Intel Z87 Motherboard Review with Haswell: Gigabyte, MSI, ASRock and ASUS
by Ian Cutress on June 27, 2013 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- MSI
- Gigabyte
- ASRock
- Asus
- Haswell
- Z87
- Shark Bay
- Lynx Point
Metro2033
Our first analysis is with the perennial reviewers’ favorite, Metro2033. It occurs in a lot of reviews for a couple of reasons – it has a very easy to use benchmark GUI that anyone can use, and it is often very GPU limited, at least in single GPU mode. Metro2033 is a strenuous DX11 benchmark that can challenge most systems that try to run it at any high-end settings. Developed by 4A Games and released in March 2010, we use the inbuilt DirectX 11 Frontline benchmark to test the hardware at 1440p with full graphical settings. Results are given as the average frame rate from a second batch of 4 runs, as Metro has a tendency to inflate the scores for the first batch by up to 5%.
| Metro 2033 | 1 GPU | 2 GPU | 3 GPU |
| AMD | |||
| NVIDIA |
In our 3-way AMD test, it is clear that when the x1 mode is selected on the ASUS Z87-Pro, performance scaling goes out the window. For Metro there is a slight advantage having x8/x4/x4 over x8/x8 + x4.
Dirt 3
Dirt 3 is a rallying video game and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters. Dirt 3 also falls under the list of ‘games with a handy benchmark mode’. In previous testing, Dirt 3 has always seemed to love cores, memory, GPUs, PCIe lane bandwidth, everything. The small issue with Dirt 3 is that depending on the benchmark mode tested, the benchmark launcher is not indicative of game play per se, citing numbers higher than actually observed. Despite this, the benchmark mode also includes an element of uncertainty, by actually driving a race, rather than a predetermined sequence of events such as Metro 2033. This in essence should make the benchmark more variable, but we take repeated in order to smooth this out. Using the benchmark mode, Dirt 3 is run at 1440p with Ultra graphical settings. Results are reported as the average frame rate across four runs.
| Dirt 3 | 1 GPU | 2 GPU | 3 GPU |
| AMD | |||
| NVIDIA |
If I was a Dirt gamer, clearly having the most PCIe lanes supplied by the CPU is going to win out the day, putting the MSI and ASRock ahead of the others.
Civilization V
A game that has plagued my testing over the past twelve months is Civilization V. Being on the older 12.3 Catalyst drivers were somewhat of a nightmare, giving no scaling, and as a result I dropped it from my test suite after only a couple of reviews. With the later drivers used for this review, the situation has improved but only slightly, as you will see below. Civilization V seems to run into a scaling bottleneck very early on, and any additional GPU allocation only causes worse performance.
Our Civilization V testing uses Ryan’s GPU benchmark test all wrapped up in a neat batch file. We report the average frame rate of a 5 minute test.
| Civilization V | 1 GPU | 2 GPU | 3 GPU |
| AMD | |||
| NVIDIA |
For whatever reason the ASRock motherboard is not too fond of Civilization V, taking a hit on dual AMD and also dual NVIDIA.
Sleeping Dogs
While not necessarily a game on everybody’s lips, Sleeping Dogs is a strenuous game with a pretty hardcore benchmark that scales well with additional GPU power due to its SSAA implementation. The team over at Adrenaline.com.br is supreme for making an easy to use benchmark GUI, allowing a numpty like me to charge ahead with a set of four 1440p runs with maximum graphical settings.
| Sleeping Dogs | 1 GPU | 2 GPU | 3 GPU |
| AMD | |||
| NVIDIA |
Sleeping Dogs is very much static between motherboards and CPUs, except at three-way AMD where the difference between a third slot at x4 or x1 is around 12.5%.
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Mr Perfect - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
I was wondering the same thing. If all shipping Haswell boards have the faulty USB3, then this is a non-starter.Avalon - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
Is it just me, or are these boards too expensive?The Asrock Z77 Extreme6 is $155 on Newegg, $169 w/Thunderbolt. Asrock Z87 Extreme6 is $220-$20 MIR.
The Gigabyte Z77 UD3H is $140 on Newegg. Gigabyte Z87 UD3H is $180.
You get a couple extra USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb slots and Haswell support, but I don't understand how that makes mid range boards at best command low high-end prices.
Mr Perfect - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
My guess is it's just new vs old products at this point. The Z77 boards are old news and have had a year to fall in price. Meanwhile, the Z87s are shiny new toys that some people will pay a premium for.Rob94hawk - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
"As it stands the MSI BIOS looks like a higgledy-piggledy jumble to a new overclocker."Going from X38/775 to this I still haven't figured out what everything does.
nsiboro - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
Ian, kindly provide info/links to ASUS Z87-Pro 3xxx series BIOS.The website product page (download) is only showing 1xxx series BIOS.
Thanks.
blackie333 - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
Could someone please check/confirm whether USB 3.0 S3 wakeup bug also affects devices connected via additional(ASMedia 1074) onboard USB 3.0 hub ports available on Asus Z87-PRO stepping C1 board?Some people are suggesting that only USB 3.0 ports directly connected to Z87 chipset are affected by the bug.
chizow - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
The PCIe lane config was the biggest deciding factor for me. I will only ever run 2-way SLI, so I wanted to maintain x8/x8 config for my 2x primary GPUs but wanted the flexibility of that 3rd slot for a PCIe SSD or PCIe PhysX card.Only the Asus and Gigabyte options offered that lane config, from what I saw both the MSI and Asrock designs go with x8/x4/x4 3.0 rather than x8/x8 3.0 + x4 2.0
The Gigabyte UD range was pretty vanilla, but I was OK with that, the Asus boards, although solid, offered a lot of features I would never need or use, like Wi-Fi.
I ended up with the Gigabyte Z87X-UD4 as it was cheaper than the comparable Asus offering Z87-Pro by quite a bit.
pandemonium - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
I love the thoroughness of these articles. Excellent job, guys!"ASUS’ reasoning is such that some of the Haswell i7-4770K CPUs, the ones that only just get into this category, will throttle the CPU speed when using the default Intel CPU cooler when MCT is enabled."
Who - buying a 4770K - will be using a stock cooler? What kind of rationality is that garbage? >.>
blackie333 - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
There can be some, maybe those waiting for a better cooler. But the question is why Intel is including cooler which isn't capable to cool the CPU and we still have to pay for it? It should be able to do it's job at least on default frequency.Anyway this problem is IMHO more an effect of Haswell heat transfer issue than poor quality of the stock cooler. If Intel could fix the CPU overheating issue the cooler should be good enough.
ven - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link
why is that PCIe hub is present, many will prefer having a single device that will utilize all the bandwidth than having multiple devices choking with shared bandwidth, six SATA 6Gpbs is enough for most, with flex i/o and that hub removed gives x7 lanes and given this a Desktop board,msata will not be missed that much, so we can get tri-way SLI, i am little surprised that no manufactures choose this configuration.