Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC Motherboard Review (w/ Intel i7 4770k)

1. Introduction2. Intel Core i7 4700k3. Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC (Packaging and Bundle)4. Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC (Board Layout & Features)5. Corsair Vengeance Pro 2,400mhz, H100i Cooler and Seasonic Platinum PSU6. Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC (The Bios)7. Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC (Overclocking)8. Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC (Super High Res Gallery)9. Testing Methodology10. System: PCMark711. System: 3DMark Vantage12. System: 3DMark 1113. System: 3DMark14. System: Unigine Heaven Benchmark15. Processor: SiSoft Sandra16. Processor: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit17. Processor: 3D Rendering18. Processor: Video Encoding19. Motherboard: USB 3.0 Performance20. Motherboard: SATA 6Gbps performance21. Gaming: Tomb Raider (DX11)22. Gaming: Sleeping Dogs (DX11)23. Gaming: Dirt Showdown (DX11)24. Gaming: Total War Shogun 2 (DX11)25. Power Consumption26. Closing Thoughts27. View All Pages

This weekend Intel launch their range of Haswell processors and companies such as Asus and Gigabyte have a new range of boards for the enthusiast audience to choose from. This review focuses on the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC motherboard when paired up with the Intel Core i7 4770k processor. Just how capable is the new Intel HD graphics solution? Today we aim to find out – by testing with some Direct X 11 titles running at 1080p. Not an easy task for Intel's latest and greatest.

Gigabyte have made quite a stir in the weeks running up to Intel's Haswell launch. Kitguru published an article highlighting high resolution photographs of upcoming motherboards and our readers on the main site and Facebook page seemed very excited about the new designs.

The GA-Z87X-OC is a stunning looking board, built around a black PCB with bright orange memory and graphics card slots. Gigabyte told us before launch that it should be priced in the competitive sub £200 sector.

This board supports the 4th generation Intel Core i7 / i5 and i3 processors. The Z87 Express chipset is based on the latest LGA1150 socket. It utilises the serial point to point links which increase bandwidth and enhance system performance. It natively supports up to six USB 3.0 ports and enables the iGPU function for Intel integrated graphics performance. All of the SATA ports have 6GBps capability, so no hunting around to make sure you have the right connector for that shiny new Solid State Drive.

The GA-Z87X-OC supports Quad Crossfire and 2 way SLi graphics configurations for high performance gaming demands.


We didn't receive our Intel Core i7 4770k samples until very close to the NDA deadline so we didn't get the time to cover everything we wanted in our reviews today. I think this has actually been one of the worst Intel launches in history, with almost all the details of the products leaked online long before the ‘official' NDA broke this weekend.

That and the motherboard manufacturers insistence on pushing almost every detail of the products into the public domain via video ‘previews' and picture media makes this launch feel like a damp squib.

The Intel Core i7 4770k is the direct replacement for the highly successful Core i7 3770k , a processor which sold well into the overclocking sector.

Intel are keen to highlight the ‘re-invention of the desktop pc'. With the new manufacturing process they can focus on reducing power drain, physical dimensions of the partnering chassis and allow their partners further options for delivering interesting products.

As we would expect the Intel Core i7 4770k is a Quad core processor with hyperthreading support (4+4), identical in that regard to its predecessor, the 3770k. It is also unlocked, targeting the overclockers who want to get the most for their money. We don't have confirmed pricing as I am writing this, but we have been told that it will cost more than the 3770k.

Sadly, AMD are not able to challenge Intel in this specific sector so they can charge whatever they want, knowing that many people will pay a premium for the performance.

The 4770k is manufactured on the 22nm process and has a Max TDP rating of 84W. The standard clock speed is set at 3,500mhz, although as we will see later in the review, the processor can turbo well above this figure, depending on the thermal overhead at the time. The official speed rating is up to 3.9ghz and it has 8MB of cache.

The 4770k has an integrated memory controller which supports 2 channels of DDR3-1600 memory, with 2 DIMMs per channel. With an XMP profile, the memory limitations are much higher, as we will find out later.

