Asus Sabertooth Z77 Motherboard Review (with OC GTX680)

1. Introduction2. Asus Sabretooth Z77 Motherboard3. Asus Sabretooth Z77 Motherboard (Super High Res Gallery)4. Bios and Overclocking5. Testing Methodology6. Synthetic: PCMark 77. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage8. Synthetic: 3DMark 119. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark10. Synthetic: HQV Benchmark 2.011. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra 201112. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit13. Synthetic: SSD Performance14. Real World: 3D Rendering15. Real World: Media Encoding16. Real World: HandBrake 9.517. Gaming: F1 201118. Gaming: Far Cry 219. Gaming: Alan Wake20. Gaming: Battlefield 321. Gaming: Total War Shogun 222. Closing Thoughts23. View All Pages

Intel have a busy month in April, launching their 3rd generation processors within a couple of weeks time. Today however they release their much awaited Z77 platform, with a raft of motherboards hitting the market from all their partners. Under NDA we have to wait until a later date to publish next generation Core i5/i7 results, so today we will take a look at one of the many boards we have in our labs when paired up with a Core i7 2600k.

The Asus Sabretooth Z77 looks to be another quality product from ASUS and we will overclock it to the limit and pair it up with an overclocked Asus GTX680.

This hasn't been the smoothest product launch for Intel as their Z77 NDA has been breached by some publications clamoring for hits and even some retailers. This means that performance results, detailed photographs and descriptions are already in the wild and have been for many weeks. On Friday for instance many of the UK retail stores such as Scan, Aria and Overclockers decided to launch Z77 sales.

The Asus Sabertooth Z77 motherboard supports Quad SLI and Quad Crossfire and uses an interesting ‘Thermal Armor' cover to enhance cooling and improve reliability under stressful conditions. The Sabertooth Z77 also features ASUS exclusive pioneering Dual Intelligent Processors 3 with SMART DIGI+ Power Control where 2 dedicated chips, the TPU and EPU provide an auto overclock and save energy through optimized power management, significantly boosting performance.

Overview:

Asus Exclusive Innovations:

• SMART DIGI+ Power Control
• Fan Xpert+
• Network iControl
• USB BIOS Flashback
• USB 3.0 Boost
• AI Suite II

Innovations:

• Quad GPU AMD CrossfireX – a flawless architecture accommodating the power of up to four graphics cards
• LudicLogix Virtu MVP – boots responsiveness, improves gaming frame rates by 30-70% and sharpens visual quality

The Sabertooth Z77 motherboard arrives in a dramatically designed board, which is very eyecatching.

The box is a gatefold design and opens up to reveal a list of key selling points arranged vertically. ‘Thermal Armor', ‘Thermal Radar' and ‘Dust Defender' are mentioned and we will discuss each, shortly.

The bundle we received included an early driver disc, before the retail version reaches retailers. ASUS include SATA cables (2xSATA 6 and 2xSATA 3), SLI cable, an I/O backplate, well written user manual, several accessory fans, slot ‘dust' covers (for memory and PCI slots). They also include screws, ‘dust covers' and an adhesive sponge for a 35mm fan.

The Asus Sabertooth Z77 motherboard ships with a protective cover which is called ‘Thermal Armor'. Above, we highlight pictures with this cover both on, and off. The board uses ‘Military standard' TUF Components. More companies, such as MSI are promoting ‘Military grade' components in their literature.

It covers the entire motherboard and can incorporate fans (included) for enhanced airflow and cooling. Asus claim that the PCB convection holes provide underside circulation for even greater heat mitigation, denying temperatures room to build up.

There are several areas on this ‘Thermal Armor' which can be removed and fans attached. ASUS supply two small fans for mounting areas. Above you can see a cover removed, just above the first PCIE slot.

Asus claim to be using a system called ‘Thermal Radar' which is a temperature monitoring algorithm analysing parts of the board for excessive heat. The fans will then kick in, lowering temperatures for improved system stability. ‘Fan Overtime' keeps the fans working in critical minutes after shutdown to extend component lifespan. They say that temperatures drop by 7c in just ten minutes after the computer is turned off. ‘New Fan Off' is a switch that disables fans if temperatures drop below a manually or automatically configured level.

I am not a big fan of small fans as they can generate a lot of noise. These fans aren't too loud, but they can add noise to the overall system build. We didn't use them during the review at all. Even when overclocking just shy of 5 GHZ.

When we move past all these new ‘buzzwords' that ASUS are determined to implement, we can see that the board is actually well designed and follows a subdued cream and brown colour scheme which looks great. They are using black heatsinks close to the CPU socket to help cool the VRM's.

