MSI Z87I Gaming AC Mini-ITX Motherboard Review

We will outline the performance increases that can be obtained from using the MSI Z87I Gaming AC motherboard to overclock our system. Our overclocked processor frequency was 4.5GHz and memory speed was 2133MHz.

As a performance comparison, we have included the overclocked results from five other Z87 motherboards. The maximum overclocked configuration achieved with each board was a 4500MHz (45 x 100MHz) processor frequency and 2133MHz CL9 memory speed.

When overclocked, MSI's Z87I Gaming AC delivers strong performance in 3DMark 11.

Our Cinebench tests prove that the mITX motherboard can compete with larger alternatives, even when operating in an overclocked state.

Metro: Last Light performance doesn't scale with CPU frequency. In fact, the Z87I Gaming AC's frame rate seems to drop by a marginal amount (compared to the stock speed result), although the difference is negligible when rounding is factored in.

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