The Asus Prime Z270-A & GIGABYTE Z270X-Ultra Gaming Motherboard Review
by E. Fylladitakis on July 18, 2017 10:45 AM ESTTest Bed and Setup
Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives in essence an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, overriding memory sub-timings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.
For reference, both the Asus Prime Z270-A and the GIGABYTE Z270X-Ultra Gaming had multi-core acceleration enabled by default. We tested the Asus Prime Z270-A with the 0604 BIOS and the GIGABYTE Z270X-Ultra Gaming with the F6 BIOS.
| Test Setup | |
| Processor | Intel Core i7-7700K (ES, Retail Stepping), 91W, $340 4 Cores, 8 Threads, 4.2 GHz (4.5 GHz Turbo) |
| Motherboards | Asus Prime Z270-A GIGABYTE GA-Z270X-Ultra Gaming |
| Cooling | Alphacool Eisbaer 240 |
| Power Supply | Corsair AX1200i Platinum PSU |
| Memory | G.Skill DDR4-2400 C15 2x16 GB 1.2V |
| Memory Settings | XMP @ 2400 |
| Video Cards | MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB (1150/1202 Boost) |
| Hard Drive | Crucial MX200 1TB |
| Case | Open Test Bed |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit SP1 |
Many thanks to Alphacool, Corsair, G.Skill, MSI and Crucial for contributing to our test bed.
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Edgar Saint - Wednesday, July 19, 2017 - link
Not related to the boards but anyone else notice how each picture of both boards is taken from EXACTLY the same perspective/angle? How is that even possible? Are you a robot or something?milkod2001 - Wednesday, July 19, 2017 - link
the secret is putting your camera on tripod and placing products in the same angle,super simple.And to crop it if needed in Photoshop to make it look similar :)
E.Fyll - Wednesday, July 19, 2017 - link
Illuminati confirmed.Bullwinkle J Moose - Wednesday, July 19, 2017 - link
Stevo asks....Does it really matter if a system boots in 3 seconds or 15 seconds? Booting a system isn't where you spend most of your time.
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Does it really matter if a Billion PC's take 15 seconds to boot?
It would if each of them reboots every day!
That would be over 4 million hours of waste energy DAILY!
The wasted energy in one day is equivalent of running one PC for 475 years
so, ummmmm, yeah?
Bullwinkle J Moose - Wednesday, July 19, 2017 - link
But Mr Moose, a Billion PC's rebooting daily seems a bit high because some systems stay on for a year or more!Yes, but some people reboot 3 / 5 / 10 or 20 times a day in which case a Billion would seem quite low
Icehawk - Wednesday, July 19, 2017 - link
I guess you guys don't remember the days of 2min+ boots, to me a 20s boot feels very fast. I do care about reboot time for those instances where I am in a game and the PC crashes - too long and you can't rejoin.lucam - Wednesday, July 19, 2017 - link
When are you guys going to review the new IPad Pro?Lolimaster - Wednesday, July 19, 2017 - link
Why would you want an obsolete platform?Ryzen 5 1500X 4c/8t is 95% of the i7 7700 at 1440p gaming + 1080ti for half price, whats the point of z270?
silverblue - Monday, July 24, 2017 - link
On that note, a Ryzen motherboard review or two could help with future purchasing decisions... :)Lolimaster - Wednesday, July 19, 2017 - link
There's something called fast boot to bypass unnecessary tests. I use that on my AMD mobos, I only see the mobo logo, AHCI page and straight to windows load.