Above, some images of the Z77 motherboard with an Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 installed. This is one of my favourite coolers for review systems as it can handle relatively high overclocks and is a pinch to ‘speed install' in less than a minute. The bonus is that it only costs £20 from Amazon. We found that the plastic fan shroud on the cooler was very close to the armor shell on the board, but it did fit.

The board includes 4 DIMM slots, coloured dark brown and cream to indicate Channel A and Channel B. The Sabertooth Z77 is a dual channel board and can support up to 32GB of system memory at 1066mhz/1333mhz/1600mhz/1866mhz speeds. This has to be unbuffered, non ECC DDR3 memory. It has full support for Intel's Extreme Memory Profile (XMP). Asus include the excellent ‘MEM OK' button on the board to ensure it will post, overriding potential memory timing issues.

There are eight SATA connectors on the board. The white connectors on the left (picture above) are controlled by the ASMedia chip and are rated to 6Gb/s. The four black connectors in the middle are controlled by the Intel Z77 chipset and are rated to 3 Gb/s. The two brown SATA ports on the far right are also controlled by the Z77 chipset, however they are rated to 6Gb/s. The green connector beside these is the USB 3.0 header for front panel I/O.

Along the bottom of the board are three USB headers, next to some well positioned 4 pin fan headers (ideal for case fans on the side panel). The system panel connector is placed bottom right of the board.

The Sabertooth Z77 has two PCI Express 3.0 capable slots which operate at x16 or x8/x8 depending on the configuration. There is also a single PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot at the bottom and three PCI Express 2.0 x1 slots. The PCIe 2.0 x16 slot shares bandwidth with PCIe 2.0 x1_1 slot, PCIe 2.0 x1_2 slot and PCIe 2.0 x1_3 slot.

The back I/O panel supports:

• 1x DisplayPort
• 1x HDMI Port
• 1x Optical S/PDIF Output
• 1x USB BIOS Flashback Button
• 2x eSATA 6Gb/s ports
• 1x LAN (RJ-45) port
• 4 x USB 3.0/2,0 ports (blue, 1 supports USB BIOS Flashback)
• 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
• 8 channel audio I/O ports.

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.

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.

To make the review more interesting today we are testing the system in a highly overclocked state. A large portion of the potential audience will be wanting the same thing.

The 2600K is overclocked to 4.8ghz and the ASUS GTX680 graphics card is overclocked to 1,200mhz core and 1,701 memory (6.8 Gbps effective).

Above, the final result from the Windows Experience index. These are all rated out of a maximum of 7.9 points.

Main Test System:

Processor: Intel Core i7 2600K @ 4.8ghz
Motherboard: Asus Sabertooth Z77

Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 13
Memory: 8GB ADATA 1,600mhz 9-9-9-24 1T
Graphics Card: ASUS GTX 680

Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Cooler Master Cosmos 2
Monitors: Dell U3011, 3x Ilyama ProLite E2472HDD
Boot Drive: Kingston SSDNow V+200 90GB
Storage Drive: Patriot 240GB Wildfire

Comparison Systems:

Processor: Intel Core i7 2600K @ 4.43ghz (auto overclock setting).
Motherboard: Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3
Cooler: Noctua D14
Memory: 8GB Kingston HyperX 2,400mhz DDR3 (4x2gb) @ 2200mhz
Graphics Card: AMD HD7870
Power Supply: PC Power & Cooling 600W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Cooler Master Cosmos 2
Boot Drive: Patriot 240GB Wildfire

Processor: Intel Core i7 3930K
Motherboard: Asus P9X79 WS WorkStation
Cooler: Corsair H100
Memory: 8GB Corsair Dominator GT8 2400mhz memory
Graphics Card: AMD HD7770 CrossfireX
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Cooler Master Cosmos 2
Boot Drive: Crucial C300 128GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Patriot 240GB Pyro SE

Intel i7 3960X EE
Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV Extreme
Cooler: Antec H20 920
Memory: 8GB Corsair Dominator GT 2400mhz memory
Power Supply: Enermax Platimax 1200W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Lian Li PC-A77FR Aluminium Red Full Tower Case
Boot Drive: Patriot WildFire 120GB
Secondary Drive: 1TB Samsung

Intel i7 3820
Motherboard: ASRock Extreme4-M
Cooler: Intel reference cooler
Memory: 8GB Corsair GTX8 @ 2133mhz
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Chassis: Lian Li PC60
Boot Drive: Crucial C300
Secondary Drive: Patriot Pyro SE 240GB

