ASRock Z68 Extreme 4 (Intel Z68) Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. ASRock Z68 Extreme 4 (Bundle)3. ASRock Z68 Extreme 4 (board)4. ASRock Z68 Extreme 4 (Bios and overclocking)5. Testing Methodology6. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark7. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage8. Synthetic: 3DMark 119. Synthetic: PCMark Vantage10. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra11. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit12. Synthetic: CrystalDiskMark & HDTach 3.0.4.013. Image Quality: HQV Benchmark 2.014. Real World: BluRay Playback with Cyberlink PowerDVD 10 Ultra15. Real World: Flash HD Performance16. Real World: Media Encoding with Cyberlink MediaEspresso17. Real World: File Copying with Kingston HyperMax 3.018. 1 screen gaming: Far Cry 219. 1 screen gaming: Resident Evil 520. 1 screen gaming: Battlefield Bad Company 221. 1 screen gaming: Tom Clancy HAWX 222. 1 screen gaming: Alien V Predator23. 1 screen gaming: Lost Planet 224. 1 screen gaming: Metro 203325. 1 screen gaming: Dead Space 226. Four Screen gaming: Batman Arkham Asylum27. Four screen gaming: Battleforge28. 4 screen gaming: Crysis Warhead29. 4 screen gaming: Devil May Cry 430. 4 screen gaming: Left 4 Dead 231. Lucid Virtu & Intel Smart Response Technology32. Closing Thoughts33. View All Pages

Intel's Sandybridge has been dominating the headlines in 2011 with a heady combination of performance and competitive pricing. The H67 chipset enabled on-CPU graphics and Intel's new Quick sync transcoding engine and the P67 chipset delivered great overclocking capabilities with the new K series processors. The Z68 is set to merge the capabilities into a single platform with other enhancements to sweeten the deal.

In the space of four short months, the new processors have delivered class leading performance at a fraction of the cost of the high end 12 threaded 970, 980x and 990x. The Intel Core i7 2600k in particular offers amazing value for money as in certain situations it can give the higher end processors a run for their money …. after all not all programs use 12 threads.

Sadly, the P67 platform has been tainted a little by the Cougar Point chipset SATA port issues, which could cause long term reliability problems. Intel and all their partners had to rush to support users and replace millions of boards and according to the latest reports, Intel are a billion dollars out of pocket. If you get a new P67 motherboard just make sure it is the B3 revision (which is fixed).

Fast forward to this week, and Intel have released the Z68 platform to reviewers. Today we have decided to focus on a company who don't often get the headlines, but who over the last year have been releasing some really solid, fully featured boards to the enthusiast audience. ASrock are releasing their Z68 Pro 3 and Z68 Extreme 4, and today we are focusing on the higher end Extreme 4 edition. KitGuru has been using several ASRock Extreme boards over the last year, and they really are bulletproof products.

We don't see the Z68 being a ‘revolutionary' new product to lure away current P67 owners, but if you are in the market for a new system, then the Z68 makes more sense.

ASRock Z68 Extreme 4 specifications:

• ASRock DuraCaps (2.5 x longer life time), 100% Japan-made high-quality Conductive Polymer Capacitors
• Digi Power, Advanced V8 Power Phase Design
• Supports Intel K-Series unlocked CPU
• Supports Intel Smart Response Technology (click here to download required BIOS and driver)
• Supports Dual Channel DDR3 2133(OC)
• Integrated PLX PEX8608 chip onboard to offer sufficient PCI-E lanes
• Supports ATI Quad CrossFireX , 3-Way CrossFireX and CrossFireX
• Supports NVIDIA Quad SLI and SLI
• Supports Intel HD Graphics with Built-in Visuals
• Multi VGA Output options: D-Sub, DVI-D, HDMI and DisplayPort
• 2 x Front USB 3.0 ports, 2 x Rear USB 3.0 ports, 4 x SATA3 connectors, 1 x eSATA3 connector
• Supports ASRock XFast USB Technology, Graphical UEFI, Lucid Virtu
• Supports ASRock Extreme Tuning Utility (AXTU), On/Off Play, Instant Boot, Instant Flash, Good Night LED, APP Charger, SmartView
• Combo Cooler Option (C.C.O.)
• 7.1 CH HD Audio with Content Protection (Realtek ALC892 Audio Codec), THX TruStudio PRO
• Free Software: Cyberlink MediaEspresso 6.5 Trial
• Free Bundle : 1 x Front USB 3.0 Panel, 1 x Rear USB 3.0 Bracket, 1 x 3.5mm Audio Cable

The ASRock Z68 Extreme 4 arrives in a box created to look like anodised aluminum.

