H97 has worse memory bandwidth than Z97? - ASRock H97 Fatal1ty Performance Mobo

Sparktown · Mar 6, 2015

Still researching my first build. I was thinking about i5-4590 with AsRock H97 Fatal1ty Performance Mobo (or ASRock H97 Anniversary, but Performance is only $5 more expensive). However, then I saw this review. Although it does pretty well in most of the other tests, the H97 Fatal1ty Performance does much worse than Z97 mobos in the AIDA64 and SiSoft Sandra memory bandwidth test.

Why did this happen? I know most people claim the only real difference between H97 and Z97 is that Z97 can overclock (although the reviewers claim Asrock H97 Fatal1ty Performance can OC, but doesn't matter with the i5-4590 anyway). However, is this really the only difference? Is there an actual difference in performance? Is this isolated to the H97 Fatal1ty Performance (the review doesn't test other h97 boards) or is it true for all h97 mobos?

I would be lying if I said I totally understand what the practical advantage of high memory bandwidth is. However, one of the main reasons I'm building a new system is to have a speedy computer that can run several applications at once. If there really is a performance difference between H97 and Z97, I wouldn't mind paying $20 more or so for a Z97 mobo.

Please let me know. Thanks.

TheFluffyDog · Mar 6, 2015

Unless your running LARGE rendering projects for long periods of time, you wont notice a difference. Not even between 1333Mhz and 2400Mhz ram

unless your dealing with i7's and OC'ing, the details of small memory bandwith changes wont be noticed.

If you want to know the reason why, its because the H97 only supports up to DDR3 1600, so if they used 2400MHz ram, which they did, the board runs it at 1600, but you will not be able to tell the difference, not in games, not on the desktop, not during anything. (like i said, maybe during rendering, but your i5 is gonna bottleneck that before the ram becomes a problem,)

williamcummins · Mar 6, 2015

There are many difference between H97 and z97 boards. PCIe connectors will not allow SLI, you're often limited to a maximum of 32Gb of Ram, power phase design is less elaborated, etc.

Technically, there will be a performance difference in bandwith from a h97 to a z97. Will you notice the difference? Probably not. If you wish to perform a satisfying and stable overclock, you should go with a z97 board.

pbm86 · Mar 6, 2015

The explanation is simple. The RAM used in the review can run at 2400Mhz. But H97 does not allow RAM overclocking. That means the RAM is running only at 1600MHz. Maybe the reviewers should have configured the Z97 motherboards to run at 1600MHz. There isn't a big difference in the performance in most tasks with a lower frequency RAM.

Sparktown · Mar 6, 2015

TheFluffyDog :

So the ram h97 and z97 can support is different? This is the first time I've heard this. If h97 only supports up to 1600 mhz, how much can z97 support?

I was surprised by this because Intel claims the i7-4770K (the CPU the testers use) only supports DDR3 1333/1600. The same is true for the i5-4590 and a bunch of other i5s and i7s I looked at. Is this not true?

As you mentioned, I have also heard there is currently no practical reason to get over 1600 mhz ram. I was planning on getting 8 GB 1600mhz (2 stick x 4 GB) and maybe upgrading to 16 GB (4 sticks x 4 GB) in the future.

So if I'm not planning on OCing or running two GPUs at the same time, is there any reason for me to get an z97 instead of an h97?

Sparktown · Mar 8, 2015

Thanks for all the responses. Did some more research. People might already know this, but I'll post since it might be useful to someone in the future. Feel free to correct me if I got something wrong.

Currently, most (maybe all?) Intel CPUs are officially rated for DDR3 1333/1600 RAM. You cannot utilize the full bandwidth of RAM over 1600 mhz (even with a Z97 mobo) without "overclocking" the CPU. This can be done through Intel's XMP or other OC methods. This technically voids the standard warranty on Intel CPUs. According to the Intel forums, even using Intel's own XMP is considered "direct overclocking to the Memory Controller Hub (MCH) in the processor" and voids the standard warranty (Intel does sell a special after-market overclocking warranty).

Since H97 is normally not supposed to be able to OC, my guess is most H97 mobos cannot use XMP or other OC methods to fully utilize over 1600 mhz RAM. The review does claim the Asrock H97 Performance can OC, but it looks like they only speed up the CPU and leave the RAM locked at 1600 mhz (it's unclear). As other posters claimed, that was probably the cause of the difference in the tests, which appeared to specifically measure memory bandwidth.

Unfortunately, the review of the Asrock H97 Performance does not directly state whether or not this is the case. However, it does point out that "H97 limits memory speeds to 1600MHz so memory performance suffers". Since the Asrock mobo was the only H97 mobo they tested, it does seem like they might have been doing a memory bandwidth test comparing the bandwidth of RAM locked at 1600 mhz versus RAM unlocked to 2400 mhz.

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H97 has worse memory bandwidth than Z97? - ASRock H97 Fatal1ty Performance Mobo

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