ASRock Z77 Extreme6 Review: Legacy Bites Back
by Ian Cutress on July 13, 2012 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
- Z77
Test Setup
| Processor |
Intel Core i7-3770K ES 4 Cores, 8 Threads, 3.5 GHz (3.9 GHz Turbo) |
| Motherboards |
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 ASUS P8Z77-V Pro Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H MSI Z77A-GD65 ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe ASRock Fatal1ty Z77 Professional Gigabyte GA-Z77MX-UD3H ASRock Z77 Extreme6 |
| Cooling | Intel All-in-One Liquid Cooler |
| Power Supply | OCZ 1250W Gold ZX Series |
| Memory |
GSkill RipjawsZ 4x4 GB DDR3-2400 9-11-11 Kit GSkill TridentX 2x4 GB DDR3-2666 11-13-13 Kit |
| Memory Settings | XMP (2400 9-11-11) |
| Video Cards |
ASUS HD7970 3GB ECS GTX 580 1536MB |
| Video Drivers |
Catalyst 12.3 NVIDIA Drivers 296.10 WHQL |
| Hard Drive | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed - CoolerMaster Lab V1.0 |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit |
| SATA Testing | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| USB 2/3 Testing | OCZ Vertex 3 240GB with SATA->USB Adaptor |
Power Consumption
Power consumption was tested on the system as a whole with a wall meter connected to the OCZ 1250W power supply, while in a dual 7970 GPU configuration. This power supply is Gold rated, and as I am in the UK on a 230-240 V supply, leads to ~75% efficiency > 50W, and 90%+ efficiency at 250W, which is suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading. This method of power reading allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency. These are the real world values that consumers may expect from a typical system (minus the monitor) using this motherboard.
The Z77 Extreme6 does not seem to pull anything special out of the bag for power delivery, matching some of the more high performance models from ASUS and Gigabyte.
POST Time
Different motherboards have different POST sequences before an operating system is initialized. A lot of this is dependent on the board itself, and POST boot time is determined by the controllers on board (and the sequence of how those extras are organized). As part of our testing, we are now going to look at the POST Boot Time - this is the time from pressing the ON button on the computer to when Windows starts loading. (We discount Windows loading as it is highly variable given Windows specific features.) These results are subject to human error, so please allow +/- 1 second in these results.
ASRock always does quite well on boot timings, taking all the top spots. It is assumed that ASRock has the least amount of 'check and verification' tools compared to their competitors, which can increase boot time.
Overclocks
Here at AnandTech we want to provide quick and easy ways to determine if a board is good for you (with in-depth analysis of course). So here is a quick round up of our overclocking results. Overclocks are tested for stability with PovRay and OCCT - while these may not be the most strenuous of stability tests, it does offer a quick check for memory errors under high load (and also balances testing time with getting the next board on for review!).
|
CPU Speed (MHz) |
Voltage (Volts) |
PovRay Peak Temp (ºC) |
OCCT Peak Temp (ºC) |
Notes | |
|
ASRock Fatal1ty Z77 Professional |
4700 | 1.200 | 89 | 89 | PLL Overvoltage enabled |
|
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 |
4700 | 1.175 | 86 | 86 | LLC Level 1 |
|
ASRock Z77 Extreme6 |
4700 | 1.175 | 81 | 82 | LLC Level 1 |
|
ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe |
4700 | 1.225 | 89 | 84 | PLL Overvoltage enabled |
|
ASUS P8Z77-V Pro |
4700 | 1.200 | 83 | 86 | PLL Overvoltage enabled |
|
Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H |
4700 | 1.200 | 82 | 86 | LLC Extreme |
|
Gigabyte Z77MX-D3H |
4700 | 1.200 | 80 | 84 | LLC Extreme |
|
MSI Z77A-GD65 |
4700 | 1.250 | 90 | - | PLL Overvoltage enabled |
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35 Comments
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IanCutress - Monday, July 16, 2012 - link
You would be surprised at how regular these timings are. For the 10.81 seconds, I got that on my manual stop watch three times in a row. To do as you suggest would be a heavily distorted effort vs. reward, especially for motherboard reviews. Interesting exercise though, not sure if it would be possible. Not that I'd know how either :)Ian
Demon-Xanth - Monday, July 16, 2012 - link
These days I think the truly best way to support legacy is by add-in cards, and am kind of surprised nobody has come up with a 486 era style I/O card that has serial, parallel, floppy, and IDE on a single card. Just use an older PCI southbridge on a PCIe bridge and you can add some USB to the mix as well.stedaniels - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
Hi,I've been doing some research on this board and notice that you kept referring to the mini PCIe slot as an mSATA slot. While these are physically the same slot size, they are electrically different. Both the specs at the end of the first page, and on the ASRock website state that this is a mini PCIe slot and there is no mention of it being an mSATA slot on any of the official documentation.
Was this a mistake during the review, or are the ASRock specs wrong?
Cheers,
Steve
Mike89 - Friday, January 11, 2013 - link
The settings I've tried give voltage readings way different than this review. For example the review stated the automatic overclock of 4.4 gigs at 1.096 volts at load but when I used that same setting I got a voltage of 1.22 at load. That's quite a bit of difference. Other oc settings I tried that were in the review were also a lot different than the view being they were all higher voltages than the review stated. Can't quite figure out why that is.flexy - Tuesday, April 24, 2018 - link
This is an older article, but since I am OC testing an older Haswell system right now.These numbers seem STRANGE if not outright fantasy to me. What is that "ES" version of the i5 anyway, I can't get any information on this.
The article states they run at 44x multi stable w/ 1.096V in bios, in OCCT/Povray, and stable at 1.100 in bios (1.096 measured under load) at 45x, in OCCT and Povray. Of course, LLC = 1.
What "wonder chip" is that supposed to be that runs stable at a 45x multi in OCCT at 1.096 volts? I am having a very hard time taking these numbers seriously, unless you used some extremely carefully select CPUs with amazingly low power requirements and temps for your testing. (At these voltages I can't even get into the OS, even with LLC1, not to mention OCCT.)