MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX Review (w/ 4770k / HD7990 / 2,933mhz DDR3)

1. Introduction2. MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX (Packaging & Bundle)3. MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX (Board Layout and Features)4. Corsair Vengeance Pro 2400mhz, HX750 and H100i5. MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX (The Bios)6. MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX (Overclocking)7. MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX (Super High Res Gallery)8. Testing Methodology9. System: PCMark 710. System: PCMark 811. System: 3DMark Vantage12. System: 3DMark 1113. System: 3DMark14. System: Unigine Heaven Benchmark15. System: Unigine Valley Benchmark16. Processor/Memory: SiSoft Sandra17. Processor: CineBench R11.5 64 bit18. Processor: 3D Rendering19. Processor: Media Encoding20. Motherboard: USB 3.0 Performance21. Motherboard: SATA 6Gbps performance22. Gaming: Tomb Raider (2560x1600)23. Gaming: Sleeping Dogs (2560x1600)24. Gaming: GRID 2 (2560x1600 & UH IQ)25. Gaming: Far Cry 3 (2560x1600)26. Gaming: Crysis 3 (5760x1080)27. Gaming: BioShock Infinite (5760x1080)28. G.Skill Trident X Memory overclocking29. Closing Thoughts30. View All Pages

It would have been difficult to miss Intel's launch of Haswell last weekend. On launch day we looked at the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC and the ASUS Z87 Sabertooth motherboards and today we analyse the latest high end board from MSI – The Z87 MPower MAX. This is priced a little higher than the other boards we have looked at so far – around £219.95 inc vat.

Today we pair the MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX board up with an AMD Radeon HD7990, 16Gb of Corsair 2,400mhz memory and the Intel Core i7 4770k. We also test later with new G.Skill memory rated at 2,933mhz.

Is this a good overclocking board and is it worth your hard earned cash?

MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX Overview:

• Supports 4th Gen Intel Core / Pentium / Celeron processors for LGA 1150 socket
• Supports DDR3-3000(OC) Memory
• Supports USB 3.0 + SATA 6Gb/s
• 20 Phase DigitALL Power Design
• Multi-GPU: NVIDIA SLI & AMD CrossFire Support
• OC Certified: Military Class Burn-in Test Passed
• Military Class 4: Top Quality & Stability
• OC Genie 4: Overclock in 1 Second
• Click BIOS 4: Easily Fine-tune Your System
• PCI Express Gen 3: World's 1st PCI Express Gen 3 Motherboard Brand
• Audio Boost: Reward Your Ears with True Quality
• Killer Ethernet: Kill Your Lag
• Sound Blaster Cinema: Realistic Surround Sound Experience
• Lucid Virtu MVP 2.0: Uncompromised Game Response Performance
• Wi-Fi 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0, Intel Wireless Display

We love the packaging of this box – the letter ‘M' in bright yellow and the name of the product in the center. Brilliant and very eye catching.

There are two smaller boxes inside – one of which contains the peripherals and an MSI overview of internal testing. This isn't the first time MSI have done this and its an interesting concept. The test date, some performance results and name of tester are included. The MSI engineer tested the board to 4.2ghz, but we plan on taking it beyond that point today.

The bundle is extensive and it includes.

• Drivers and Utilities Disc
• Motherboard User Guide
• I/O Shield
• SATA cables x6
• Network Driver and Utilities Disc
• Software & Application User Guide
• USB 3.0 bracket
• M-Connector
• Antenna x 2 (wireless)
• mPCIe Card with Wi-Fi Bluetooth Module
• SLI cable
• V-Check cable x4

We like the appearance of the MSI Z87 MPOWER Max – it is based around a black PCB with yellow accenting on the heatsinks.

The MSI Z87 MPOWER Max is an ATX Form Factor board measuring 30.4cm x 24.4 cm. MSI claim this board is ‘OC Certified'.

They say “OC Certified is a military class burn-in test for motherboards. Running Prime95 for over 24 hours with a highly overclocked CPU is already a stressing endeavor, but removing all airflow from the motherboard ensures that only the best motherboards survive. If a motherboard can survive this, it can survive any overclocking situation.

The MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX motherboard is equipped with all the necessary features to make sure you get the most out of your system. From the Enhanced PWM and Thermal Design that give you the best stability to all the easy features that ensure that you don't have to perform a lot of tricks to get great stability in your quest for performance.”

The latest Military class ‘4' is incorporated into the board design. MSI are using Hi-C Caps, Super Ferrite Chokes and Dark CAPs to ensure stability under the most taxing situations.

There is a large heatsink around the CPU socket, although there is plenty of room for large coolers to fit. MSI are using a new board design for this product, formed on 6 PCB layers.

They say “50% more layers are used. This allows us to optimize all traces for overclocking. Power and signal traces are isolated, resulting in higher efficiency and performance and more features can be installed relatively close to each other without causing interference.”

There are two eight pin power connectors to help improve overclocking stability. We only needed to use one of these throughout the review today, more on that later.

There are four DIMM slots on this board, Supporting up to 32GB of memory in a dual channel configuration. It supports DDR3 3000(OC)/ 2800(OC)/ 2666(OC)/ 2400(OC)/ 2200(OC)/ 2133(OC)/ 2000 (OC)/ 1866 (OC) / 1600 / 1333 and 1066mhz. There is full support for Intel's Extreme Memory Profile (XMP).

The board supports 2 Way Crossfire and 2 Way Nvidia SLI Technology and Lucidlogix Virtu MVP 2.  If you have no experience with overclocking, there is an OC Genie button at the bottom. We like the Go2BIOS button – press it before you start or restart the system and it will post immediately into the BIOS.

MSI are using a Killer E2200 internet chip with this board – with the dedicated software installed on the optical media.

The complete audio circuitry is isolated from other features, you'll enjoy less interference and more stability.

• Studio level integrated 600Ω headphone amplifier
• Golden audio jacks for pure audio signals
• EMI shielded audio codec
• High quality audio capacitors
• Illuminated audio PCB separation

There are eight SATA connectors on the board, six of these are controlled by the Intel Z87 Express chipset and the remaining two are controlled by the Asmedia ASM1061 Chipset. They are all SATA 6Gbps ports which is a great improvement over the previous Z77 chipset. No more hunting through a manual to find which ports to use with a new Solid State Drive.

There is RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5 and RAID 10 support as well via the Intel Z87 Express Chipset.

The rear panel has the following connectors:

• 1x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port
• 2x USB 2.0 ports
• 1x Clear CMOS button
• 6x USB 3.0 ports
• 1x Optical S/PDIF OUT connector
• 2x HDMI ports
• 1x DisplayPort
• 1x LAN (RJ45) port
• 6x OFC audio jacks

We always like to use the latest memory when testing a new series of motherboards. With this in mind Corsair very kindly offered to send us 16GB of their latest 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.

Corsair also sent us one of their HX750 power supplies which is 100% compatible with Haswell. 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 for outfitting us with much of our partnering equipment for this review today.


Well you can't argue that this isn't an eye catching bios. Like Gigabyte, MSI have put a lot of effort into their latest Z87 Bios layouts and configurations. The BIOS is split over 6 different subsections.


The main settings panel gives an overview of the system you have just built, including the option to save the settings and reboot – a frequently accessed area when you are overclocking and pushing the hardware to the limit.

The M-Flash section of the BIOS is used for upgrading to new revisions of the BIOS software. You can also save a copy of the bios to attached storage.

If you are an inexperienced user then the ‘Board Explorer' part of the BIOS may be useful. It highlights various sections and details their operation.

This section of the BIOS is used for saving and loading various configurations – to save time later.

The hardware monitor part of the BIOS has received a huge overhaul when compared to the last MSI motherboard we looked at in the days of Z77. We can configure target temperature parameters, fan speeds and monitor how the system is running as we change voltages and speeds. Very useful.

The main OC panel is where you will start your overclocking adventures. Everything is accessible from a single sub panel menu which we like.

The first course of action is to load the Corsair memory XMP profile, as the BIOS will initially default to a ‘safe' 1,333mhz speed. We set this first and reposted to ensure stability. No problems and a good start.

The default settings for the Core i7 4770k, shown above.

Inside the CPU menu we can change the 1,2,3 and 4 Core Ratio Limits.