The bundle is comprehensive, with an IDE cable, SATA cable, software setup guide, quick installation guide and driver CD. There are also two molex to SATA power connectors, an SLI bridge, I/O backplate and 3.5mm audio cable. There is also a 3.5 inch bay provided to install in the front of the PC which offers two USB 3.0 ports. ASRock also supply a bracket to fit this into the back of the PC.

An interesting addition is the inclusion of a 3.5 mm audio jack which allows music to be played from a portable audio device and through the PC without the need for it to be turned on. It is a worthwhile extra which some people may find useful.

The ASRock Z68 Extreme 4 is an attractively designed board, featuring large metallic style heatsinks to help with cooling performance.

While the colour scheme is rather subdued, the board layout is very strong with offering good positioning on connectivity. The CPU socket is clear from obstruction, meaning that fitting oversized CPU coolers such as the Noctua NH D14 proves painfree. We actually fitted a D14 cooler for this review.

There are two PCI, two PCI E 1x and three PCI-E 16x slots on this board. The top two PCI-E slots will run at 16x if only one card is fitted. If you use two cards, then they drop to 8x speed. If you want 3 way crossfire, then the last card drops to 4x.

Many people immediately wince when they see a two card setup drop to 8x, but in reality there is very little difference in the real world. We have looked at this before and the performance hit, is minimal, if any, right now. That said, if you want to run graphics in a three way configuration , then the 4x bandwidth drop will prove a problem. X58, or the upcoming X79 will prove a better alternative if this is a high priority on your list.

ASrock also recommend that you use the 4 pin Molex connector when running more than a 200watt card demand in CF or SLI, seen in the image above right. We saw no difference with it connected (with high end CFx and SLI builds), but in some situations it might help with stability.

Along the bottom of the board are connectors for front panel audio, COM1, floppy drive, Infrared, 1394 FireWire, three USB 2.0 headers (dark blue), USB 3.0 header (lighter blue) and the usual chassis headers. Above this are instant power on, reset buttons and a diagnostic readout to help deal with potential issues.

This board is supplied with eight SATA ports, the SATA 2 are blue and the SATA 3 (6Gbps) are white. The onboard controller handles the blue SATA connectors and the nearest SATA 3 ports. The two ports far right are controlled by the Marvell SE9120 controller (they are marked M1 and M2).

The board has plenty of fan headers positioned on all corners and there is a main 24 pin power connector, next to the four ram slots. It supports 1066/1333/1600/1866/2133mhz DDR3 memory with a dual channel configuration up to 32GB total.

Next to the CPU socket is an 8 pin power connector with both 3 and 4 pin fan headers close by. The Extreme 4 heatsinks are large, but don't interfere with cooler fitting along any of the axis.

Connectivity is strong with PS/2 keyboard support, two USB 2.0 ports, DVI-D, VGA, Displayport and HDMI out. A handy reset CMOS button is also included. Two more USB 2.0 ports are next to a 1394 Firewire port and below that there is an eSATA port. Two USB 3.0 ports are set to the right, under a Broadcom BCM57781 chip. 7.1 audio is supported via the Realtek ALC892 chip with additional THX TruStudio PRO capabilities.

The bios, as we hoped is fully featured and offers all the settings we would expect from an enthusiast level product. There are many settings for overclocking and we managed to get our 2500k to 5ghz, and the 2600k to 4.8ghz with a Noctua NH D14 cooler. This is pretty much just like every other P67 style board we have reviewed lately and we didn't encounter any issues over the course of the last week of testing.

As with many of the newer bios designs you are given full control of the mouse, making the whole experience much more intuitive.