As we received multiple motherboards for launch day we are looking at the Core i7 4770k onboard graphics performance in this review (HD4600). We don't think too many people buying a 4770k will be wanting to rely on onboard graphics capabilities, unless it would be a temporary solution while they save money to buy a discrete card. Nonetheless it will be interesting to look at later in the review.

New enhanced built-in visual features deliver a seamless visual PC experience for doing everything from simple e-mail to enjoying the latest 3D and HD entertainment. The built-in visuals suite includes:

• Intel Quick Sync Video Technology: Media processing for incredibly fast conversion of video files for portable media players or online sharing.
• Intel InTru 3D: Stereoscopic 3D Blu-ray playback experience in full HD 1080p resolution over HDMI 1.4 with 3D.
• Intel Clear Video HD Technology: Visual quality and color fidelity enhancements for spectacular HD playback and immersive web browsing.
• Intel Advanced Vector Extensions 2.0 (Intel® AVX 2.0): Increased performance for demanding visual applications like professional video & image editing.
• Intel HD Graphics 4600: Significant 3D performance for immersive mainstream gaming on a broad range of titles. The dynamic graphics frequency ranges up to 1250MHz.

The Intel ‘HD4600' graphics get a new control panel in Windows, as shown in the screenshots above. The main panel splits the options into 5 separate sections – ‘display', ‘3D', ‘support', ‘video' and ‘options'. By default Intel have the general image quality settings configured to the ‘balanced' preset. This offers a mixture of image quality and performance characteristics. The ‘Video' panel has a variety of settings to adjust the onscreen image quality.

We found the image quality to be excellent, although still a little behind AMD and NVIDIA discrete solutions.


The Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC ships in a black box featuring an orange and black ‘ultra durable' heatsink.

The Bundle includes a Motherboard driver disc, a user manual, a quick installation guide, four SATA cables, an I/O shield, 2 way SLI bridge connector, 2 way Crossfire bridge connector, twelve voltage measurement cables and an OC brace.

The Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC is a very attractively designed board featuring a black PCB with contrasting orange slots and several large heatsinks for cooling. This board complies with the ATX form factor measuring 30.5cm x 24.4cm.


There is a large heatsink close to the CPU socket which features the ‘Ultra Durable' branding. There is plenty of room around the socket to fit the largest air coolers on the market. We tried with several Phanteks and Noctua coolers and had no issues. You can see in the image above that Gigabyte have included an 8 pin and a 4 pin power socket to enhance overclocking stability. This could potentially help when overclocking with phase change, or LN2.

Alongside the memory slots (next to the Debug display readout) is the ‘OC Touch' panel, which can be used for ‘on the fly' overclocking. There are CPU ratio buttons, as well as BCLK buttons and BCLK steppings. A handy power button is also available here, if you are using the system outside a chassis, or haven't connected all the cables yet.

The OC Ignition button powers up all the system's equipment before powering on the CPU. This is ideal to check power cables are connected and to keep the system fans running to avoid the LN2 ‘cold bug' issue.

Gigabyte also include a ‘OC PCIe switch' which allows the user to disable and enable various PCIEX graphics slots.

Lastly, Gigabyte include a series of onboard voltage connectors – to be used with a multimeter to measure component voltages, including VRIN, VCORE, VRING, VIOD, VIOA, VAXG, VSA, PCHV and VDIMM.


Above, Gigabyte created diagrams showing how the on board ‘OC Touch' buttons work. I have to admit, when I am overclocking I do tend to use the primary BIOS. That said, we can see the use for this, especially with a system built on a desk, specifically for overclocking events and tournaments.

Along the lower side of the board are two connectors for OC Connect and On/Off Charge and a clear battery CMOS switch – if things go wrong. There are additional switches on this board to toggle the Main and Backup BIOS.

The Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC can accept up to four DDR3 DIMM's with support for up to 32GB of memory. Their manual states ‘support for DDR3 1600mhz/1333mhz modules' but as we find out later this is only a very basic statement. There is obviously also support for Intel's Extreme Memory Profile (XMP).

One of our favourite aspects of owning a new Z87 motherboard is the fact that all the SATA ports are 6Gbps capable. The SATA ports on the GA-Z87X-OC are controlled by the Intel Z87 chipset and offer RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5 and RAID 10 support. There are six SATA ports on this board, while the ASUS Z78 Sabertooth has an additional two.