We already know our particular Intel Core i7 4770k sample is limited to 4.5ghz at around 1.225 volts. Getting the system stable at 4.7ghz or higher requires between 1.3 and 1.35 volts which pushes the 4770k temperatures to between 90c and 105c. Not ideal, certainly not long term anyway. We could get a post with the MSI board at 4.9ghz, but the voltage was too high to be usable. We either need to get another sample, or use more extreme ways of cooling.

A very small percentage of our audience will own anything better than a Noctua NH D14, or Corsair H100i however.

We have chatted with system builders in the last week and they are finding huge variance between samples – some are only stable at 4.2ghz – others up to 4.9ghz. Due to this however they are opting for safe system speeds between 4.2ghz and 4.4ghz. If you have a 3770k that can overclock to 4.8ghz or higher it will easily compete on a performance level with the 4770k at these speeds.

CPUz Validation is available over here.

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 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 staying with Windows 7 for the time being.

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.

We are using an AMD HD7990 MALTA graphics card, testing at 1920×1080, 2560×1600 and 5760×1080 resolutions. We are using a 30 inch Apple Cinema HD screen and three 24 inch Dell 2411 monitors for this review today.

MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX System
Processor: Intel Core i7 4770k (3.5ghz & 4.5ghz)
Motherboard: MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX
Cooler: Corsair H100i (performance mode)
Graphics: AMD HD7990
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
PCMark8
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 (DX 11)
GRID 2 (DX 11)
Sleeping Dogs (DX 11)
Far Cry 3 (DX 11)
Crysis 3 (DX 11)
BioShock Infinite (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.

Some 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 overclock translates into a very noticeable boost in PCMARK 7, increasing the score from 6,214 points to 7,056 points.

PCMark 8 is the latest version in the popular series of PC benchmarking tools. Improving on previous releases, PCMark 8 includes battery life measurement tools and new tests using popular applications from Adobe and Microsoft. Whether you are looking for long battery life, or maximum power, PCMark 8 helps you find the devices that offer the perfect combination of efficiency and performance for your needs.



The 1GHZ overclock doesn't translate into a noticeable score increase in the latest PCMark 8.

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 system scores very well, thanks to the powerful AMD HD7990 Malta graphics card.

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 system scores 14,991 points, which is fantastic.

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.

Futuremark say “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.”


A very strong showing in the latest 3DMark – scoring 11,233 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 test with the settings above – at both 1920×1080 and 2560×1600.


The system scores very highly in this benchmark, averaging 86 frames per second at 2560×1600 and almost 147 frames per second at 1920×1080.

Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.

We used the settings above at both 1920×1080 and 2560×1600.


The system scores highly, as we would expect, averaging 75.5 frames per second at 2560×1600 and 126.1 frames per second at 1920×1080.

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 system scores exceptionally well, and we noticed a slight increase over other systems we tested at the weekend, in regards to memory performance. Both ASUS and Gigabyte boards scored between 25Gb/s and 26Gb/s in the memory bandwidth test. The MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX board comes out on top, over 30GB/s in both tests.

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 Core i7 4770k is a powerful processor, scoring 8.48 points at stock speeds. When overclocked to 4.5ghz, this increases to 9.73 points, matching the Core i7 2700k @ 5ghz.

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 4770k is a good processor for rendering, showing improvements over the previous 3770k design. When overclocked to 4.5ghz the rendering time is decreased noticeably.

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.

The 4770k is particularly strong at video encoding. At 3.5ghz without hardware acceleration it takes 8 minutes and 50 seconds to complete the task. When using the HD7990 under hardware acceleration, a further 50 seconds are reduced from the encoding time.

Overclocking the 4770k to 4.5ghz reduces the time to 7 minutes and 39 seconds. Enabling the HD7990 for hardware acceleration at 4.5ghz reduces the time further to 7 minutes – one of the best times we have achieved to date.
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.

Performance via the USB 3.0 ports is excellent, scoring almost 260 MB/s and 177MB/s in sequential read and write tests.

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.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark shows similar results in the read test, peaking at 260 MB/s. The write performance results are much lower however, dropping to around 65 MB/s.

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

The drive scores well – especially considering there is data stored on it for some of our tests today. The 4K QD32 results are excellent.