Overall system validation (with the 2500k installed) is available over here

Today we will be testing the ASrock Z68 Extreme 4 with an Intel Core i7 2600k in an overclocked state @ 4.8ghz with various configurations of video card installed.

Processor: Intel Core i7 2600k @ 4.8ghz
Cooler: Noctua NH D14
Motherboard: ASrock Z68 Extreme 4 (& Asus P8P67 Deluxe for some compares)
Memory: ADATA 8GB DDR3 1600mhz gaming memory
Drives: Crucial 128GB Real SSD & 2TB Samsung storage drive // OCZ Vertex 3 240GB (CrystalDiskMark & HDTach)
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W PSU
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay SBC-06d1S-U
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Monitors: 3x Dell U2410 and Dell U3011 Ultrasharp.

Graphics cards:

AMD HD6990
Nvidia GTX580
Nvidia GTX570
AMD HD6970
AMD HD6950

Software:
Windows 7 64 Bit Enterprise Edition
Catalyst 11.4
Forceware 266.66
Fraps Professional
SiSoft Sandra
CPUz
GPUz
CPUID Hardware Monitor Professional
Cinebench R11.5 64 bit
CyberLink PowerDvd 10 Ultra
Cyberlink Media Espresso
CrystalMark
HDTach
HQV Benchmark V 2.0
3DMark 11
Unigine Heaven Benchmark

Games:
Far Cry 2
Resident Evil 5
Battlefield Bad Company 2
Tom Clancy HAWX 2
Alien V Predator
Lost Planet 2
Metro 2033
Dead Space 2
Batman Arkham Asylum
Battleforge
Crysis Warhead
Devil May Cry 4
Left4Dead 2

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests across five closely matched runs and averages out the results to get an accurate median figure.

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 at 1080p so that all video cards can be compared throughout our reviews. Obviously driver updates might enhance performance slightly over time, but as a rule, its a useful way for us to present the findings.

Results fall in line with our experiences of the high performance P67 boards we have reviewed in the past, with only very minor variation evident with the results.

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.

Again, these are very healthy results with a variety of high end graphics cards, and indicative of the higher performing P67 motherboards.

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.

Just under 14,000 points with two HD6990's in CrossfireX which is a class leading result. A single GTX580 scores over 6,100 points which shows good throughput performance with both Nvidia and AMD hardware.

PCMark Vantage is a PC benchmark suite designed for Windows Vista offering one-click simplicity for casual users and detailed, professional grade testing for industry, press and enthusiasts.

A PCMark score is a measure of your computer’s performance across a variety of common tasks such as viewing and editing photos, video, music and other media, gaming, communications, productivity and security.

From desktops and laptops to workstations and gaming rigs, by comparing your PCMark Vantage score with other similar systems you can find the hardware and software bottlenecks that stop you getting more from your PC.

Great figures from the ASrock board with GTX580 handling the graphics.

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

Falling in line with our expectations, a very good set of results from the Core i7 2600k @ 4.8ghz.

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 2600k is no rendering slouch scoring more at 4.8ghz than a reference clocked 980x at twice the price. An overclocked 2600k makes for a great foundation if you are heavily into 3D rendering.

A very important part of overall system responsiveness is down to hard drive performance. We use two of our favourite benchmark utilities Crystalmark X64 Edition and HD Tach to rate the SSD and HDD.

Incredible performance from the OCZ Vertex 3, dominating this test, even with small uncompressed files.

I have been using HDTach for many years now and always find it is an invaluable benchmark to ascertain potential levels of performance. HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random access read/write storage devices such as hard drives, removable drives (ZIP/JAZZ), flash devices, and RAID arrays. HD Tach uses custom device drivers and other low level Windows interfaces to bypass as many layers of software as possible and get close to the physical performance of the device.

HD Tach measures an average speed of over 376MB/s which is impressive and the joint highest score yet from a single drive with this specific benchmark.

HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.

There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.

This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.

Read our initial analysis over here.