This board has a total of four PCI Express x16 slots. The top slot runs at x16 and Gigabyte recommend a single graphics card is installed here. The secondary PCI Express x16 slot runs at x8 bandwidth, sharing bandwidth with the top slot. If two graphics cards are installed, then both run at x8.

The lower two PCI Express x 16 slots run at 4x (PCIEX4_1, PCIXX4_2). Gigabyte recommend when installed a card in the PCIEX4_1 slot to make sure to adjust the PCIE Slot Configuration in the BIOS setup to x4 – this is located the peripherals BIOS submenu.

The PCIEX16, PCIEX8 and PCIE4_1 slots conform to PCI Express 3.0 standards. The PCIEX_2 and PCIEX1_1 slots conform to the PCI Express 2.0 standard. Additionally, there are two PCI slots.

The rear panel has the following connectors:

• 2x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
• 1x OC Ignition button
• 6x USB 3.0/2.0 ports
• 1x optical S/PDIF Out connector
• 2x HDMI ports
• 1x DisplayPort
• 1x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port
• 1x RJ-45 port
• 6x audio jackets (Center/Subwoofer Speaker Out/Rear Speaker Out/Side Speaker Out/Line In/Line Out/ Microphone).

The GA-Z87X-OC has a total of 6 system fan header connectors, to suit a wide variety of builds.

Along the bottom of the board (from right to left) are the following connectors. The main front panel connector, a system fan header, a USB connector, another system fan header, two more USB connectors, another system fan header and audio connectors.

We always like to use the latest memory when testing a new range of motherboards. With this in mind Corsair very kindly offered to send us 16GB of their Vengeance Pro Series 2,400mhz memory. We will be looking closer at this memory in a dedicated review shortly.

The Corsair Vengeance Pro ships in a colourful package featuring an artistic photograph of the heatspreader, as shown above.

The heatsinks are nicely designed with curved edges and company branding on the sides.

This memory has an XMP profile set at 2,400mhz with 10-12-12-31 timings.

Seasonic also sent us one of their Platinum grade power supplies to use with our system builds today. We recently published a little article on these compatibility concerns over here, with a short excerpt below:

“Intel’s Haswell C6/C7 power states require a minimum load of 0.05A on the 12V2 rail and many current power supplies will fail to provide that low a current. Many older power supply designs comply with ATX 12V V2.3 design guidelines meaning they only call for load of 0.5A on the CPU power rail. This will mean C6 and C7 power states will be disabled in the bios.

Although we have yet to test, there may be cases that the supplies will become unstable when the processors try to enter into these states. Additionally the problems get worse when we factor in that many power supply units do not report minimum currents supported by the 12V2 rail.

From what we hear, the problem may kick in when the CPU enters sleep mode but with a load on the power supply non primary +3.3V and +5V rails. If the load on these rails hits a certain point (different from PSU to PSU) the +12V can go out of spec – voltages greater than 12.6V. If the +12V is out of spec when the system steps out of sleep state the power supply protection may kick in and stop the power supply from running normally. This situation may involve the end user turning the power supply switch off and back on again.

A power supply that uses a DC to DC design for the non primary +3.3V and +5V rails will not have a problem with the new low power sleep states. The reason is based around the DC to DC converter, used to convert +12V to +3.3V and +5V. This design ensures that there will always be load on the +12V regards of the load the CPU places on the power supply.”

Corsair also sent over one of their H100i coolers which we reviewed back in November last year, it is one of the best mainstream ‘all in one' coolers money can buy. You can read our full review over here.

Special thanks to Corsair and Seasonic for outfitting us with much of our partnering equipment for this review today.


Gigabyte have completely revamped their UEFI bios for their latest products and it is extremely impressive. There is an immense amount of information on the home screen including details on the processor along the left, with fan speeds and voltages. Underneath this is the memory status – defaulted in this case to 1333mhz. The system status is available from the panel down the right hand side of the screen. The drive boot sequence is seen in the middle panel, bottom right.

