Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 Motherboard3. Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 Motherboard (Super High Res Gallery)4. Bios and Overclocking5. Testing Methodology6. Synthetic: PCMark 77. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage8. Synthetic: 3DMark 119. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark10. Synthetic: HQV Benchmark 2.011. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra12. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit13. Synthetic: SSD Performance14. Real World: 3D Rendering15. Real World: Media Encoding16. Real World: HandBrake 9.517. Gaming: F1 201118. Gaming: Alien V Predator19. Gaming: Resident Evil 520. Closing Thoughts21. View All Pages

When it comes to creating a quality motherboard very few manufacturers can match ASUS in regards to build quality, bios stability and overclocking capabilities. Today we are looking at their latest Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 Motherboard, based around the Z68 platform with full support for Quad SLI and Quad Crossfire graphics.

This motherboard features UASP mode, which stands for USB Attached SCSI Protocol. Asus say “With USB 3.0 Boost technology, a USB device's transmission speed is significantly increased up to 170%, adding to an already impressive fast USB 3.0 transfer speed. ASUS software automatically accelerates data speeds for compatible USB 3.0 peripherals without the need for any user interaction.”

The board also has Dual Intelligent Processors with DIGI+ VRM support. As with many of the higher end ASUS motherboards it has 12 phase power for the processor and 4 phase power for iGPU. Today we plan on testing the board in an overclocked state, after all many people buying this board will be doing the very same thing.

How does the P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 Motherboard handle in an automated overclocked state? If you aren't a bios expert is there an ‘easy one switch' setting to improve performance significantly?

Overview:

• Dual Intelligent Processors 2 with DIGI+ VRM Digital Power Design
• UEFI BIOS (EZ Mode) – Flexible & Easy BIOS Interface
• LucidLogix Virtu (Universal Switchable Graphics) – Auto Switching between Integrated Graphics and NVIDIA/AMD Cards
• Intel® Smart Response Technology – SSD Speed with HDD Capacity
• BT GO! (Bluetooth) – Diverse BT Enjoyment, New Technology Lifestyle
• GPU Boost – Push the Limits with iGPU Level Up!
• Quad USB 3.0/SATA 6Gb/s Support – Double Access, Double Convenience
• Quad-GPU SLI and Quad-GPU CrossFireX Support!

The P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 motherboard ships in a nicely styled box with the name of the product listed in white and green type. There are some key selling points along the bottom at the right of the box.

The bundle includes:

• User's manual
• ASUS Q-Shield
• 2 x SATA 3Gb/s cable(s)
• 2 x SATA 6Gb/s cable(s)
• 1 x SLI bridge(s)
• 1 x Q-connector(s) (2 in 1)
• 1 x ASUS USB 3.0 Bracket(s)

The motherboard is built around a black PCB and looks quite attractive with the blue heatsinks populated around the board. This is an ATX motherboard, measuring 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm.

The P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 is passively cooled with several chunky heatsinks cooling the VRM's and southbridge.

The board has 8 SATA ports. The three light blue ports on the left (above) are SATA 3.0 GB/s controlled by the Z68 Express Chipset. The two gray ports are SATA 6.0 GB/s and are also controlled by the Intel Z68 express chipset. the two dark blue ports on the right at controlled by the Marvell controller and are rated SATA 6.0 GB/s. The single eSATA 3.0 GB/s port is controlled by the JMicron JMB362 controller.

The Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 has 2 PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, which run at x16 in single mode, or x8/x8 in dual. There is also a single PCI Express 2.0 x 16 slot, which is black. This runs at x4 mode and is compatible with PCIe X1 and x4 devices. There are two more PCI Express 2.0 x 1 slots and two PCI slots.

The PCI e x 16_3 slot shares bandwidth with PCIe x 1_1 slot, PCIe x 1_2 slot, USB 3_34 and eSATA. The PCIe x16_3 default setting is x1 mode.

There are four DIMM slots with a maximum memory support of 32GB. The board can handle speeds of 1066mhz/ 1333 mhz / 1600 mhz / 1866 mhz (O.C.) / 2133 mhz (O.C.) and 2200mhz (O.C.). As expected, it supports Intel Extreme Memory Profiles (XMP).

Underneath these slots is an EPU and TPU switch. There is also a MEMOK button which can help rescue a non posting system.

ASUS include handy power and reset buttons along the bottom of the board, which are very useful.

Along the bottom of the board we have three USB headers, firewire headers and the front panel connector. There are plenty of fan headers scattered across the area of the PCB to cover a wide audience of enthusiast user.