	AMD HD6990
Dial	4
Dial with static pattern	5
Gray Bars	5
Violin	5
Stadium 2:2	5
Stadium 3:2	5
Horizontal Text Scroll	5
Vertical Text Scroll	5
Transition to 3:2 Lock	5
Transition to 2:2 Lock	0
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video	5
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video	5
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed	5
5:5 FPS Animation	5
6:4 12 FPS Animation	5
8:7 8 FPS Animation	5
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)	5
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)	5
Random Noise: Sailboat	5
Random Noise: Flower	5
Random Noise: Sunrise	5
Random Noise: Harbour Night	5
Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text	5
Roller Coaster	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Bridge Traffic	5
Luminance Frequency Bands	5
Chrominance Frequency Bands	5
Vanishing Text	5
Resolution Enhancement	15
Theme Park	5
Driftwood	5
Ferris Wheel	5
Skin Tones	7
Total	196

A very high level of image quality from the HD6990 and the latest Catalyst driver.

Our good friends at Cyberlink kindly supplied the software for our BluRay and conversion tests.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 10 is one of the finest solutions for the BluRay experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the new Extended Bluray Disc of Avatar, one of our favourite sci-fi films in recent years.

The overclocked Core i7 2600k has no problem with 1080p Bluray content, with an average of only 9% utilisation. Exactly the same CPU utilisation as the excellent Asus P8P67 Deluxe board.

Fantastic results from the ASRock Z68 Extreme 4 system, with the CPU load peaking at a maximum of 19 percent for a very short time.

Many people using this system will be enjoying Flash related content so we feel it is important to test with some of the more demanding material available freely online. Full hardware acceleration is enabled.

A Core i7 2600k really doesn't struggle to deal with high definition flash content, averaging only 5 percent CPU usage. This is directly comparable against the Asus P8P67 Deluxe board with the same processor installed.

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 newest version which has been optimised for Sandybridge processors.

Nvidia Cuda acceleration is disabled, then enabled. Both times are recorded.

9 minutes and 4 seconds with hardware acceleration disabled is a very good result, one of the best you are likely to see. When we enable the GTX580 hardware acceleration however the time is reduced significantly to 7 minutes and 23 seconds. It is worth mentioning that when using an ATOM powered system, this same test takes 1 hour and 20 minutes.

We are now going to test the USB 3.0 and 2.0 speed, so we used one of the fastest drives we have, the Kingston HyperX Max 3.0 128GB, which is an Toshiba based SSD product within a USB 3.0 capable enclosure.

We copied a 3.9GB MKV file to and from the Kingston and Crucial drives.

Great results, and as fast as we have seen across the USB 3.0 bus.

Far Cry 2 (commonly abbreviated as “FC2 or “fc2″) is an open-ended first-person shooter developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 21, 2008 in North America and on October 23, 2008 in Europe and Australia. It was made available on Steam on October 22, 2008. Crytek, the developers of the original game, were not involved in the development of Far Cry 2.

Ubisoft has marketed Far Cry 2 as the true sequel to Far Cry, though the sequel has very few noticeable similarities to the original game. Instead, it features completely new characters and setting, as well as a new style of gameplay that allows the player greater freedom to explore different African landscapes such as deserts, jungles, and savannas. The game takes place in a modern-day East African nation in a state of anarchy and civil war. The player takes control of a mercenary on a lengthy journey to locate and assassinate “The Jackal,” a notorious arms dealer.

Far Cry 2 is still a popular game and the open world environment can be taxing on even the latest hardware available today.

Settings: 1920×1200, D3D10, Disable Artificial Intelligence(No), Full Screen, Anti-Aliasing(8x), VSync(No), Overall Quality(Ultra High), Vegetation(Very High), Shading(Ultra High), Terrain(Ultra High), Geometry(Ultra High), Post FX(High), Texture(Ultra High), Shadow(Ultra High), Ambient(High), Hdr(Yes), Bloom(Yes), Fire(Very High), Physics(Very High), RealTrees(Very High)

The results with Far Cry 2 indicate that the board is just as good as the P67, with only slight variation between some of the results.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

Gaming performance is showing a good start with the Direct X 10 powered Resident Evil 5 scaling well as we move up the range of high end graphics cards.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2, released in March 2010 by Electronics Arts, is the most successful DirectX 11 title so far. Even though it contains a full single-player campaign during which the player has to work with a squad to secure a secret weapon, the game is most well known for its fast paced, exciting multiplayer squad action.