Gigabyte let the user adjust the layout and readout of the BIOS screens to suit their own tastes. This is very indepth and is a very commendable idea sure to appeal to an audience who feel that the default settings are never completely right for them.

The panel information will only update after you press the mouse button or hit the return key. The System panel gives a quick overview of passwords, startup pages and display policies.

The BIOS Features panel gives an overview of many of the BIOS settings, such as showing the detailed system information, or a Gigabyte boot screen. There are Fast boot options here, alongside virtualisation settings.

The peripherals panel gives an overview of various device configuration settings and SATA configurations.

The Power Management panel lets the user configure wake up times and days as well as power on by keyboard and mouse settings.


The main performance panel has various little subsections in the panel underneath, which is actually easily missed if you aren't paying attention. In here we can adjust the frequency of the processor, memory and adjust voltage settings, while checking the health status of each.

The first course of action is to correct the memory speeds by selecting the XMP profile. This is handled in the memory subsection of the main ‘memory' panel, as shown above. The motherboard correctly set the voltage without intervention.

The default settings for the Core i7 4770k are shown above – the multiplier is set at 35 (x100), giving the final speed of 3,500mhz. The turbo function allows for boosts to 3,900mhz, the same as the ASUS Z78 Sabretooth which we also reviewed for launch today.

We configured the Corsair H100i cooler fans and pump to ‘performance'. There is very little if any difference using ‘maximum fan settings' as the cooler was reaching its limits under load.

Overclocking the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC proved straightforward enough. Inside the Frequency submenu of the Performance tab are various settings to adjust the PCIe Clock frequency, processor graphics clock and the processor frequency itself.

With the Core i7 4770k installed, we could access a range of automated range settings for the Core i7 4770k – we selected the ‘4.5GHZ' option. It didn't change any of the voltage settings however, so we still had to manually adjust those.

We changed the CPU Vcore voltage to 1.225V.

The 3D Power Control panel contains the Loadline Calibration and the PWM Phase Control settings. These can be useful to enhance stability at overclocked speeds. We used a mixture of ‘extreme' and ‘high perf' with the voltage of 1.225 to achieve stability at 4.5ghz.

Our 4770k sample seemed to be hot running (we checked with a diode connected directly to the core) and we tested with several motherboards and coolers before launch. At 1.25V or above the temperature could easily hit 90c+ under load. At 1.225V with a Corsair H100i the 4770k temperatures would hover around 82c, which is certainly safer long term.

System validation at 4.5ghz is available over here.

Not enough? … Well lets see how high we could get a (unstable) post into Windows.

With 1.35 volts and the loadline calibration and PWM Phase Control settings close to maximum we got a post at 4.9ghz – the temperatures of the processor hit more than 100c however. We do need the 4770k for other reviews and content, so immediately backed down. This was obviously not close to Prime stable either.

Remember, it is always important to use an overclock and voltage settings that won't kill the processor over time … unless you are rich or make a living out of overclocking hardware to the limits.

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.

We installed Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit on this system today. Our polls on the Kitguru main site and Facebook page have shown a huge percentage of our readers are still in favour of using Windows 7. Our own internal testing shows very little difference between the operating systems in regards to gaming or synthetic benchmark testing, so we are holding steady with Windows 7, for the time being anyway.


Our test system today is based around the new Intel Core i7 4770k processor running at default clock speeds of 3.5ghz and when overclocked to 4.5ghz. We are using 16GB of Corsair Vengeance Pro Series memory running from an XMP profile at 2,400mhz with 10-12-12-31 2T timings.

This review focuses on performance with the onboard Intel HD 4600 graphics, so no discrete cards are being used in this specific review today. We have other reviews showing discrete graphics performance however, so check out our front page for more information.

We had wanted to include other results from AMD APU's with onboard graphics, but sadly we ran out of time before HASWELL NDA broke this weekend and were unable to include them.

We are using the 30 inch Dell U3011 for this review today:

Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC System
Processor: Intel Core i7 4770k (3.5ghz & 4.5ghz)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC
Cooler: Corsair H100i (performance mode)
Graphics: Intel HD4600 onboard
Memory: 16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro Series @ 2,400mhz (10-12-12-31 2T)
Power Supply: Corsair HX750
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive.
Chassis: Lian Li X2000
Boot Drive: Patriot 240GB Pyro SE
Storage Drive: Patriot 240GB Wildfire.

