Asus completely revamps its UEFI GUI in the Z97-A, though it contains the same settings as the firm’s previous firmware generation. The menu still starts with two overclocking options, Manual or XMP, where XMP actually means “manual with XMP enabled”.


Unless you're using a K-series CPU, overclocking is limited to a handful of 100 MHz speed bins over stock. So, we reverted to our Core i7-4770K to test it. That CPU reaches its full-load thermal threshold at 1.25 volts, which we achieved using the board's 1.245 V setting. That's the sort of correlation we like to see.


It seems that everyone cheats on memory voltage to maximize DRAM stability. Our voltmeter showed the target 1.65 to 1.66 volts at the board’s 1.62 V setting, even though the board’s volt meter reported only 1.63 volts.
Occasionally informative, the little information box at the bottom of this GUI version also makes us scroll through an extra page of settings—compared to Asus’ previous GUI—to reveal its full set of primary, secondary, and tertiary memory settings.

Two additional submenus provide voltage stability techniques to protect your overclock, and power-limiting settings to protect your CPU from your overclock. Asus told us last year that its defaults are best-suited to the majority of hardware, and so we follow that guidance.
- 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.
[/quotemsg]
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.