ECS hasn’t altered its bonus software suite since our previous round-up, so we'll save you the trouble of rehashing it all here. We did, however, take another run with its unchanged eOC suite.




ECS eOC is more useful than we previously thought, even though it’s only capable of modifying BCLK and a few voltage levels.
Like many of the ECS motherboards we’ve tested in the past, this one has a bad habit of getting stuck when its BCLK is set too high in the UEFI. Several hours of effort to reset the firmware, including the use of the CLR_CMOS button, battery removal, and battery terminal shorting, could not revive the board. We even tried to force an error by starting the PC with missing components (memory, graphics, CPU), hoping that's restore the BIOS defaults. No dice.
Sometimes, an ECS motherboard that’s stuck will start working again after being disconnected for a few days. That didn’t work either, even with the battery removed. The one thing that did get the system to finally boot was when, out of desperation, we put a jumper on a pair of pins that the manual says are for chassis intrusion detection. We just happened to notice that those pins were next to the system ROM.
From that point forward, all of our attempts to push higher BCLK settings on ECS' Z77H2-AX were performed using its eOC utility. Since eOC-based BCLK modifications don't alter the firmware, choosing a bad setting in software didn’t cause the UEFI to lock up. Thus, we never had to repeat our no-boot ordeal.
- Intel's Mainstream Z77 Express Goes High-End
- Panther Point's Thunderbolt Connection
- ASRock Z77 OC Formula
- Z77 OC Formula Software
- Z77 OC Formula Firmware
- Asus Sabertooth Z77
- Sabertooth Z77 Software
- Sabertooth Z77 Firmware
- ECS "Golden Board" Z77H2-AX
- Z77H2-AX Software
- Z77H2-AX Firmware
- Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP5 TH
- GA-Z77X-UP5 TH Software
- GA-Z77X-UP5 TH Firmware
- Intel DZ77RE-75K
- DZ77RE-75K Software And Firmware
- MSI Z77A-GD80
- Z77A-GD80 Software
- Z77A-GD80 Firmware
- Test Settings And Compatibility
- Benchmark Results: 3DMark 11
- Benchmark Results: PCMark And SiSoftware Sandra
- Power And Heat
- Overclocking
- Picking The Right High-End Z77 Board
"Six $220-280 Z77 Express-Based Motherboards, Reviewed"
Also, the time taken to show the windows loading screen/ BIOS page..
you really liked the black/grey dimms and PCI slots of the gigabyte better than the blue/black of the MSI!
Andrew Ku tests drive controllers. I'm trying to get him to "write the book" on controller performance, since dozens of boards use only a few different controllers. As for testing things like Z77 controller performance on board A vs Z77 controller performance on board B, it's a waste of time unless something is broken. So the article looked for "broken stuff". See the red bar on the first chart:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/z77x-up5-th-z77a-gd80-z77-oc-formula,3305-22.html
With nothing broken, there's no excuse to test the Z77 controller six times. Back to me begging Andrew Ku for a comprehensive comparison of every SATA controller currently available on mainstream-brand enthusiast boards.
This allows ocer's to achieve higher overclocks while still retaining the power saving functions, instead of being forced to either reduce the overclock, or be forced to run high voltage 24/7.
MSI doesn't have this key feature.
Overclocking the BLCK is very unlikely to cause any damage, it's just likely to not give much of a stable overclock.
And as much as I like ASRock, I realy wish they'd put more PWM headers on their boards.
On a side note, in a future I would love to see a comparison including boards like the Z77X-UP7 from Gigabyte, haven't got a chance to see that one in action
The problem isn't the review, the problem is that only two people didn't realize that the performance is supposed to be identical. Those two people are you, and the person who gave you the "thumbs up".