ASRock Z77 Extreme6 Review: Legacy Bites Back

A note about 3-way AMD

So far most of the Z77 motherboards we have tested had three full length PCIe slots - two from the CPU that can be x16/- or x8/x8, and a third that was limited to 4 PCIe 2.0 lanes from the chipset.  By design, this final third slot should not be graphics compatible - with only four PCIe 2.0 lanes from the chipset, it would be slow as well.

ASRock bucks the trend with the Z77 Extreme6, and allows this third PCIe slot to accept a GPU:

Even though the Extreme6 is the only board we have tested tri-GPU so far, we will add the results here for completeness.  Unfortunately, we only have three AMD GPUs, and were unable to test three NVIDIA GPUs.

Civilization V

Civilization V is a strategy video game that utilizes a significant number of the latest GPU features and software advances.  Using the in-game benchmark, we run Civilization V at 2560x1440 with full graphical settings, similar to Ryan in his GPU testing functionality.  Results reported by the benchmark are the total number of frames in sixty seconds, which we normalize to frames per second.

Strangely on Civilization V, the ASRock Z77 Extreme6 seems to not enjoy processing frames, coming bottom on both single and dual 7970 by a significant margin.  However, the board is the only Z77 we have tested that will happily accept three GPUs.

Again, with NVIDIA the board does not perform that well, especially when the other ASRock motherboards we have tested are reasonable.

Dirt 3

Dirt 3 is a rallying video game and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters.  Using the in game benchmark, Dirt 3 is run at 2560x1440 with full graphical settings.  Results are reported as the average frame rate across four runs.

The ASRock Z77 Extreme6 does not light up the charts with Dirt3, but the differences between first and last are very small.  It is interesting to note that the first GPU gives 74.67 FPS, the second GPU adds 59 FPS, and the third only adds 11 FPS.  This is most likely due to the third GPU being limited to 4 PCIe 2.0 lanes.

NVIDIA wise, the Extreme6 puts up more of a battle and ends up mid table, where less than 2 FPS separates first and last in dual GPU and 0.4 FPS for single GPU.

Metro2033

Metro2033 is a DX11 benchmark that challenges every system that tries to run it at any high-end settings.  Developed by 4A Games and released in March 2010, we use the inbuilt DirectX 11 Frontline benchmark to test the hardware at 2560x1440 with full graphical settings.  Results are given as the average frame rate from 4 runs.

Surprisingly the Extreme6 does take the lead on one gaming benchmark - Metro2033 using a single 7970.