AMD FX 8150 Black Edition
Processor: AMD FX 8150 Black Edition
Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7
Cooler: Noctua NH D14
Memory: G-SKill Ripjaws 1600mhz 8GB (2x 4GB)
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Chassis: SilverStone Raven 3
Boot Drive: Intel 40GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Patriot 120GB WildFire

Intel Core i7 990X
Processor: Intel Core i7 990x
Cooler: Corsair H100
Motherboard: Gigabyte G1 Assassin
Memory: Kingston HyperX 6GB
Drives: Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Chassis: Antec Twelve Hundred

Intel Core i7 2700k
Processor: Intel Core i7 2700k
Cooling: ThermalTake Frio OCK
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 Z68 Motherboard
Chassis: Silverstone Raven 3.
Power Supply: Corsair 850W.
Memory: Corsair 1600mhz memory
Storage: Intel 80GB SSD (boot) / Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD.

Intel Core i7 2600k
Processor: Intel Core i7 2600k
Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen 3
Cooler: Intel XTS-100H
Memory: ADATA 1600mhz DDR3 8GB (2x4GB)
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower 850W
Boot Drive: Intel 510 SSD 250GB

Intel Core i5 2500k
Processor: Intel Core i7 2500k
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 Z68 Motherboard
Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme Rev.2 CPU Cooler
Memory: Corsair 1600mhz memory 8GB (2x4GB)
Power Supply: Corsair 850W.
Boot Drive: Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD.

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T
Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1100T
Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7
Cooler: Noctua NH D14
Memory: G-SKill Ripjaws 1600mhz 8GB (2x 4GB)
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Chassis: SilverStone Raven 3
Boot Drive: Intel 40GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Patriot 120GB WildFire

PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use.

The system scores 5,879 points which is excellent. The combination of highly overclocked 2600k processor and Solid State drive help enhance the overall performance.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

The overclocked GTX680 scores 37,688 points which is incredible for a single GPU. The processor scores 81,643 points which raises the overall score to 43,564 points.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.

After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.

A score over 10,000 points this time last year with a single GPU just wasn't possible. The heavily overclocked system scores great in this benchmark with a final score of 10,352 points.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11.

The system averaged around 89 frames per second with this intensive Direct X 11 tessellation benchmark.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here.

	Asus GTX680
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	3
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	5
Total	192

The hardware scores 192 points out of a possible 210 which is excellent.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

At 4.8ghz, the 2600k performs at a very similar level to the reference clocked 990x Extreme Edition which is impressive.

CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

At 4.8ghz, the 2600k scores 9.24 points which is almost identical to the reference clocked 990x Extreme Edition processor.

Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0 x64.

Today we are testing with the Patriot Wildfire 256GB Solid State Drive.

The Asus Sabertooth Z77 Motherboard has certainly no issues in regards to SATA 3 performance. The Patriot Wildfire drive shines via the board, achieving 500 MB/s sequential read. 4K QD32 performance is also very strong.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

The Wildfire peaks at 557 MB/s read and 517 MB/s write, pretty much as we would hope in an ideal environment. Excellent results.

V2011 is the first release of 3DStudio Max to fully support the Windows 7 operating system. This is a professional level tool that many people use for work purposes and our test will show any possible differences between board design today.

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software offers compelling new techniques to help bring designs to life by aggregating data, iterating ideas, and presenting the results.

Streamlined, more intelligent data exchange workflows and innovative new modeling and visualization tools help significantly increase designers’ creativity and productivity, enabling them to better explore, validate, and communicate the stories behind their designs.

Major new features:

• Slate: A node based material editor.
• Quicksilver: Hardware renderer with multithreaded rendering engine that utilizes both CPU and GPU.
• Extended Graphite Modeling Toolset
• 3ds Max Composite: A HDRI-capable compositor based on Autodesk Toxik.
• Viewport Canvas toolset for 3D and 2D texture painting directly in the viewport
• Object Painting: use 3D geometry as ‘brushes’ on other geometry
• Character Animation Toolkit (CAT): now integrated as part of the base package
• Autodesk Material Library: Over 1200 new photometrically accurate shaders
• Additional file format support: includes native support for Sketchup, Inventor
• FBX file linking
• Save to Previous Release (2010)

We created a new 8200×3200 scene and recorded the time for the hardware to finalise the render.

The system completes the render in 6 minutes and 13 seconds, which is only 2 seconds slower than the 990X EE at reference clock speeds. The reference clocked 2600k completes the same task in 6 minutes and 53 seconds.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 3.3GB 720p MKV file (2h:12mins) to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power. We are using the newest version which has been optimised for Sandybridge processors.

For testing today we are disabling graphics acceleration.

Media Espresso doesn't fully load all cores to 100%, so the overclocked cores on the 2600k processor help boost performance past even the 3960X EE at reference clock speeds.

