2600k @ 3.4ghz. The motherboard didn't pick up the correct 1,600mhz speed from the DDR3 memory, instead configuring the speed to 1,333mhz. This was easily rectified however.

The advanced panel offers control over various CPU and SATA and network settings. The monitor panel is self explanatory and the first place we normally check immediately after building a system.

The boot menu controls full screen logo display and hard/optical drive priority. The tool menu is used to flash to a new revision of the bios and to save and load overclocking configurations.

The board in default mode, showing 9-9-9-24 1T timings via the 1,600mhz memory. We wanted to try the ‘OC Tuner' option in this section of the bios which ‘automatically overclocks' the board.

The Z77 motherboard rebooted several times and we were presented with the automatic overclock settings above. The Sabertooth board overclocked the 2600k to 4,429mhz via a 43×103 frequency. The voltage was not increased, however the board automatically tweaked the current capability to 140%.

The 2600k we are using today will run at 4.8ghz with only 1.42 volts so we wanted to manually push the Sabertooth Z77 board further.

We adjusted the board to a 48 x 100 frequency and increased the core voltage to 1.42. The system wasn't 100% stable however, so we moved into the DIGI+ Power control section of the bios.

I changed the Load Line calibration from ‘auto' to ‘high', which improves the Vdroop for added stability. I also changed the CPU Power Duty Control to ‘extreme'.

Above, CPU validation at 4.8ghz. This processor can run at 5ghz, but it would need more voltage and therefore a more powerful cooling solution. Very good results however, especially when paired with the modest £20 Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 air cooler.

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