Intel Z77 Motherboard Review with Ivy Bridge - ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI
by Ian Cutress on May 7, 2012 7:40 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- MSI
- Gigabyte
- ASRock
- Asus
- Ivy Bridge
- Z77
ASUS P8Z77-V Pro - In The Box
The ASUS P8Z77-V Pro retails at $225-$235, essentially $100 more than the ASRock Z77 Extreme4, so I would expect a good amount in the box to help sweeten the price point. Thankfully, we get a good amount!
Driver CD
User Manual
IO Panel
4 SATA Cables
SLI Finger
WiFi Go! 802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi card
WiFi magnetic antenna
USB and eSATA back panel
ASUS Q-Connectors
The addition of WiFi on the board obviously adds substantial value – personally, at home, I have my machines connected via WiFi, and ASUS say that at least 25% of their user base is in a similar position, hence the addition to the package.
Voltage Readings
Using OCCT we monitor the voltage change of the motherboard under load. This represents the direct correlation between the Load Line Calibration and how the processor/motherboard deals with voltage requests while under load. This is not to be confused with the quality of power delivery, but more an indication of how aggressive the default LLC settings are on a motherboard.
The ASUS board has regular power delivery, with minimal voltage ripple under load.
Overclocking
Note: Ivy Bridge does not overclock like Sandy Bridge. For a detailed report on the effect of voltage on Ivy Bridge (and thus temperatures and power draw), please read Undervolting and Overclocking on Ivy Bridge.
ASUS overclocking tools have been consistent over the few previous chipsets. In the BIOS, OC Tuner is a simple setting that enables a ‘Fast’ overclock on the system. Similarly, the TPU button on board does a similar action. In the OS, the TurboV Evo part of the software offers ‘Fast’ and ‘Extreme’ auto overclocking modes. For manual overclocking, the TurboV Evo software allows the user to play with an overclock in the OS, which should aid in setting a more permanent overclock in the BIOS.
Auto Overclock: ‘Fast’ mode (either through BIOS or OS) implements an immediate 19% overclock, with 41x on the multiplier and 102 MHz base frequency, ending with 4182 MHz overall. This is coupled with a memory overclock, which in my case it did XMP but backed off one memory strap. What was odd was that the memory was set to a 3T command rate!
‘Extreme’ mode implements a algorithmic testing tool in the OS to probe overclock limits. By slowly upping the multiplier and voltage, the system performs stability tests until the system crashes. The system reboots and then implements BCLK tuning, while still monitoring temperatures. In our test, the initial boot implemented a 20% overclock at 41x103 (4223 MHz), and then performed multiplier testing. At 47x, the system restarted to 46x and started BCLK tuning. At 104.5 MHz, the system restarted again, do a ‘Failed Overclock’ screen on boot. After pressing F1 for Setup, then F10 for Save and Exit, the operating system showed an overall 36% overclock – 46x103.8 (4774 MHz). At load, this gave 1.280 volts at load, giving an immense 94ºC peak temperature during PovRay. I do not think I would be happy with that temperature for a daily system.
Manual Overclock: With the overclock performance of Ivy Bridge processors being highly limited by temperature, having a low voltage is key along with hope that it does not compromise the overclock. In this case, I have started with 1.100 volts on the CPU and adjusting only the CPU multiplier to see what stable overclock we can get, before upping the voltage further. For this, PLL Overvoltage was also enabled.
At 1.100 volts, the highest multiplier that was stable was 45x, giving 4.5 GHz. This gave 68ºC at load with PovRay.
At 1.150 volts, the highest multiplier that was stable was 46x, giving 4.6 GHz. This gave 76ºC at load with PovRay.
At 1.200 volts, the highest multiplier that was stable was 47x, giving 4.7 GHz. This gave 83ºC with PovRay and 86ºC with OCCT. The system did boot at 48x, but gave 94ºC under PovRay as well as memory errors.