Comparison Systems (for specific synthetic test compares):

Processor: Intel Core i7 3770k
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe
Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 13
Memory: 16GB G.Skill @ 2,400mhz 11-11-11-31.
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W.
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive.
Chassis: Cooler Master Cosmos 2.
Boot Drive: Kingston SSDNow V+200 90GB.
Storage Drive: Patriot 240GB Wildfire.

Intel E5 2687W x 2
Motherboard: Asus Z9 PE-D8 WS
Coolers: Corsair H80 x2
Memory: 64GB Kingston Predator 1,600mhz 9-9-9-24 1T
Power Supply: Seasonic 1000W Platinum Modular
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Lian Li X2000FN
Boot Drive: Corsair 240GB Neutron GTX SSD
Secondary Drive: Corsair 240GB Neutron SSD

Intel E5 2660
Motherboard: Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WIFI
Cooler: Corsair H100
Memory: 16GB G.Skill ARES 2,133mhz @ 9-11-10-28
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Lian Li X2000a
Boot Drive: Intel 510 120GB
Secondary Drive: Patriot 240GB WildFire

Intel i7 3960X EE
Motherboard: Asus P9X79 WS WorkStation
Cooler: Corsair H100
Memory: 8GB Corsair Dominator GT8 2400mhz memory
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 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

Intel i5 3570K @ 4.2 – OCUK Prodigy Arctic Gaming System
Motherboard: ASRock Z77E-ITX Intel Z77
Cooler: Coolit Liquid
Memory: Corsair Vengeance White 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
Power Supply: OCZ ZS 750W PSU
Chassis: Bitfenix Prodigy Mini ITX Case – White
Boot Drive: OCZ Vertex 4 128GB
Secondary Drive: 1TB HDD

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

Core i7 970 @ 4.6ghz
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Memory: 6GB ADATA @ 2133mhz 9-10-9-32
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)

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.

Software:
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
PCMark 7
Cinebench 11.5 64 bit
FRAPS Professional
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
CrystalDiskMark
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 11
Cyberlink MediaEspresso
HQV Benchmark V2.
Atto Disk Benchmark
CrystalDiskMark
HQV Benchmark 2.0
SiSoft Sandra

Games:
Tomb Raider (DX11)
Total War: Shogun 2 (DX11)
Dirt Showdown (DX 11)
Sleeping Dogs (DX 11)

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Asus USB BluRay Drive
Lacie 730 Monitor (Image Quality testing)
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter
Nikon D3X with R1C1 Kit (4 flashes), Nikon 24-70MM lens.

Game descriptions are edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.

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 well, and highlights good all round performance. When overclocked , the system score improves from 6,283 points to 6,549 points.
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.

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.

The new onboard Intel graphics are delivering good results, scoring 1497 points in performance mode, and 2807 points in the entry level test.

Above, a result from the last generation Core i7 3770k running the same entry level test.

3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.

Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system.

Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.


We ran all the tests in the latest 3DMark. The frame rates were smooth until the Fire Strike test kicked in and the frame rate suffered dramatically, sometimes running in single digits.

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 tested at both 720p and 1080p resolutions.


The system averages 12.1 frames per second at 1080p, and this increases to 22 frames per second at 720p.

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

The 4770k scores higher than the 3770k when both are left to the default bios settings. The 4770k has a noticeable edge over the 3770k at 4.5ghz, even with a 100mhz deficit.

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.


The system scored 8.5 points at the default clock speeds, outperforming the 3770k by just over 0.5 points. When overclocked to 4.5ghz, the 4770k almost scores 10 points, landing just behind the reference clocked Xeon ES 2660 8/16 core processor.

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.


These results show the 4770k has a noticeable edge over the 3770k when it comes to rendering intensive 3D scenes, cutting the time by 12 seconds at default BIOS settings on the Asus Z78 Sabretooth motherboard. When overclocked to 4.5ghz, the final time drops by around 20 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 latest version of the software.

