GIGABYTE G1.Sniper Z87 Review
by Ian Cutress on February 24, 2014 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- Gigabyte
Scientific and Synthetic Benchmarks
2D to 3D Rendering – Agisoft PhotoScan v1.0: link
Agisoft Photoscan creates 3D models from 2D images, a process which is very computationally expensive. The algorithm is split into four distinct phases, and different phases of the model reconstruction require either fast memory, fast IPC, more cores, or even OpenCL compute devices to hand. Agisoft supplied us with a special version of the software to script the process, where we take 50 images of a stately home and convert it into a medium quality model. This benchmark typically takes around 15-20 minutes on a high end PC on the CPU alone, with GPUs reducing the time.
Console Emulation – Dolphin Benchmark: link
At the start of 2014 I was emailed with a link to a new emulation benchmark based on the Dolphin Emulator. The issue with emulators tends to be two-fold: game licensing and raw CPU power required for the emulation. As a result, many emulators are often bound by single thread CPU performance, and general reports tended to suggest that Haswell provided a significant post to emulator performance. This benchmark runs a Wii program that raytraces a complex 3D scene inside the Dolphin Wii emulator. Performance on this benchmark is a good proxy of the speed of Dolphin CPU emulation, which is an intensive single core task using most aspects of a CPU. Results are given in minutes, where the Wii itself scores 17.53; meaning that anything above this is faster than an actual Wii for processing Wii code, albeit emulated.
Haswell has been quoted as improving console emulation elsewhere on the web, and the results here give that quote substance.
Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test: link
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores.
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Encryption – TrueCrypt v0.7.1a: link
TrueCrypt is an off the shelf open source encoding tool for files and folders. For our test we run the benchmark mode using a 1GB buffer and take the mean result from AES encryption.
Synthetic – 7-Zip 9.2: link
As an open source compression tool, 7-Zip is a popular tool for making sets of files easier to handle and transfer. The software offers up its own benchmark, to which we report the result.
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Flunk - Monday, February 24, 2014 - link
Really? I didn't know that discrete GPUs used exactly the same chipsets as onboard GPUs and sometimes even inferior DACs. Oh wait they don't, making your comparison ridiculous and nonsensical.apoe - Monday, February 24, 2014 - link
I have used exclusively sound cards for almost a decade. The first time I went from onboard to discrete, I was using a 5.1 system and the difference was massive. Recently I plugged my Beyer DT770s into the onboard (ALC1150) just to see how bad it was... and surprisingly, the audio quality was exactly the same. In fact it was better, since the sound card (HTO Striker) would pick up EM interference resulting in a buzzing noise whenever the frame rate went >140 fps in any game, yet this didn’t happen with the onboard audio. This buzzing under load is apparently still a common problem with discrete cards, which I guess is why some of them have shielding now.Kaihekoa - Monday, February 24, 2014 - link
Have you tested this theory recently? The tech has made good progress. In my experience, the biggest difference in sound quality comes from the speakers/headphones these days.Samus - Monday, February 24, 2014 - link
Totally, it takes a hell of a pair of phones or speakers to actually measure the SNR difference from one audio codec to another. Most of it comes down to capacitor quality these days since many caps aren't even designed for audio. I've replaced caps with Panasonic FM's and still couldn't tell the difference on my Beats (j/k I wear Grado's)lever_age - Monday, February 24, 2014 - link
How are you getting the SNR figure from the graph under the RMAA section? Integrating and A-weighting in your head? Calculating with what?For what it's worth, RMAA is supposedly giving you A-weighted noise and dynamic range figures, which should deemphasize ultrasonics. So the figure for the motherboard as-is should be fine... as fine as RMAA is in general (frequently strange, high on bugs, and low on documentation). Though I believe the weightings are not defined above 20 kHz, so I don't know if they just carry through the equations / curves, notch them out for the actual calculation, or just use the weighting for the 20 kHz and extend it out to the ultrasonics.
popej - Monday, February 24, 2014 - link
RMAA can be configured to compute noise and distortion only in range 20-20kHz. And probably this is default setting, so problem simply doesn't exist. Please check your settings.And of course an attempt to estimate noise floor from the graph is plain wrong.
DanNeely - Monday, February 24, 2014 - link
Have Creative's audio drivers gotten any better in the last 7 years? Their being bad enough in the first part of the prior decade that MS ripped the entire audio sub-system into userland to stop Creative's buggy drivers from BSODing the system is still fresh in my memory; and of more potential concern again now because to improve power management on tablets Win8 has moved the audio sub-system back into the kernel where boggy drivers can crash the system.ViRGE - Monday, February 24, 2014 - link
For what it's worth I've been running an X-Fi Titanium for years without any issues. So I'd say their drivers are fine.As for Vista, my understanding is that it was Realtek that was BSODing everywhere and was the biggest motivation for the audio stack change, not Creative.
Nfarce - Monday, February 24, 2014 - link
Exactly, ViRGE. I've been usinggg an X-Fi Titanium for nearly 5 years now, bought originally and put into a C2D Duo/Vista gaming build, now being used in a near 3 year old i5/Win7 gaming build. No problems. And the sound blows away Realtek. Sounds like user error to me for this guy.angrypatm - Monday, February 24, 2014 - link
I had an X-Fi Titanium and the drivers sucked, and the "critical updates" which would remove the entire program and require full reinstall took longer than loading an O/S -and you had to baby sit through the whole process to click yes or proceed. Afterward, no difference, still clunky and slow, and unreliable. Critical update for a sound card? Never fixed anything. I moved away from Creative to the CMedia based HT Omega Claro Plus, quick uncluttered app, sounds better, and rock solid, NO problems. And creative's crystalizer is btw artificial nonsense.