GIGABYTE Z97X-SOC Force Review
by Ian Cutress on June 17, 2014 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Gigabyte
- Overclocking
- Z97
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 boost 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 minutes.
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.
Encryption –TrueCrypt v0.7.1a: link
TrueCrypt is an off the shelf open source encryption 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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TiGr1982 - Friday, June 20, 2014 - link
This board should have been tested with new Devil's Canyon CPU.What's the point of using year-old 4770K?...
BTW, where is Devil's Canyon review? Sometimes Anandtech is severely lagging in real computing stuff review, hurrying to post a lot about iCrap and other smartphone toys...
haardrr - Sunday, June 22, 2014 - link
june 26 is the date the devils canyon review will appear. my guess based on the date that Newegg starts selling the Devils Canyon 4970 Khaardrr - Sunday, June 22, 2014 - link
um, err, make that a 4790k, not a 4970k...dragonhockey - Sunday, June 22, 2014 - link
If you are looking for a motherboard with an outstanding price, quality components, and a support team you can count on look no further than the motherboards from Gigabyte. It is well-known for years as they produce some of the toughest board and now giving you another state of the art motherboard loaded with new features.Joepublic2 - Monday, June 23, 2014 - link
Why don't you guys pry that heat sink off offer a more nuanced analysis of the board's VRM? There's so little to differentiate motherboards based on the same chipset these days; this is one of the few areas where they still differ significantly. It is good to see they're using screw fasteners on the heatsinks (like my z87 board) which I would expect have much higher mounting force/better heat transfer than the push pins used on some other gigabyte z97 boards.boe - Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - link
I'm hoping the GIGABYTE GA-Z97X-Gaming G1 starts to drop in price soon. Seems like a great design other than Intel's flaw in their lack of PCIe lanes for standard processors.OClock - Wednesday, April 8, 2015 - link
Could anyone tell me if this motherboard will work with i5 4690 and four NVIDIA GPUs ?My problem is that in a 4 GPU config, this motherboard runs at 8x 4x 4x 4x. Where as the CPU only supports max 16x express lanes. Now if the GPU is locked to 8x in first PCIe slot, then does that mean the i5 4690 will hit a bottle next after 3 GPUs? Considering that the first PCI slot will not run below 8x. Hence the 16x express lanes won't get divided into 4x 4x 4x 4x. Instead due to this, the motherboard it will run at 8x 4x 4x. I hope I didn't confuse anyone.
This rig I am building is for GPU rendering. And GPU rendering runs fine without SLI. No ATI either.