We turn on hardware acceleration, using the 4770k processor's ‘Quick Sync Video' functionality.

The 4770k processor completes the task around 17 seconds faster than the 3770k.

We measure the system USB 3.0 performance by using the excellent Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB USB 3.0 drive, which we reviewed back in February this year.

No concerns with the USB 3.0 performance from the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC motherboard, hitting a sequential read rate of 276 MB/s. Write speed is slower, although this is limited to this particular drive, rather than the USB 3.0 controller. Due to the nature of this kind of flash, and via the USB 3.0 interface, 4k and 4k QD32 performance is substantially worse than from a native SSD drive across a SATA connector.

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.

Performance via the ATTO disk benchmark is a little lower than in CrystalDiskMark, hitting a peak around 260 MB/s in the sequential read test and around 65Mb/s in the sequential write test. That said, these are excellent results for this particular drive.

We measure performance of the Patriot Wildfire 256GB Solid State Drive when connected to the Intel Z78 Express Chipset controller.

Excellent results, scoring around 460 MB/s in the sequential read and write tests.

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 ATTO Disk Benchmark performance results are superb across the full tests on the Patriot Wildfire drive. The system peaks at 557 MB/s Read and 512MB/s write. No bottleneck concerns from the controller on this board.
After a delayed release from late 2012 to March 2013, the game received much anticipation and hype. Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far.

We like to use settings that enthusiast users would adopt themselves. No one plays the latest Direct X 11 titles at 1024×768 with low IQ, especially with this expensive flagship hardware.

We configured the engine to use the ‘Normal' setting at a full 1080p resolution. We use the built in benchmark to get these results – so you can compare directly yourself.


The benchmark shows that the frame rate hovers around a ‘semi' playable 23.1 frames per second, dropping a few times to around 19 frames per second. A few tweaks of the settings, or a reduction to 720p would help improve the frame rate.

Sleeping Dogs started development as an original title, but was announced in 2009 as True Crime: Hong Kong, the third installment and a reboot of the True Crime series. As a result of the game’s high development budget and delays, it was canceled by Activision Blizzard in 2011. Six months later, it was announced that Square Enix had picked up the publishing rights to the game, but the game was renamed Sleeping Dogs in 2012 since Square Enix did not purchase the True Crime name rights.

We configured the game to use low image quality settings but holding the native 1080p resolution. We didn't think the results would be very good, as this is a demanding game.

We used the built in benchmark for these results, so you can compare directly against your own system.


The game is not quite playable at these settings, smooth enough in some environments, but struggling when the density increases. We would need to lower the resolution to 720p to help improve the frame rate.

Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.

We set the game to run at 1080p, disabling anti aliasing completely and using the ‘Normal' preset. We test with the built in benchmark today, so you can compare directly to your own system.


The game was playable at 1080p. holding a frame rate in excess of 28 at all times. This is very impressive considering there is no discrete card in the mix. The game actually looked rather good too, even though some jaggy edges were visible as we disabled anti aliasing to help improve the frame rate.
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.
The built in benchmarks in STEAM would not run, returning the errors above. We therefore loaded the game and configured the image quality settings ourselves.

We selected a 1080p resolution and used the default ‘low' quality settings as shown in the image above.

The game ran well on low image quality settings, averaging just over 60 frames per second. There is certainly a little overhead to increase some of the image quality settings available.
Today we are measuring the system wattage at the wall socket via a calibrated meter.The system power drain was measured in the following states:Idle: when resting at the desktop.

Gaming Load: 3Dmark 11 ‘combined test’.

Power consumption of the system without a discrete graphics cards is very impressive, demanding less than 90watts under load at the reference clock speeds. Overclocking adds a little more to the power drain, but it is still very impressive.
The Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC is an extremely impressive motherboard, loaded to the gills with features. They say first impressions count, and the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC scores well in this regard. The black PCB and bright orange heatsinks immediately reminded me of the iconic Austrian KTM motorcycle colour scheme, which is certainly not a bad thing.