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 drive peaks around 560 MB/s read and 510 MB/s write, as we would expect. The controller on the MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX gets a clean bill of health from us.

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.

Lesser systems would struggle to maintain >30 frame rates at these settings, but the MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX system build averages close to 70 frames per second, dropping to just above 50 frames per second when the action heats up.

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 are using the highest possible settings at 2560×1600, including the high resolution texture pack.

This is a particularly demanding engine at these high settings. The MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX system manages to maintain a smooth frame rate at all times, averaging 47 frames per second.
Grid 2 is the sequel to the racing video game Race Driver: Grid.  It was developed and published by Codemasters. The game includes numerous real world locations such as Paris, numerous United States locations, and many more, and also includes motor vehicles spanning four decades. In addition, it includes a new handling system that developer Codemasters has dubbed ‘TrueFeel', which aims to hit a sweet spot between realism and accessibility.

We selected a series of very high-ultra settings as shown above.

For the first test we selected a 8x MSAA configuration, shown above.

Frame rates are extremely smooth, averaging around 130 frames per second. There is clearly plenty of headroom available for higher image quality settings, so we went back into the game configuration settings to increase quality further.

We opted for a 8f16x EQAA configuration.

The frame rates drop to around 80 frames per second average, with a minimum frame rate of 62. In real world terms this game is perfectly smooth at all times, and looks stunning at these settings.

Far Cry 3 is a first-person shooter, which also features role-playing game elements including experience points, skill trees, and a crafting system. The player has the ability to take cover behind objects to break enemies' lines of sight and also to peek around and over cover and blindfire. The player also has the ability to perform silent “takedowns” by performing melee attacks from above, below, or close behind. The game's narrative director, Jason Vandenberghe, said that the story mode map is around ten times larger than in the game's previous installments. Players are given the ability to survey and plan out their attacks with stealth takedown combinations and also tag enemies with the camera in order to track their movement once they break the player's line of sight.

We used a combination of ultra high settings at 2560×1600 resolution. Alpha To Coverage was set to ‘enhanced'. MSAA Anti Aliasing was set to x2. SSAO Method was set to HDAO. Field of view was set to 73.15

Excellent results, often holding a 50+ frame rate. The most intensive action sections drop to around 33-40 frames per second. Smooth gameplay throughout.

In Crysis 3 players take on the role of Prophet as he returns to New York in 2047, 24 years after the events of Crysis 2. He discovers the city has been encased in a giant Nanodome created by the corrupt CELL corporation. The New York City Liberty Dome is a veritable urban rainforest teeming with overgrown trees, dense swamplands and raging rivers. Within the Liberty Dome, seven distinct and treacherous environments become known as the Seven Wonders. Prophet is said to be on a “revenge mission” after uncovering the truth behind CELL’s motives for building the quarantined Nanodomes.

We use the ‘very high’ preset at a resolution of 5760×1080, no MSAA is enabled.

A demanding game, especially across three 24 inch screen. Still the system manages to maintain smooth frame rates, averaging 46 frames per second and dropping to just over 30 frames per second in the most intensive sections.
BioShock Infinite is the third installment in the BioShock series, and though it is not part of the storyline of previous BioShock games, it does feature similar gameplay concepts and themes. The game’s concept and setting were developed by Irrational’s creative lead, Ken Levine, who took inspiration from both historical events at the turn of the 20th century, as well as more recent ones at the time such as the ”Occupy” protests.

Smooth frame rates throughout, averaging 60 fps and dropping to 45 in a couple of the environmental locations.

G.Skill sent us over a 16GB kit of their 2,933mhz memory for some testing. We therefore wanted to add a little section close to the end of this review to ascertain Z87 MPOWER MAX memory performance when pushed past 2,400mhz and even 2,666mhz – the previous standards for ultra high performance memory.

We will be reviewing this memory in a standalone review at later date.

The G.Skill kit arrives in a large brown box, with a dedicated fan cooling system included. There was a phase when every memory manufacturer was including these as standard, but they seem to have lost popularity recently.

The G.Skill Trident X 2,933mhz memory is very attractively design, featuring red and black heatspreaders.

The Trident X 2933mhz memory is set at 12-14-14-35 timings @ 1.65 volts. According to the sticker, it is ‘Intel XMP ready’.

