Overall Performance And Efficiency
ASRock leads in the largest number of today’s charts, so we are not surprised to see the firm on top of our averages. Zotac, on the other hand, shows off the best power consumption attributes, and we are equally unsurprised to see it at the bottom of average performance. We are, however, surprised to see that both the top and bottom boards on this chart have similar default overclocks, at 1.3% and 1.4%.
Efficiency compares performance to energy, so a miserly board could still potentially lose if it also underperforms. Yet, Zotac’s power advantage looks far better than its performance deficit, so we expect it to be somewhere near the top.
This is where AMD’s decision to stick with DDR3-1066 begins to make sense: the four boards that support our memory at DDR3-1333 are also the best performers. But they consume enough power that they’re also the least-efficient. The lowest-energy motherboards are also the most efficient, in spite of minor performance limitations.