Bad Company 2 is a demanding game, proving to be a harder test for the lower end boards. Once we get to the GTX580 however the performance levels lead to a perfectly playable experience at these settings.

Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style flight action game developed by Ubisoft Romania and published by Ubisoft. After the events of the first game, the H.A.W.X squadron is sent to Middle East, where a high level of violence is being registered, and the appearance of various insurgents leaders in various hotspots. The team also has to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Russian nuclear weapons. The player will be controlling three groups: one American (Hunter), one British (Munro) and one Russian (Sokov), each with its own pilots and supporting characters. There will also be references to other characters in the Tom Clancy universe.

We are testing in full DX11 mode with all settings to maximum.

HAWX 2, is an nVidia favourite because it isn't often that a GTX580 SLI setup will match two HD6990's in QuadFireX. That said, all the cards on test today are more than capable of powering this engine at these settings.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 1080p resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on. We use this with most of our graphics card testing so cards are comparible throughout reviews.

Alien v Predator is a demanding Direct X 11 title although with the higher end cards on test today there are no performance problems. The scaling is good and indicates that the platform is on par with the P67 boards.

Lost Planet 2 is a third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the sequel to Lost Planet: Extreme Condition which is also made by Capcom, taking place ten years after the events of the first game, on the same fictional planet. The story takes place back on E.D.N. III 10 years after the events of the first game. The snow has melted to reveal jungles and more tropical areas that have taken the place of more frozen regions. The plot begins with Mercenaries fighting against Jungle Pirates.

After destroying a mine, the Mercenaries continue on to evacuate the area, in which a Category-G Akrid appears and attacks them. After being rescued, they find out their evacuation point (Where the Category-G appeared) was a set-up and no pick up team awaited them. Lost Planet 2 runs on the MT-Framework 2.0, an updated version of the engine used in several Capcom-developed games.

We are testing in DX11 mode with all settings on the highest. Direct X 11 features are on high.

Lost Planet 2 is another intensive Direct X title however all the cards we tested were capable of delivering playable frame rates. Once we get to the GTX580, higher resolutions and image quality settings could be used without a problem.

Metro 2033 is an action-oriented video game with a combination of survival horror and first-person shooter elements. The game is based on the novel Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. It was developed by 4A Games in Ukraine and released in March 2010 for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows.

The game utilizes multi-platform 4A Engine, running on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Windows. There is some contention regarding whether the engine is based on the pre-release X-Ray engine (as claimed by Sergiy Grygorovych, the founder of GSC Game World, as well as users who have seen the 4A Engine SDK screenshots, citing visual similarities, shared resources, and technical evaluation of the pre-release 4A Engine demo conducted at the request of GSC Game World), or whether the engine is an original development (as claimed by 4A Games and Oles’ Shiskovtsov in particular) who claims it would have been impractical to retrofit the X-ray engine with console support). The PC version includes exclusive features such as DirectX 11 support and has been described as “a love letter to PC gamers” because of the developers’ choice “to make the PC version [especially] phenomenal”.

The lower end boards struggle to maintain 25> frame rates at these settings. This is a very demanding title.

Dead Space 2 is a survival horror third-person shooter. The player controls Isaac Clarke from a third-person point of view, looking over the character’s right shoulder. The game features no HUD elements, relying on holograms projected from the player character and his weapons to show information such as messages and ammunition count, respectively. Player health and stasis is shown by a visual indicators located on Isaac’s back. Isaac must fight an alien organism that infects and takes control of human corpses, turning them into “Necromorphs”, mutating their bodies.

Necromorphs must be dismembered as the alien organism controls host bodies via tentacles extending into their limbs. Other, larger types of Necromorphs that cannot be dismembered will often have yellow, glowing pustules, indicating weak spots. Occasionally, when an enemy gets close enough to Isaac, they will grab a hold of him, and the player must repeatedly press a key to fend off the enemy, with failure to do so leading to death of the player character.

