MSI Z170A XPower Gaming Titanium Edition Review

1. Introduction2. MSI Z170A XPower Gaming Titanium Edition: Packaging and Bundle3. MSI Z170A XPower Gaming Titanium Edition: Board Layout and Features4. MSI Z170 UEFI5. MSI Z170 GAMING Software6. Testing Methodology7. Tests: System-related8. Tests: Processor-related9. Tests: Gaming-related10. Tests: Motherboard-related11. Overclocking: Frequencies12. Overclocking: Performance13. Technical: Power Consumption14. Closing Thoughts15. View All Pages

Intel's Skylake processors are just the latest Intel CPU architecture to see many of the critical system operations handled by the processor. As such, benchmarking a motherboard becomes more of a test to certify that the part operates correctly and meets the anticipated performance levels.

We will be outlining the MSI Z170A XPower Gaming Titanium Edition motherboard's performance with the Core i7-6700K CPU at its stock frequency (4.2GHz due to forced turbo). Overclocked performance will be outlined later in the review.

By default, the MSI Z170A XPower Gaming Titanium Edition motherboard applies multi-core turbo (MCT) and forces the 6700K to a constant 4.2GHz when XMP is enabled. This will be displayed as the ‘stock’ setting.

MSI's board positioned the BCLK slightly off a dead-100MHz level, which resulted in 10MHz and 8MHz increases in the CPU and memory clocks, respectively.

Our multimeter recorded a VCore delivery of 1.230V under a CPU-wide (CPU cores, FPU, and caches) in AIDA64. Prime95 saw the voltage hover around the 1.9V mark while games put the CPU around the 1.21V level. Idle CPU voltage was heavily dynamic and jumped around the 0.9-1.0V level.

We noticed that CPU-Z tends to display a VCore reading of around 10mV more than the actual delivery measured via a multimeter.

Z170 Motherboard Test System:

• Processor: Intel Core i7-6700K (4.2GHz forced turbo).
• Memory: 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200MHz 16-18-18-36 DDR4 @ 1.35V.
• Graphics Card: Nvidia GTX 980 Ti.
• System Drive: 250GB Crucial BX100 SSD.
• CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i.
• Case: NZXT Phantom 630.
• Power Supply: Seasonic Platinum 1000W.
• Operating System: Windows 7 Professional with SP1 64-bit.

Compared Z170 Motherboards:

• ASRock Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming K6+.
• Asus Maximus VIII Hero.
• Gigabyte Z170XP-SLI

Software:

• MSI Z170A XPower Gaming Titanium Edition BIOS v1.10 (latest public BIOS).
• GeForce 353.30 VGA drivers.
• Intel 11.0 ME drivers.

Tests:

• SiSoft Sandra 2015 SP2b (v2142) – Processor arithmetic and memory bandwidth (System)
• 3DMark 1.5.915 – Fire Strike Ultra (System)
• Cinebench R15 – All-core CPU benchmark (CPU)
• 7-Zip 15.05 beta – Manual video archival (CPU)
• HandBrake 0.10.2 – Convert 1.23GB 1080P game recording using the High Profile setting and MP4 container (CPU)
• Grand Theft Auto V – 1920 x 1080, near-maximum quality (Gaming)
• Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor – 1920 x 1080, ultra quality (Gaming)
• Metro: Last Light – 1920 x 1080, very high quality (Gaming)
• Tomb Raider – 1920 x 1080, maximum quality, TressFX disabled (Gaming)
• ATTO – SATA 6Gbps, USB 3.0, M.2 transfer rates (Motherboard)
• RightMark Audio Analyzer – General audio performance test (Motherboard)

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