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vegemeister - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
Yes, it is a very important feature. The Ivy Bridge IGP can drive 3 monitors. 4 display outputs means 3 of them are digital.Discrete GPUs increase idle power consumption, an as of this post none of them have particularly good open source drivers. Some of us just want lots of screens, good compiz performance, and silence.
philipma1957 - Monday, May 7, 2012 - link
I have been building a series of matx htpc/gamer machines.I have one with the basic
Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3H mATX board
and one with the
Gigabyte Ga-h77m-d3h mATX board.
I want to decide between
the ASUS P8Z77- m pro mobo or
the ASUS p8z77-m board and
last but not least the
Gigabyte Intel Z77 LGA 1155 AMD CrossFireX/NVIDIA SLI DVI/HDMI/DisplayPort Dual UEFI BIOS mATX Motherboard G1.SNIPER M3 .
I am liking the two builds I did with the lowend gigabyte boards and some intel i5 t2500t cpus I want a better board but I don't have many reviews to go by.
EnzoFX - Monday, May 7, 2012 - link
It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Are most DIY'ers really opting for ATX? Should they? I'd bet most people only plug in a video card and maybe one other card such as wireless or even a tuner. Every other possible need they may have would not only be met by mATX but even ITX is pretty full featured these days.You'd think mATX would be what most boards are targeted at, and leaving ATX for extreme builds/bragging rights. It's just like those high end video cards, most people don't buy those, rightfully and importantly so. Those should be the premium prices, and mATX should have a lower price. The focus just feels off.
Zoomer - Monday, May 14, 2012 - link
You mentioned people want mATX board. There by itself probably means that it can command higher prices, due to higher price tolerance of the purchasers.Caeric - Monday, May 7, 2012 - link
Enjoyed the review. I still have an old AMD dual core, and I'm considering a new system in the next couple of months so these help a great deal.I did find one error in the article, under the ASUS board:
"The ASUS P8Z77-V Pro retails at $225-$235, essentially $100 less than the ASRock Z77 Extreme4..."
It should say "...essentially $100 more than the ASRock..."
Movieman420 - Monday, May 7, 2012 - link
Curious as to this controllers' performance vs the ever present Marvell controllers. Does it use a pci-e lane or usb3 for it's bandwidth?FozzyofAus - Monday, May 7, 2012 - link
Great review.I'm leaning towards mATX as well for this build as I've never used more than four expansion slots and currently I'm only using 3 (one is USB3 which won't be needed in the new board).
I'd like to have a bit more room in my current case and the option to reuse this motherboard in a smaller case in future if I upgrade my main rig to Haswell next year.
Any chance of adding Asrock Extreme4-m to the next motherboard roundup?
spronkey - Monday, May 7, 2012 - link
Sorry guys but this review was a bit average. Comment on the various different controllers used by the motherboard manufacturers but don't offer any kind of review on them?The good additions: DPC latency and boot time.
The missing? Well everything else.
I was especially hoping for a comment on the VIA audio on the UD3H - it's been a while since I've seen VIA codecs on mainstream boards.
I'm also amazed that you didn't slam the ASUS board for it's price and lack of features. Realtek 892? On a board that's nearing twice the cost of the ASRock? Seriously?
No comment on the durability of the boards either? Hrm. No separation in testing of the different controllers on each board?
A bit lacking, sorry.
ggathagan - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
Perhaps you're commenting on the wrong review.As Ian stated multiple times throughout the review, Asus is using Intel NIC's on their boards, in this case, the Intel 82579V.
Durability is a function of time. Please point out the other motherboard reviews that covered durability.
spronkey - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
He stated ASUS were using Intel, sure. But didn't get into any details other than stating they exist about the fact that there are multiple USB3 controllers and SATA controllers on each board. No benchmarks comparing them etc.In fact does it even mention which controllers were tested?
And Durability is a function of construction quality and time. It would be nice to see comments on points such as board weight and flex, quality of soldering, quality of components used on the board (according to an electrical minded person on OCN, Gigabyte uses significantly higher rated MOSFETs than other manufacturers), temperatures of chipsets and VRM circuitry. These are things I can't easily find out by reading manuals.