Intel Z77 Motherboard Review with Ivy Bridge - ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI
by Ian Cutress on May 7, 2012 7:40 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- MSI
- Gigabyte
- ASRock
- Asus
- Ivy Bridge
- Z77
MSI Z77A-GD65 - In The Box
The MSI Z77A-GD65 is currently available for $190, just north of the Gigabyte board. With this in mind, we also get a few more extras in the box than the Gigabyte:
IO Shield
Driver CD
User Manual
Certification of Military Class testing (FWIW)
Four SATA cables
Flexi-SLI bridge
M-Connectors (to help front panel connections)
V-Check cables (to help with voltage read points)
Voltage Readings
Using OCCT we monitor the voltage change of the motherboard under load. This represents the direct correlation between the Load Line Calibration and how the processor/motherboard deals with voltage requests while under load. This is not to be confused with the quality of power delivery, but more an indication of how aggressive the default LLC settings are on a motherboard.
Similarly to the ASUS board in this review, the MSI has minor variations in the CPU voltage. Worthy of note though is the lower VCore used by the MSI board compared to the other boards in this review while at load, suggesting more aggressive LLC settings.
Overclocking
Note: Ivy Bridge does not overclock like Sandy Bridge. For a detailed report on the effect of voltage on Ivy Bridge (and thus temperatures and power draw), please read Undervolting and Overclocking on Ivy Bridge.
Overclocking options on the MSI Z77A-GD65 are relatively straightforward. With the OC Genie button on board, give it a press and it lights up, causing the next boot to initialize a series of predefined settings for an overclock. Manual overclocks can be done by the Click BIOS software in the operating system, or by adjusting the BIOS directly.
Automatic Overclocking: After pressing the OC Genie button, it essentially seemed to enable the Enhanced Turbo option in the BIOS. The system booted without issue, and I was greeted with a 39x multiplier under all loads, showing 1.080 volts and 65ºC with PovRay. This is a rather disappointing automatic overclock. This is also indicative of issues relating to one button overclocks - the manufacturer is supplying a series of presets that has to work on every processor out of the factory. It is perhaps time that MSI introduces their own stress-testing overclock into the mix to get a better result.
Manual Overclock: Given the previous overclocking results achieved, with the MSI board we jumped straight in with 1.2 volts, with PLL Overvoltage enabled just for good measure. At this voltage, 46x multiplier was the highest multiplier stable, giving 82ºC with PovRay and showing 1.184 volts at load. In order to get the 47x multiplier to work, it required 1.250 volts on the CPU, although this gave 90ºC during PovRay and 1.240 volts at load.
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drbuzbee - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
The Lan read and write sequential speeds are labeled MBytes ps but undoubtedly are reported in Mbits ps.millisec - Thursday, May 10, 2012 - link
The Gigabyte UD3 is a nice board but it's a little annoying that's the board GB keeps sending out for reviews because of the $160 price mark. For $29 more you get so much more in the UD5 with Realtek audio, dual lan with Intel/Atheros, PCI 3.0 X4 slot, more sata 3 ports and second Marvell raid controller. The extra $29 buys a lot vs. the UD3 and in IMO is a much better value. Just hoping the UD5 arriving today does not have the same problems with the G.Skill Ripjaws X 2400 kit Anand had. Won't be a happy camper...Zoomer - Tuesday, May 15, 2012 - link
$29 for extra sata ports = pass. ;)embeddedbill - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
Hi Ian, any chance you will have an update on this board?embeddedbill - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
What... Did that take about 3 minutes from this question to Anands article?smalM - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
Black connectors, video ports, PS/2 - the first manufacturer who omits all that nonsense will get my money.KivBlue - Friday, May 11, 2012 - link
Gigabyte has gone cheap for sure, I have compared the specs for both on-board audio chips and Realtek clearly has more feature sets. Plus VIA interface looks hideous. My current system's motherboard is Gigabyte and while they have improved things with UEFI, the feature set they have in it is pretty much the same as the old BIOS, ASUS clearly has a more comprehensive UEFI in that regard, I would go with ASUS motherboard in the future as I'm no longer a novice and someone who wants to take full control of a system.bobster1 - Sunday, May 13, 2012 - link
I've been debugging crashes at stock and overclock for a few days and finally seem to have found the cause, and thought it was worth mentioning here as I didn't see anything about it in the article.I was finding my 7970 crossfire/UD3h/3770k setup was locking up frequently in games like the Witcher 2 - the system would freeze and had to be turned off and on again. I discovered by accident that the games became stable if I had prime95 running in the background, and eventually concluded that it must have something to do with the voltages at lighter loads. When I bumped up the voltage to 1.25v in the BIOS (using the static setting, rather than dynamic voltage), it seems to have solved the problem. I'm guessing this is due to Ivy Bridge taking responsibility for pci-e; it's rather unfortunate as it means I can't let the cpu use a lower voltage in an idle state without it rendering the system unstable when rendering 3d.
mikeyd55 - Tuesday, June 19, 2012 - link
Hi,First, thank you for addressing this important benchmark!
Your article notes that POST times can be improved by disabling non essential controllers.
It would be helpful to know, with the minimum controllers enabled to support a system built on either the PRO or DELUXE (Asus) boards, with: one NIC enabled in OS (only?), boot from one SSD and/or one optical drive connected to Z77 chipset ports (no third party storage controller needed), USB disabled on boot, but enabled in OS (if possible as with certain Intel boards?), and any Wireless option disabled, what could be expected.
Conditioned - Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - link
So how was dpc measured? If you disable intel-c state and all other powersaving features it makes an absolutely huge difference in dpc.