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
3D Movement Algorithm Test
The algorithms in 3DPM employ either uniform random number generation or normal distribution random number generation, and vary in various amounts of trigonometric operations, conditional statements, generation and rejection, fused operations, etc. The benchmark runs through six algorithms for a specified number of particles and steps, and calculates the speed of each algorithm, then sums them all for a final score. This is an example of a real world situation that a computational scientist may find themselves in, rather than a pure synthetic benchmark. The benchmark is also parallel between particles simulated, and we test the single thread performance as well as the multi-threaded performance.
In our single threaded test, the improved IPC from Ivy Bridge is clear to see, with every board able to beat the i7-3960X results.
Now we see some real differences to the boards - as the ASUS has MultiCore Enhancement, which boosts the CPU to full turbo mode under multithreaded mode, it has a clear advantage over the other boards in the test. Surprisingly the Gigabyte board also did the same, despite clear settings in the BIOS to enforce multiplier ratios at core loads.
WinRAR x64 3.93
With 64-bit WinRAR, we compress the set of files used in the USB speed tests. WinRAR x64 3.93 attempts to use multithreading when possible.
Due to the mixed threaded nature of the WinRar test, this is all about how the board reacts to different load levels. The four core Ivy chips are on par with the six core Sandy-E chips, but the ASRock Z77 seems to lag behind.
FastStone Image Viewer 4.2
FastStone Image Viewer is a free piece of software I have been using for quite a few years now. It allows quick viewing of flat images, as well as resizing, changing color depth, adding simple text or simple filters. It also has a bulk image conversion tool, which we use here. The software currently operates only in single-thread mode, which should change in later versions of the software. For this test, we convert a series of 170 files, of various resolutions, dimensions and types (of a total size of 163MB), all to the .gif format of 640x480 dimensions.
The single thread speed is key for FastStone, where the IPC for Ivy really gets to play.
Xilisoft Video Converter
With XVC, users can convert any type of normal video to any compatible format for smartphones, tablets and other devices. By default, it uses all available threads on the system, and in the presence of appropriate graphics cards, can utilize CUDA for NVIDIA GPUs as well as AMD APP for AMD GPUs. For this test, we use a set of 32 HD videos, each lasting 30 seconds, and convert them from 1080p to an iPod H.264 video format using just the CPU. The time taken to convert these videos gives us our result.
As one of our new tests, Xilisoft can show how motherboards treat a fully multi-threaded load with optimised coding. Again, the ASUS and Gigabyte win out here.
x264 HD Benchmark
The x264 HD Benchmark uses a common HD encoding tool to process an HD MPEG2 source at 1280x720 at 3963 Kbps. This test represents a standardized result which can be compared across other reviews, and is dependant on both CPU power and memory speed. The benchmark performs a 2-pass encode, and the results shown are the average of each pass performed four times.
Similarly to Xilisoft, the way different boards react to a full multithreaded load are on display. Score another one for ASUS and Gigabyte.
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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.