MSI Z87M Gaming mATX Motherboard Review

We will outline the performance increases that can be obtained from using the MSI Z87M Gaming 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 ASRock's Fatal1ty Z87 Killer motherboard. The maximum overclocked configuration achieved with each board was a 4500MHz (45 x 100MHz) processor frequency and 2133MHz CL9 memory speed.

MSI's Z87M Gaming carries forward its narrow 3DMark 11 lead into the overclocked results. As was the case with the stock tests, the differences between each board's results are negligible enough to call their performances identical.

With both motherboards being used to take a 4770K to 4.5GHz, Cinebench performance is close enough to call the result a tie.

Metro: Last Light's obscure results continued through to overclocking tests. This time the frame rate of MSI's Z87M Gaming dropped by a frame per second, despite the only change being a 600MHz higher CPU clock speed.

At the moment we will cautiously suggest that the Metro: Last Light data can currently be ignored. We will gather more data with other Z87 motherboards to gain an insight into the benchmark's reliability and, if required, remove it from our testing.

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