ASUS Z97-DELUXE (NFC & WLC) Review: With Two Thunderbolt 2 Too
by Ian Cutress on May 16, 2014 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- Asus
- NFC
- 802.11ac
- Thunderbolt 2
- Z97
- Wireless Charging
Gaming Benchmarks
Sleeping Dogs
Sleeping Dogs is a benchmarking wet dream – a highly complex benchmark that can bring the toughest setup and high resolutions down into single figures. Having an extreme SSAO setting can do that, but at the right settings Sleeping Dogs is highly playable and enjoyable. We run the basic benchmark program laid out in 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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Company of Heroes 2
Company of Heroes 2 also can bring a top end GPU to its knees, even at very basic benchmark settings. To get an average 30 FPS using a normal GPU is a challenge, let alone a minimum frame rate of 30 FPS. For this benchmark I use modified versions of Ryan’s batch files at 1920x1080 on High. COH2 is a little odd in that it does not scale with more GPUs with the drivers we use.
| Company of Heroes 2, 1080p Max | ||
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Battlefield 4
The EA/DICE series that has taken countless hours of my life away is back for another iteration, using the Frostbite 3 engine. AMD is also piling its resources into BF4 with the new Mantle API for developers, designed to cut the time required for the CPU to dispatch commands to the graphical sub-system. For our test we use the in-game benchmarking tools and record the frame time for the first ~70 seconds of the Tashgar single player mission, which is an on-rails generation of and rendering of objects and textures. We test at 1920x1080 at Ultra settings.
| Battlefield 4, 1080p Max | ||
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Eidigean - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
First off, This is a great review Ian. The in-depth details of shared PCIe lane distribution between the x4 slot, x2 M.2, and x2 SATAe helped me make a decision...I'm looking for Thunderbolt 2 and two x4 M.2 SSDs. The only board that seems like it will fit the bill is the GIGABYTE GA-Z97X-UD7 TH. Reason being, it's the only board that provides x8/x4/x4 from the CPU while also providing x4 from the Z97 for the Thunderbolt controller. This will allow for a GPU and two Samsung XP941 M.2 SSDs in a RAID 0.
An alternative I'm kicking around is the Asus Z79-WS with its PLX switch; allowing x16 for the GPU, two x4 M.2 SSDs in two x8 slots, and the ASUS Thunderbolt 2 controller in the x4 slot from the Z79.
Ian, could you get your hands on the two Samsung XP941 sticks that Kristian was testing?
Eidigean - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
The ASUS Z97 lineup would be better if ASUS put a x4 slot in place of the middle or bottom x1 slot and shared 4 lanes from the x8 slot when needed, allowing for x8/x4/x4 in addition to x8/x8. Intel allows for it, and only one vendor (GIGABYTE) is doing it.Eidigean - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
There's actually another vendor that *almost* meets my requirements, the ASRock Z97 Extreme6. From their user manual:* If M2_1 slot is occupied, PCIE2 slot will run at x8 mode, and PCIE4 slot will run at x4 mode.
That would allow me to run one XP941 stick in the motherboard's M.2 socket, and the other in the PCIE4 slot. The missing feature is Thunderbolt 2; which is only offered by ASUS and GIGABYTE.
Ian Cutress - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
Hi Eidigean,I have the Z97 Extreme6 in for testing, should have a review (with a single XP941) incoming. I've got some data regarding the impact an x4 M.2 has on GPU performance, stay tuned for that.
-Ian
Taurus229 - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
Considering this is a $400.00 board, I feel that no one should have to play musical chairs with Sata inputs! Asus missed the boat here!austinsguitar - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
one does not just simply pay 400+ dollars on just a motherboard with thunderbolt 2's.... this is a little bit overkill and stupid to the common consumer/ marketing executive. This premium doesn't make much since....DMCalloway - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
Great review! Unfortunately, one of the best selling i7 chips (2600k) isn't in the benchmarks. I do like the progress being made with the UEFI BIOSs. Thanx for the review Ian.EricPraline - Saturday, May 17, 2014 - link
Many high-end motherboards these days use special audio capacitors for 'better' sound in the audio area of the motherboard. The amount of capacitors used in the audio portion of newer motherboards seems to vary using anywhere from 6 to 14 or more depending on the motherboard. Does using more capacitors for audio roughly correlate with a better sound? Why is there a difference in the number of audio capacitors used among high-end ALC1150-based motherboards, even by the same manufacturer (e.g., Asus)Haravikk - Saturday, May 17, 2014 - link
I find the selection of SATA ports and the juggling act of connecting them a bit weird; I thought that one of the advantages of SATA Express was that you could still use it as two ordinary SATA ports, only getting the increased speed when you connected a full SATA Express cable? With that in mind I don't see why this really needs so many additional, regular SATA ports anyway; an extra two would be enough for most people, as that gives you either six regular SATA drives, or two SATA Express and two regular SATA. Or they could even have gone for four SATA Express which would be even better as it gives you four to eight ports.I dunno, it just feels a bit like an odd in-between standards kind of mixture; since Intel will most likely be pushing to increase PCI lanes on future processors then it just seems like if you need so much connectivity you're still better going for a dual processor motherboard, or waiting a year for more Thunderbolt friendly processors.
Laststop311 - Monday, May 19, 2014 - link
Seems to me Intel needs to stop cheaping out on the pci-e lanes for its mainstream line. Now that sata express needs 4x pci-e 3.0 lanes to function to it's maximum. Asrock Extreme 9 is the only board right now that allows you to connected an SSD directly to the CPU using 4 pci-e 3,0 lanes and surprise those drives function the best. With skylake and Z107 intel really needs to step up its pci-e lane game.