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
Power Consumption
Power consumption was tested on the system as a whole with a wall meter connected to the OCZ 1250W power supply, while in a dual 7970 GPU configuration. This power supply is Gold rated, and as I am in the UK on a 230-240 V supply, leads to ~75% efficiency > 50W, and 90%+ efficiency at 250W, which is suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading. This method of power reading allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency. These are the real world values that consumers may expect from a typical system (minus the monitor) using this motherboard.
Perhaps the alarming graph of these is the power draw under video performance. It seems that certain motherboard BIOSes consider it a more intensive task, waking up more of the processor (or GPU) to compensate. At load however, we see the MSI and the ASRock boards drawing less power overall.
Boot Times
Different motherboards have different POST sequences before an operating system is initialized. A lot of this is dependent on the board itself, and POST boot time is determined by the controllers on board (and the sequence of how those extras are organized). As part of our testing, we are now going to look at the POST Boot Time - this is the time from pressing the ON button on the computer to when Windows starts loading. (We discount Windows loading as it is highly variable given Windows specific features.) These results are subject to human error, so please allow +/- 1 second in these results.
With a lot more controllers to initialise on board, the ASUS P8Z77-V Pro requires at default 20.47 seconds to reach the windows loading screen. By disabling controllers that aren't used, a time more like the ASRock could be achieved. There is direct correlation between functionality and POST time.
Overclocking
Here at AnandTech we want to provide quick and easy ways to determine if a board is good for you (with in-depth analysis of course). So here is a quick round up of our overclocking results. Overclocks are tested for stability with PovRay and OCCT - while these may not be the most strenuous of stability tests, it does offer a quick check for memory errors under high load (and also balances testing time with getting the next board on for review!).
|
CPU Speed (MHz) |
Voltage (Volts) |
PovRay Peak Temp (ºC) |
OCCT Peak Temp (ºC) |
Notes | |
|
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 |
4700 | 1.175 | 86 | 86 | LLC Level 1 |
|
ASUS P8Z77-V Pro |
4700 | 1.200 | 83 | 86 | PLL Overvoltage enabled |
|
Gigabyte Z77X-UD3H |
4700 | 1.200 | 82 | 86 | LLC Extreme |
|
MSI Z77A-GD65 |
4700 | 1.250 | 90 | - | PLL Overvoltage enabled |
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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.