The back I/O panel includes the following connectors:

• 1 x Bluetooth module(s)
• 1 x DVI
• 1 x D-Sub
• 1 x HDMI
• 1 x eSATA 3Gb/s
• 1 x LAN (RJ45) port(s)
• 2 x USB 3.0
• 6 x USB 2.0
• 1 x Optical S/PDIF out
• 6 x Audio jack(s)

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.

The ASUS UEFI bios is immediately familiar as I use their motherboards very regularly. EZ mode is the default setting as it offers just enough settings for inexperienced users to play with. You can bypass this and head into the advanced panels for more tweaks, overclocking settings and fine tuning.

The main panel gives a basic overview of the system configuration. We are using a Core Intel i7 2600k Engineering Sample today, clocked at 3.4ghz.

The AI Tweaker panel is where most of the main goodness is kept. You can push the processor and memory in this panel to squeeze as much performance as possible from the system.

The Advanced panel offers many of the configuration menus to tune the processor and other components.

The monitor panel gives temperatures and fan speeds as well as offering adjustments for the Q-Fan settings.

The boot menu is used to disable or enable the main bios boot screen. The priority of the hard drives and optical drives can be set here also.

The Tool menu lets the user save configured settings, then to recall them later. The bios can also be easily flashed here, via an optical or USB drive.

We generally overclock the system to the limit to see how stable it will be under extreme circumstances. There was no problem achieving a 4.8ghz overclock with the P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 and Core i7 2600k processor but we have done this before with many other motherboards.

Today we decided to test the ‘OC Tuner' option. This automatically configures the board and processor to a ‘safe' overclocked setting. The board restarted a few times and it ended up with the settings above (4.43ghz – 103mhz bus speed). As we are using expensive Kingston 2400mhz rated QUAD Channel memory, we increased the memory multipler to 2,200mhz.

System validation is available here.

To test today we are using our bios configured setting of 4.43ghz. We will compare against a variety of systems and processors we have tested in the past, listed below.

Main Test System:

Processor: Intel Core i7 2600K @ 4.43ghz (auto overclock setting).
Motherboard: Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3
Cooler: Noctua D14
Memory: 8GB Kingston HyperX 2,400mhz DDR3 (4x2gb) @ 2200mhz
Graphics Card: AMD HD7870
Power Supply: PC Power & Cooling 600W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Cooler Master Cosmos 2
Monitors: Dell U3011, 3x Ilyama ProLite E2472HDD
Boot Drive: Patriot 240GB Wildfire

Comparison Systems:

Processor: Intel Core i7 3930K
Motherboard: Asus P9X79 WS WorkStation
Cooler: Corsair H100
Memory: 8GB Corsair Dominator GT8 2400mhz memory
Graphics Card: AMD HD7770 CrossfireX
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Cooler Master Cosmos 2
Monitors: Dell U3011, 3x Ilyama ProLite E2472HDD
Boot Drive: Crucial C300 128GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Patriot 240GB Pyro SE

Intel i7 3960X EE
Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV Extreme
Cooler: Antec H20 920
Memory: 8GB Corsair Dominator GT 2400mhz memory
Power Supply: Enermax Platimax 1200W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Lian Li PC-A77FR Aluminium Red Full Tower Case
Monitors: Dell U3011, 3x Ilyama ProLite E2472HDD
Boot Drive: Patriot WildFire 120GB
Secondary Drive: 1TB Samsung

Intel i7 3820
Motherboard: ASRock Extreme4-M
Cooler: Intel reference cooler
Memory: 8GB Corsair GTX8 @ 2133mhz
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Chassis: Lian Li PC60
Monitors: Dell U3011/La Cie 730
Boot Drive: Crucial C300
Secondary Drive: Patriot Pyro SE 240GB

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

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

The game results will be compared against our primary Kitguru graphics card workbench, which features a Core i7 970 overclocked to 4.6ghz. Specifications are below.

We test the games at real world settings, instead of 800×600 or 1024×768, because we want to see the benefits moving to this newer system will give you in the ‘real world’ at realistic, enthusiast based high resolution settings.

We know that variables will often be larger at very low resolutions, but it means very little to a gamer buying one of these systems. No one plays games at 800×600 anymore.

Main Game System for comparison:
Processor: 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)

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 system scores 5,763 points, much as we would expect with a fast overclocked processor and Solid State Drive.

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 Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 system scores slightly higher than our long term overclocked 970 system, increasing the GPU score from 24,200 to 24,832 points.

