MSI Z97 Gaming 5 Motherboard Review: Five is Alive
by Ian Cutress on October 6, 2014 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- MSI
- Z97
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Timbrelaine - Monday, October 6, 2014 - link
The many hundreds of dollars they would save?fluxtatic - Tuesday, October 7, 2014 - link
This. For gamers, X99 is an e-peen extender.typographie - Monday, October 6, 2014 - link
DDR4 is actually not a thing in the mainstream market. Probably won't be until Skylake's release, either. We don't need it anyway.spidey81 - Monday, October 6, 2014 - link
There's also talk that initially there will be controller support for both DDR3 and DDR4. Not sure if it is legitimate. It seems unlikely considering it would be extra space on the die used.fluxtatic - Tuesday, October 7, 2014 - link
AMD did it a while back with Phenom II. When my M4A78 board died, I dropped the processor into an M5A97 EVO.That is, AMD might do simultaneous DDR3/DDR4, but I don't think it likely from Intel.
gw74 - Monday, October 6, 2014 - link
"We don't need it anyway" is presumably what you also said about DDR3 when DDR2 was coming to the end of its lifecycle."No one will need more than 637k of memory for a personal computer"
casperes1996 - Monday, October 6, 2014 - link
He obviously meant as in "Right now we don't need it."Not that we'll never need it.
Comparix X99 Haswell-E based systems with the likes of this just isn't fair, and you won't be able to put DDR3 into this.
Nobody in this market needs DDR4 now anyway, n'or will they within the next few years.
gw74 - Monday, October 6, 2014 - link
no he didn't obviously mean anything of the sort, because what do you mean by "need" anyway? just because you don't need the performance today, doesn't mean you shouldn't buy it now to future-proof your purchase.just4U - Wednesday, October 8, 2014 - link
Future proofing sounds good on paper but by the time you actually need to be on something faster chances are you've already moved on to new Hardware perhaps... even several generations on..Nite Owl - Monday, August 24, 2015 - link
No such thing as future proof. What he meant is he isn't dumb enough to squander that kind of cash for very little performance increase. In "real world" bench marking ddr4 doesn't do much. As long as you have good high quality ddr3 your fine. I've been building since 2001. Last years latest and greatest always lasts me at least 3 years, at least. My 2007 build lasted through 2013 with only upgrading the video card, once! Still ran max settings on every game I play. Blind consumers that jump on things for the sake of doing drive up the prices. Nice going, slick!