CPU limiting is a problem with this undemanding engine. Still, every card we tested was more than capable of powering Dead Space 2 at these settings.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is played as an over-the-shoulder, third-person perspective action-adventure game. The player controls Batman as he makes his way around the island and structures of Arkham Asylum. In addition to running, jumping and crouching, Batman is also able to glide from heights using his cape, and use his grapple gun to ascend short heights or escape and hide from foes onto gargoyle statues. In order to track Joker and other enemies, the player can switch in and out of “detective mode,” which activates special visors in Batman’s Cowl. In this mode, most of the game world is rendered in darker colors, but objects of interest and people are highlighted, including limited x-ray ability to detect the location of people.

Special objects with which Batman can interact, either directly or using various gadgets gained over the course of the game, are also highlighted. In some sections of the game, the detective mode is augmented to detect compounds, fingerprints, and other clues, which are used to direct the player to the next location to explore.

An older, but classic game, which still is great fun to play. No problems with the cards at 7680 resolution.

BattleForge is a video game developed by EA Phenomic and published by Electronic Arts. It was released on Windows in March 2009. A demo was released in the same month. BattleForge is a card based RTS. It revolves around trading, buying and winning through means of micro-transactions. Micro-transactions are not required for playing the game, only for buying new cards.

It supports DirectX 11 providing full support for hardware tesselation.

Good CrossfireX scaling at 7680 resolution, averaging 82 frames per second throughout the testings.

Crysis Warhead, like the original Crysis, is set in the near future when an ancient alien spacecraft is discovered on an island east of the Philippines. The single-player campaign has the player assume the role of former SAS Delta Force operator Sergeant Michael Sykes, referred to in-game by his call sign, Psycho. Psycho’s arsenal of futuristic weapons builds on those showcased in Crysis, with the introduction of Mini-SMGs which can be dual-wielded, a six-shot grenade launcher equipped with EMP grenades, and the destructive, short ranged Plasma Accumulator Cannon (PAX). The highly versatile Nanosuit returns. In Crysis Warhead, the player fights North Korean and extraterrestrial enemies, in many different locations, such as a tropical island jungle, inside an “Ice Sphere”, an underground mining complex, which is followed by a convoy train transporting an unknown alien object held by the North Koreans, and finally, to an airfield.

The engine is still a system killer, all these years later, but modern day hardware can finally generate the frame rates we wanted when it was released !

Crysis, the game that was used for many years to measure system performance. With a single card it proves a challenge at these settings, adding another card really makes a noticeable difference.

Devil May Cry 4 is an action game that was published and developed by Capcom in 2008 for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows platforms. The game is the fourth installment to the Devil May Cry series.

In the game, the player controls both Nero and Dante, the game’s protagonist and the series’ title character as they fight enemies in close combat using firearms, swords, and other weapons. The characters Lady and Trish from previous games in the series makes an appearance, along with new characters Nero, Kyrie, Credo, Gloria, and Agnus. The game is set after Devil May Cry but before Devil May Cry 2.

We used Super high settings with HDR on high and 8aa and 16af to improve the image quality as much as possible.

With even a single card, this game is playable at 7680×1080, although adding another certainly helps to increase the frame rates.

Left 4 Dead 2 is a cooperative first-person shooter game. It is the sequel to Valve Corporation’s award-winning Left 4 Dead.

Like the original, Left 4 Dead 2 is set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, and focuses on four survivors fighting against hordes of the infected. The survivors must fight their way through levels, interspersed with safe houses that act as checkpoints, with the goal of reaching a rescue vehicle at the campaign’s finale. The gameplay is procedurally altered by an artificial intelligence engine dubbed the “Director” that monitors the players’ performance and adjust the scenario to provide a dynamic challenge. Several new features have been introduced: new types of infected, melee weapons, and a story-arc that connects the game’s five campaigns together.

Not the most demanding game on test, but the Source engine is used in many games still played today.

Intel Smart Response Technology is included with the Z68 motherboard. This means a user can add a small solid state drive to a system already configured running a larger mechanical disk with the target goal of speeding up the read performance of data which is cached to the SSD. For people who can’t afford a larger SSD but who still need high levels of storage it seems like a handy workaround. This story we wrote last June might be an interesting read.