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 AMD HD7870 is a great performer and the Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 system scores a little higher than our reference 970 system @ 4.6ghz.

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 use the following settings: 1920×1080 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11.

A very close end result between the systems, scoring around 65.5 frames per second.

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 HD7870
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 score of 196 points is class leading right now, the ideal solution for high definition media playback on a big screen.

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

Overall performance scales well in both Arithmetic and Cryptographic tests. Memory bandwidth is impressive for dual channel, thanks to the aggressive 2,200mhz settings.

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.

When the 2600k is overclocked to 4.4ghz it delivers a healthy final score of just over 8.5 points. The reference 2600k scores 6.91 points, so we can see it is well worth toggling a single ‘OC tuner' setting!

Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0 x64.

The Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 motherboard delivers great performance with the Patriot Wildfire drive especially in the 4k test.

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.

Great results, achieving around 560MB/s in the read test and 520 MB/s in the write test.

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.

Overclocking the 2600k helps improve the final render time by around 29 seconds. It still falls short of the reference clocked 990X Extreme Edition processor, but it has two extra physical cores.

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.

We enabled hardware acceleration from the AMD HD7870.

Aided by hardware acceleration, the Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 system claims the top spot, with a record time of 8 minutes and 30 seconds, faster than the Intel Core i7 3960X EE system without hardware acceleration enabled. When it comes to encoding video, this shows that the graphics card can play an integral part to overall performance.

Handbrake is a fantastic free program which we wanted to include to confirm findings with Media Espresso, earlier in the review. HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.

We used the latest V 0.9.5 for testing today across all platforms. We encoded an DVD.MPG file.

Strong performance, taking just over 5 minutes to complete the task, only 5 seconds slower than the reference clocked 990X EE system.

F1 2011 is the newest Direct X 11 racing game from industry pioneers CodeMasters. The 2011 Formula One season is the 62nd FIA Formula One season. The original calendar consisted of twenty rounds, including the inaugural running of the Indian Grand Prix before the cancellation of the Bahrain Grand Prix. Pirelli returns to the sport as tyre supplier for all teams, taking over from Bridgestone. Red Bull Racing are the reigning Constructor’s Champions. Red Bull Racing’s Sebastian Vettel is the defending Drivers’ Champion, one of five World Champions appearing on the grid.

No difference in scores between the systems, averaging 70 frames per second.

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 comparable throughout reviews.

Closely matched with this engine, although the P8Z68-V system scores a little higher with minimum frame rates.

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.

The Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 system manages to average a couple of extra frames per second with this particular title. The 2,200mhz memory configuration will be helping with this specific engine.

The Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 Motherboard has impressed us during extensive testing over the last week. I really do rate the ASUS UEFI interface as the best on the market, it is extremely intuitive to navigate and offers a wide variety of voltage and timings to squeeze out every last ounce of performance.

While tweaking a bios is still considered a ‘dark art' by many people we have tried to show today just how easy it is to achieve sensible overclocks with minimal user intervention and beginner knowledge. The ‘OC Tuner' setting automatically configures the system after a couple of reboots, taking only a few minutes. When this procedure finished, our system was overclocked to 4.43ghz with minor voltage tweaks for stability. This is ideal for a user who has no interest in overclocking, but who wants a modest performance boost for free … without taking risks.

The Asus engineers have cleverly tweaked this OC Tuner setting to offer stable final results without requiring a high end air cooler to maintain good thermal performance. Obviously if you spend time with the bios and have more experience then 4.8ghz-5.0ghz is possible, with the right cooler.

The Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 has been rock solid, even when we tried pushing the 2600k to 5.2ghz. We know this particular engineering sample is only stable to 5ghz, but the P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 posted at 5.2ghz and we were able to get a CPU validation, even though it wasn't stable. This board is clearly suited for both newbies and veterans.

To test today, we used Kingston Quad Channel 2,400mhz memory designed for the X79 platform and we managed to get it running at 2,200mhz with little effort, which translated to over 27 GB/s of bandwidth. This helped improve the overall performance of the system by a small amount, depending on the task at hand.

The Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 is modestly priced, although it is not a budget product. It can be bought from ARIA for £142.79 inc vat and should be right at the top of a shortlist if you want a stable, versatile and easy to configure motherboard for a new system build.

Pros:

• Easy to overclock.
• fantastic UEFI.
• stable.
• support for highest speed memory.

Cons:

• Nothing.

Kitguru says: A fantastic board, ideal for both newbies and experienced users.

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