The MSI Z87 MPOWER Max took a couple of restarts after we removed the Corsair memory – it was clearly trying to post with a previous XMP profile and had to rectify the situation. We didn't need to reset the CMOS, so this is a good indication that the board will self correct other issues.

The Z87 MPOWER Max defaulted the G.Skill memory to 1333mhz.

Loading the XMP profile was easy enough, but the system would not post at all, even though the profile is clearly shown in the BIOS. We had to get creative again.

We set the ram frequency to auto and overclocked the system via the BLCK base clock.

At 120mhz the memory was showing 2880mhz. A successful post was easy enough.

We increased the frequency to get a final memory boot speed of 2933mhz. We also had to increase the memory voltage to 1.65V manually.

This memory has yet to work in any of the Z87 motherboards we have tested, direct via the XMP profile. Overclocking manually is the only way to achieve the desired speeds. Not ideal for an inexperienced user who might get confused.
The MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX is certainly able to battle against the ASUS and GIGABYTE boards we have reviewed last weekend. The box presentation is fantastic and the bundle is the best of the three we have had for review. MSI include everything but the kitchen sink with the MPOWER MAX.

The board layout is fantastic, and we like how MSI have added the ASMedia ASM1061 controller to increase SATA drive support from six, to eight. If you have many mechanical storage drives and a couple of Solid State Drives this will be certainly welcomed.

The Z87 chipset no longer has SATA 3Gbps ports – hugely beneficial as it means you no longer have to check that you are using the full speed ports for modern Solid State drives.

The MSI bios is almost as impressive as the new, completely overhauled Gigabyte BIOS. While it might not be as pretty, or as customisable – it is intuitive and everything works as expected. We had no problems getting stability with our 4770k at 4.5ghz, the everyday limit for this particular sample.

We got a post at 4.9ghz, but the processor requires too much voltage and the Corsair H100i in performance mode couldn't cope with the PRIME load temperatures (over 100c). There is no point overclocking to a level which will damage the hardware. With high level cooling and a better Intel sample, we would imagine close to 5ghz would be possible with this board.

We had no problems running the Corsair Vengeance memory at 2,400mhz via the XMP profile, although the latest G.Skill Trident X 2,933mhz memory wouldn't post with the default XMP profile enabled. We had to manually overclock the whole system to push the memory to 2,900mhz and beyond.

To be fair, the XMP profile on the 2,933mhz G.Skill memory hasn't worked in the ASUS or Gigabyte Z87 boards either, however the ASUS board would post at 2,400mhz with the XMP profile enabled while the other boards would fail then recover to 1,333mhz with an alert.

The MSI board seemed the easiest to overclock, as we could post at 4.5ghz by simply increasing the CPU voltage to 1.225v after changing the turbo multipliers for each core ratio limit. None of the other BIOS power settings needed adjustment to get complete stability at the 1ghz overclocked settings.

We have mentioned before that we haven't been hugely impressed with the 4770k processor when compared to the last generation 3770k. Intel are focusing on power management and while the 4770k is more powerful on a clock per clock basis, we have found that the 3770k samples we have all hit 4.8ghz or higher. When you have a 400mhz-500mhz clock advantage any initial benefits are negated.

We have been chatting with system builders and retailers such as PCSPECIALIST and ARIA over the last week and they are releasing overclocked systems between 4.2ghz and 4.4ghz. We have actually already reviewed one of them, over here.

There is simply too much of a stable variable from processor to processor to push any higher.

Integrated graphics performance may be a huge step forward for Intel, but gamers buying performance oriented motherboards like the MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX will be pairing up the 4770k with a discrete solution.

If you are looking for a brand new system upgrade, and want a stable, highly overclockable motherboard with a plethora of connectivity and features then the MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX should be right at the top of your shortlist. ARIA are stocking the MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX for £218.99 inc vat.

Pros:

• fantastic bundle.
• built to overclock.
• excellent memory performance with manual overclocking.
• great BIOS design.
• recovered well automatically from failed BIOS settings.

Cons:

• didn't accept the 2,933mhz XMP profile on the G.Skill memory.
• stiff competition from the likes of Gigabyte and ASUS.

Kitguru says: We love this board – for the price it offers exceptionally good value for money.

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