To take advantage of this you have to enable RAID on the Z68 chipset. When an operating system is installed on a mechanical drive a blank SSD can be used. The chipset drivers are installed and then the new Rapid Storage Technology 10.5 suite. An accelerate tab will be an option if this criteria is met, which then enables acceleration. The system is not limited to Intel drives, but they have to be 64GB or smaller.

Two options are given. Enhanced and Maximised. Enhanced will write data to the mechanical and solid state drive at the same time, limiting the write speed but offering additional power failure data recovery support. Maximised mode moves data from the mechanical drive to the Solid State Drive less frequently but in the case of failure the array needs to be moved to a new system as a pair. Data is stored in a similar manner as a RAID 0 configuration.

The technology really does work and it might suit some people who have a small SSD and don't want to deal with a tiny boot drive.

Lucid Hydra is not one of our favourite technologies. We looked at it recently when we reviewed the new Sapphire P67 Pure Black motherboard back in March and left with mainly negative impressions. Paying extra for this technology was (and is) basically a waste of money. We feel there is a lot of work still to be done before this is a viable platform, as we said on March 17th when analysing the Lucid Hydra platform on the Sapphire Motherboard.

Z68 brings Optimus technology to the desktop market. This allows the user to use both discrete and Intel's onboard GPU without the requirement of making physical system changes to the configuration. There are two modes – ‘D' and ‘I'. D is access via the discrete card and I means Integrated. Three display applications have to be installed to use this. Intel drivers are first, followed by the AMD or Nvidia driver. Finally the Lucid Virtu software is installed which supports GTX 450/Radeon 5700 series and better. Additionally, the technology allows access to the GPU computing technology to assist in tasks such as media encoding when in discrete mode.

While in theory this sounds great, in reality, anyone who has a modern graphics card already has access to this technology via Nvidia CUDA or AMD Stream. Quick tests indicate that as expected , the discrete card outperforms the Intel CPU and Virtu configuration. No shock really.

The software falls flat on its face, yet again, due to the demand on software profiles. None of the leading games we tried worked, such as Dragon Age 2 or Shogun 2. The HD6990 isn't supported and some of the titles that did work, take a very long time to load.

I really have to say it, but this technology really is such a waste of time, resources and effort – just like we said in the Sapphire P67 Pure Black motherboard review, several months ago in March. This particular product was more expensive than similar P67 motherboards available on the market at the time, so it is clear it may add some cost.

The new Z68 platform isn't a dramatic and game changing product for Intel … but to be fair we already knew it wouldn't be. It certainly isn't justified but P67 still has a certain negative stigma attached to it (after the Cougar Point SATA issues) so a fresh revision and a new move for Intel is certainly going to be seen as positive. P67 and H67 will still be on sale for some time, but there will be a gradual reshift in focus to Z68.

The biggest selling point in our opinion is the new Smart Response Technology, which is a worthwhile addition to the platform. Many people have a small Solid State drive lying in a drawer which can be put to good use now. If you are booting from a large mechanical drive, then the overall system speed boost is clearly noticeable in the real world. The plus point is that it is easily set up, via an intuitive software package. No messing around with fiddly DOS commands or confusing bios settings. Obviously this technology won't appeal to a solid state purist, because a dedicated SSD drive for boot up is still the best performance route to take.

The ASRock Z68 Extreme 4 is undoubtedly a fantastic motherboard. It is fully loaded, has a great PCB layout and is very stable, even when under high overclocking load. Power regulation is strong, and performance is just as good as the high end P67 boards we have reviewed in the past couple of months.

We certainly wouldn't advise happy P67 owners to ditch their board and opt for a new Z68 product, but if you are in the market for a new system build then we can certainly recommend the ASRock Z68 Extreme 4.

Pros:

• great overclocking capabilities
• good layout
• high level of connectivity
• stable

Cons:

• its not a ‘must have' for current P67 owners
• lucid virtu is such a waste of time

KitGuru says: A solid update to the older H67/P67 platform.

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