Handbrake is a fantastic free program which we wanted to include to confirm findings with Media Espresso, earlier in the review. HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.

We used the latest V 0.9.5 for testing today across all platforms. We encoded an DVD.MPG file.

The system finishes the encoding duties in 4 minutes and 54 seconds, around 3 seconds faster than the reference clocked 990X.

F1 2011 is the newest Direct X 11 racing game from industry pioneers CodeMasters. The 2011 Formula One season is the 62nd FIA Formula One season. The original calendar consisted of twenty rounds, including the inaugural running of the Indian Grand Prix before the cancellation of the Bahrain Grand Prix. Pirelli returns to the sport as tyre supplier for all teams, taking over from Bridgestone. Red Bull Racing are the reigning Constructor’s Champions. Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel is the defending Drivers’ Champion, one of five World Champions appearing on the grid.

We cranked the image quality settings to 8XQ CSAA and the ultra preset. The system had no problems, averaging 98 frames per second and dropping to 76 frames per second a few times.

Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.

Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today.

Settings: 1920×1200, D3D10, Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High).

Averaging 150 frames per second at these settings was previously achieved with the dual GPU HD6990. With the system in such a high state of overclock, the frame rates increase from around 130 fps to 150 fps.

Alan Wake is a third-person shooter psychological thriller action game developed by Remedy Entertainment and published by Microsoft Game Studios. It was released for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. The story follows bestselling thriller novelist Alan Wake, as he tries to uncover the mystery behind his wife’s disappearance during a vacation in the small (fictional) town of Bright Falls, Washington, all while experiencing events from the plot in his latest novel, which he cannot remember writing, coming to life.

Alan Wake is a relatively demanding engine at this resolution with the image quality settings maxed. No problems for this system however, averaging almost 100 frames per second.

Battlefield 3 is one of the finest looking first person shooters released in the last year. In campaign mode, players take on the personas of several military roles; a USMC recon Marine, an F-18 systems officer, an M1A2 Abrams tank operator, and a SPETSNAZ operative. The campaign takes place at various locations, from Iran to New York, and follows the story of Sergeant Blackburn and later, Dimitri Mayakovsky.

We raised the settings to the ultra preset and enabled 4x Anti aliasing. The system averaged 85 frames per second, delivering a perfectly smooth gaming experience.

Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.

We are using the built in benchmark which is available via the STEAM client for this game.

At 1080p, the system averages 72 frames per second, which drops to around 57 frames per second through the more intensive area of the benchmark.

The Asus Sabertooth is the first Z77 motherboard we have reviewed and it has certainly set the bar high already. It stands out on the market, thanks to the Thermal Armor which covers the board from head to foot.

First impressions were positive, as the bundle is extensive and adds to the value of the product. I am not really sure that the Thermal Armor is really necessary, especially without the supplied, tiny fans installed. Surely it would trap a higher percentage of warm air closer to the capacitors?

I unsuccessfully tried to measure stability variables at the highest possible speeds, overclocking the 2600k to 5ghz with the help of a Corsair H100. Would the board crash without the active cooling? Would it operate better with the Thermal cover removed and no fans in place?

In a nutshell, the Sabertooth Z77 never crashed, regardless of whether I had the active fans installed or the Thermal Armor removed. Temperatures of the VRM's reduced by around 8c with both fans operating, but temperatures weren't dangerously high in the first place so it made little difference in real world terms. I didn't appreciate the added noise, so therefore didn't use them for the review. It may be possible in a very warm climate that they will help improve stability when overclocked, but I can't imagine many people would need them installed.

Overclocking the Sabertooth Z77 was exceptionally straightforward and by simply pressing the ‘OC Tuner' option, the board overclocked the 2600k to just past 4.4ghz without increasing the core voltage. We manually pushed it to 4.8ghz with a £20 cooler, minor voltage bump and a few other tweaks. Throughout the last week it has maintained stability even when placed under extreme synthetic load.

The Asus Sabertooth Z77 is an expensive product, but we feel it is worth the money, especially if you are buying a new motherboard to overclock a processor to the limits. We are confident with high end cooling and a good stepping, that a 2600k or 2700k will be stable at 5ghz+. You can't ask for much more than that.

We can't comment on next generation CPU performance just yet, but when NDA breaks we will have all the results here.

You can buy the board from Overclockers in the UK for £182.99 inc vat.

Pros:

• Overclocks like a dream.
• Looks great.
• Very difficult to crash.

Cons:

• We aren't sold 100% on the ‘Thermal Armor' concept.
• Expensive.

Kitguru says: A quality board that comes fully loaded.

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