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Firmware
Gigabyte’s Z790 BIOS doesn’t stray far from Z690. The only significant difference is that it’s updated for Raptor Lake processors and their additional functionality. The black-on-white/orange/yellow is a good contrast and easy to read in both BIOS modes. The Easy Mode presents high-level information about the system, switch the boot sequence, and enable XMP memory profiles. Advanced mode gives you access to all of the options you need to tweak the processor and memory. Most major overclocking/tweaking options are on the same page, with some power options in a different section. Otherwise, everything is laid out in a logical order and readily accessible.
Software
On the software side of things, Gigabyte’s primary tool for Z790 is the App Center. This app is a central repository for all board-centric applications, some Windows settings, and other third-party software. Simply click to download the applications you want, install them, and an icon will show up on the screen. We installed @BIOS (BIOS flashing utility), Easy Tune (overclocking/system tweaking), RGB Fusion 2.0 (to control RGB lighting) and SIV (for system monitoring). The Gigabyte website has many other helpful applications, including USB charging (to control power to ports), LAN, and more that aren’t covered here. Overall, we like App Center’s small footprint and continue to find its modular tools helpful.
Test System / Comparison Products
We’ve updated our test system to Windows 11 64-bit OS with all updates applied. We kept the same Asus TUF RTX 3070 video card from our previous testing platforms but updated the driver. We also updated to F1 22 for our games and kept Far Cry 6. We use the latest non-beta motherboard BIOS available to the public unless otherwise noted. The hardware we used is as follows:
Test System Components
| CPU | Intel Core i9-13900K |
| Memory | GSkill Trident Z DDR5-5600 CL36 (F5-5600U3636C16GX2-TZ5RK) |
| Row 2 - Cell 0 | Kingston Fury Beast DDR5-6000 CL36 (KF560C36BBEAK2-32) |
| GPU | Asus TUF RTX 3070 |
| Cooling | Coolermaster MasterLiquid PL360 Flux |
| PSU | EVGA Supernova 850W P6 |
| Software | Windows 11 64-bit (22H2) |
| Graphics Driver | Nvidia Driver 522.25 |
| Sound | Integrated HD audio |
| Network | Integrated Networking (GbE or 2.5 GbE) |
EVGA supplied our Supernova 850W P6 power supply (appropriately sized and more efficient than the 1.2KW monster we used previously) for our test systems, and G.Skill sent us a DDR5-5600 (F5-5600U3636C16GX2-TZ5RK) memory kit for testing.
Benchmark Settings
| Synthetic Benchmarks and Settings | Header Cell - Column 1 |
|---|---|
| Procyon | Version 2.1.249 64 |
| Row 1 - Cell 0 | Office Suite (Office 365), Video Editing (Premiere Pro 22.6.2.2), Photo Editing (Photoshop 23.5.1, Lightroom Classic 11.5) |
| 3DMark | Version 2.22.7359 64 |
| Row 3 - Cell 0 | Firestrike Extreme and Time Spy Default Presets |
| Cinebench R23 | Version RBBENCHMARK330542 |
| Row 5 - Cell 0 | Open GL Benchmark - Single and Multi-threaded |
| Blender | Version 3.3.0 |
| Row 7 - Cell 0 | Full benchmark (all 3 tests) |
| Application Tests and Settings | Row 8 - Cell 1 |
| LAME MP3 | Version SSE2_2019 |
| Row 10 - Cell 0 | Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 --nores (160Kb/s) |
| HandBrake CLI | Version: 1.2.2 |
| Row 12 - Cell 0 | Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19GB 4K mkv to x264 (light AVX) and x265 (heavy AVX) |
| Corona 1.4 | Version 1.4 |
| Row 14 - Cell 0 | Custom benchmark |
| 7-Zip | Version 21.03-beta |
| Row 16 - Cell 0 | Integrated benchmark (Command Line) |
| Game Tests and Settings | Row 17 - Cell 1 |
| Far Cry 6 | Ultra Preset - 1920 x 1080, HD Textures ON |
| F1 2022 | Ultra Preset - 1920 x 1080, HBAO+, RT Med, TAA + 16xAF, Bahrain, FPS Counter ON |
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