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
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.
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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 | ||
| NVIDIA | AMD | |
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aron9621 - Saturday, May 17, 2014 - link
The Z87 Deluxe Quad uses a PLX switch (a PEX8608 I believe) for the PCI Express 2.0 lanes coming from the chipset. It's a shame given the price category the Z97 Deluxe doesn't do the same and limits the simultaneous usage of the SATA Express/M2/Thunderbolt ports.UltraWide - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
Fan curve control from the BIOS, this is worth the GOLD color! WOW I have been waiting for such a feature for the past 10 years.ASUS you got my money and vote. :thumbsup: x 2
OuchIAteMyself - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
It has been worth it for me to pay more for these premium motherboards. I'm using a P5B Deluxe bought in 2006 to post this comment and it's still going strong. ASUS even released a BIOS update that allowed me to upgrade to a Q9550 processor which is fairly modern. I'll buy ASUS again when I build a new system within the year.pt2501 - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
LOL I had that the P5B Deluxe for 5 years and thought it was simple, powerful, and rock solid. For the price it offered up the best overclocking and when I built it in late 2006 I paired it with the lowest of the then new core 2 duo (1.6 GHz model). It received a plethora of updates that allowed it to later upgrade to use the top the Cord 2 Duos/Quad cores. I later put in a 3.0 Ghz duo core with the added cache for better performance and maxed out the Ram capacity without any loss of stability. The board never failed I eventually recycled it for lack of anyone wanting a desktop. Now i run an older P8Z68-V Pro/Gen3 with an i5 2500K. The support from Asus for all my boards has been outstanding.I felt like I ponied up alot more cash for this board but the difference in all the features more than pays for itself over time. UEFI, 4 way SLI/Crossfire/TPU/EPU: you can literally do anything with this board and I have never felt like I was missing out on anything.
Most likely unless Asus starts making garbage, if you buy one of their boards my experience has been that you can use it until the subsequent technology becomes completely obsolete.
AssBall - Sunday, May 18, 2014 - link
The DELUXE set from Asus has always been top notch and rock solid. My first build ever was Lots of overclocking and tweaking options. The power delivery is some of the best in the industry, IMO. The new UEFI BIOS's are sweet to work with. Now they also put some decent integrated sound processors on the boards too, which adds a ton of value in my book.Their Pro stuff is really good too if you want a simple overclock system or a 24/7 workstation. The only thing better than an ASUS board is a new ASUS board, heh.
jibz - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
Nice review. I like the fact that you added audio benchmarks. What I'd like to see included are the numbers for a good add-on card, if only to establish some kind of upper echelon. I understand that it's not fair to compare a 300$ sounds card to the one included on a 300$ motherboard, but it'd help to put the numbers in perspective.cjs150 - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
Lovely looking board but someone needs their head examined on the storage.This is a top end board it should be capable of having a big GPU, m2 drive as boot drive and ultra fast storage via thunderbolt
xeizo - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
You could say I use only Asus DeLuxe mobos as I have both the P5Q-DeLuxe and the P8Z68-DeLuxe/G3 currently up and running ;-)The P5Q-DeLuxe has been running since 2008 and 24/7 for the last three years(web/music/movie/nas-server). The P8Z68 is the gaming/development/music production/workstation and performs admirably with dual SSD:s, 16GB RAM and a single GTX770(as I only use 1080P). Very happy with these mobos, 4xUSB3 and 4xSATA6 is very usable on the P8Z68, good for being from 2011 ... It also has no problems remaining stable above 5GHz on water with 8x100% load like forever ....
However, next mobo will be made for Haswell-E with ZX99(?), Z97 is too much of a sidegrade and more cores is good to have when compiling. Higher clocked Xeons are only damned expensive :(
wwwcd - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
Board FeaturesASUS Z97-Deluxe (NFC + WFC)
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Chipset Intel Z87
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WoW :D
Ian Cutress - Friday, May 16, 2014 - link
AHA! Re-using old table templates, thanks for the catch :D