GIGABYTE G1.Sniper Z87 Review
by Ian Cutress on February 24, 2014 2:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- Gigabyte
F1 2013
First up is F1 2013 by Codemasters. I am a big Formula 1 fan in my spare time, and nothing makes me happier than carving up the field in a Caterham, waving to the Red Bulls as I drive by (because I play on easy and take shortcuts). F1 2013 uses the EGO Engine, and like other Codemasters games ends up being very playable on old hardware quite easily. In order to beef up the benchmark a bit, we devised the following scenario for the benchmark mode: one lap of Spa-Francorchamps in the heavy wet, the benchmark follows Jenson Button in the McLaren who starts on the grid in 22nd place, with the field made up of 11 Williams cars, 5 Marussia and 5 Caterham in that order. This puts emphasis on the CPU to handle the AI in the wet, and allows for a good amount of overtaking during the automated benchmark. We test at 1920x1080 on Ultra graphical settings for a single GPU, as using multiple GPUs seems to have no scaling effect.
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Bioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite was Zero Punctuation’s Game of the Year for 2013, uses the Unreal Engine 3, and is designed to scale with both cores and graphical prowess. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
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Tomb Raider
The next benchmark in our test is Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider is an AMD optimized game, lauded for its use of TressFX creating dynamic hair to increase the immersion in game. Tomb Raider uses a modified version of the Crystal Engine, and enjoys raw horsepower. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
| Tomb Raider, 1080p Max | ||
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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.