We conducted our general benchmarks with a brand new Core i7-4790. But overclocking tests require switching back to our faithful Core i7-4770K. Using that processor, 4.60 GHz is the ragged edge of stability at 1.25 V, and any greater voltage causes it to throttle under full load. It’s not clocked higher when it’s throttled.

Most of the motherboards in today’s round-up successfully reach the full measure of our processor’s overclocking capability. Gigabyte comes up a little short, but that could seriously be the difference of a few millivolts that might not impact other builders with different overclocking needs.

Conversely, the Z79X Gaming 5 reached the highest base clock frequency when using the 100 MHz strap. That’s the only ratio available on multiplier-locked processors, so this might be important to anyone running the new Core i7-4790.

ECS wasn’t the company that ran into memory trouble after receiving an award from us, yet its L337 Gaming is the trailing brand in our memory overclocking test. The Z97-A was happy with our DDR3-2800 XMP settings, but wouldn’t let us overclock. And the Z97 Gaming 5 roughly matches the Z97 Extreme4 depending on the number of modules installed.
- Gaming Raises The Mainstream
- ASRock Z97 Extreme4
- Z97 Extreme4 Software
- Z97 Extreme4 Firmware
- Asus Z97-A
- Z97-A Software
- Z97-A Firmware
- Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 5
- Z97X-Gaming 5 Software
- Z97X-Gaming 5 Firmware
- L337 Gaming Z97-Machine
- Z97-Machine Software
- Z97-Machine Firmware
- MSI Z97 Gaming 5
- Z97 Gaming 5 Software
- Z97 Gaming 5 Firmware
- Test Hardware And Benchmark Configurations
- Results: 3DMark And PCMark
- Results: SiSoftware Sandra
- Results: 3D Games
- Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Results: Adobe Creative Suite
- Results: Productivity
- Results: File Compression
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- Overclocking
- Picking A Value Leader
I find it small
Not exactly the most comprehensive review, but here is Asus' take on NICs: http://rog.asus.com/312772014/labels/guides/tried-and-tested-why-intel-ethernet-is-still-better-for-gaming/
Latency is down the bottom of the page if you didn't realise.
It looks like they're testing at 10Mb/s though, which sort of invalidates all the latency results.
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Well, then i guess i'll have to hunt that info down because i do not like investing in mobos with cheap components, no matter how many features it has.
As to MSI, I wouldn't touch their cheap boards, but their Z77A-GD65 Gaming board really surprised me over how nice it is, and how cool the VRMs stay under load. If my primary were full ATX, I'd be using it there.