Setting up the board is extremely easy, thanks in part to the dramatically overhauled BIOS interface. This is without a doubt the best Gigabyte BIOS we have used and is a monumental leap in the right direction, and not before time either. We felt Gigabyte were lagging behind market leader ASUS for quite some time when it came to their BIOS implementation.

That is not to say there is still no room for further improvement – I feel there is really no need for all the submenus dealing with voltages, frequency settings and power adjustments. Having them all in a sensible single, scrollable menu would suit me better.

This is when Gigabyte's new BIOS methodology comes into its own. The company allow you to change the BIOS layout and even add in background images if you so desire. This particular BIOS is very customisable and their engineers do deserve credit for the strides forward. I was actually still playing with the BIOS as I was writing this final page of the review – there are really so many options to tweak and change, it can be overwhelming.

Thankfully under all the new ‘gloss', the heart of the GA-Z87X-OC beats strong. The power delivery is rock solid and we managed to take the overclock to 4.9ghz, even if it wasn't prime stable. We are positive that with a different sample and improved cooling that higher, stable clock speeds will be possible.

The Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC has six SATA ports, and we like the fact that these are all 6Gbps capable, no more hunting around in the manual to find out which 3Gbps ports we need to avoid for Solid State Drives. It may seem like such a small thing to mention, but I love the new Z78 chipset for this point alone.

USB 3.0 performance is particularly strong from this board, we achieved almost 280MB/s sequential speeds from our 256GB Patriot Flash drive, which is close to a new record and the same performance we achieved from last generation SATA 3Gbps Solid State drives.

We had no problems pairing this board up with the Intel Core i7 4770k processor. We achieved a prime stable overclock of 1GHZ while maintaining a reasonable thermal curve. Our 4770k sample runs very hot, even with 1.225 volts and we hope to get our hands on another sample in the near future to see if this is common, or just isolated. Thankfully the Corsair H100i coped with the hot running chip delivering a stable playing field at 4.5ghz.

The 4770k is undoubtedly faster than the 3770k on a clock per clock basis, however our 3770k sample overclocks quite easily to 5ghz and runs cooler than the 4770k engineering sample that Intel sent us. At 5ghz the 3770k will clearly outclass  the 4.5ghz 4770k in a variety of duties.

This makes it a little difficult for us to recommend that everyone head online and spend a lot of money moving to the new 4770k, especially if your 3770k runs cool and overclocks to 4.8ghz – 5ghz without hassle. We have spoken to several system builders in the United Kingdom this week and they tell us that they will be not pushing their 4770k systems past 4.4ghz and they may even aim closer to 4.2ghz.

Intel have made a lot of progress in regards to power consumption and the onboard HD4600 graphics is much more capable than the previous iteration. That said, I don't know many people who would be buying a 4770k and not pairing it up with a discrete graphics card for more serious duties. I can't think that an enthusiast user would adopt a 4770k for a media center system either.

In closing, there is no doubt in my mind that Gigabyte have made huge strides forward with the GA-Z87X-OC motherboard. The beautiful new BIOS is the foundation of a rebirth for the company, and when partnered up with the excellent power delivery, fantastic design and competitive pricing it looks to be a winner. If you have a system several generations old then this is a good time to budget the money for the new hardware upgrade.

The recommendation for the move to a new Haswell 4770k system is a little more difficult if you are currently running with an overclocked 3770k. The benefits just don't seem tangible enough to warrant the cost of a new motherboard and processor. We would recommend saving your pennies until the next generation.

Pros:

• A beautifully designed motherboard
• BIOS is stunning.
• rock solid.
• overclocks well.
• worked perfectly with Corsair 2,400mhz memory.
• HD4600 integrated graphics is very capable.

Cons:

• Our 4770k sample runs hot over 1.225 volts, limiting the overclock we could get from the GA-Z87X-OC.
• A post at 4.9ghz was possible, but the Corsair H100i couldn't handle the high voltage. (temperatures of 100c+)

Kitguru says: We love the motherboard, but the 4770k sample we received hasn't inspired us into recommending everyone jump on an upgrade. There is no doubt the Intel HD4600 is a good move forward for Intel, but the market for integrated graphics on the 4770k will be very small. Gamers want powerful discrete solutions.

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