Test Rig and Procedures

Our Test Rig

Intel LGA1150 Test System

CPU

Intel i7-4770K CPU

Cooling

Noctua NH-U12S for cooling

Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Paste

Memory

Kingston DDR3 HyperX Genesis Blue 1600Mhz Ram

Storage

Kingston HyperX 120Gb SSD (OS)

Seagate 2TB Hard drive (Steam games)

Corsair Force GT 60Gb (USB 3.0 and SATA 3 testing)

Video Card

Nvidia GTX 580 Video Card

Power Supply

Cooler Master V1000 Power Supply

Case

Microcool Banchetto 101 Test bench

OS

Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit

Windows is kept up to date while only having the benchmark programs and games needed for our testing installed.

Our Testing Procedures

CPU Testing

Cinebench 

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer's performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON's award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. The test procedure consists of two main components - the graphics card performance test and the CPU performance test. We only use the total CPU score for our motherboard testing.

Passmark Performance Test 8.0

We now just use the overall CPU mark score that takes into account all of the CPU oriented results

WorldBench

Designed by the guys behind PCWorld, Worldbench is a benchmark designed to use applications and utility’s that everyone uses day to day and benchmark their performance. This gives the most accurate REAL world results, something that no other benchmark does. Being fully automated, WorldBench 6's application tests are scripted to run consecutively, and those results are automatically combined and compared against a baseline system. We use their Photoshop and Office tests.

WPrime

Perfect for testing the multithreading of multiple core CPU’s. “wPrime uses a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions, with f(x)=x2-k, where k is the number we're sorting, until Sgn(f(x)/f'(x)) does not equal that of the previous iteration, starting with an estimation of k/2. It then uses an iterative calling of the estimation method a set amount of times to increase the accuracy of the results. It then confirms that n(k)2=k to ensure the calculation was correct. It repeats this for all numbers from 1 to the requested maximum.”

X264 HD

X264 HD is a CPU encoding benchmark. Using the x264 codec this test encodes a video file and times its performance.

Overall Synthetic Benchmarks

PCMark 7

We run the basic PCMark test suite and use the overall score to get a general idea of system performance.

3DMark

We run the 2013 Fire Strike test using both the normal setting and extreme settings to get an overall system performance number that takes into account gaming focused systems like bandwidth to our test bench’s video card.

In Game Tests

Bioshock Infinite

Using the Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool we run Bioshock Infinite on the “Xtreme” quality setting. This has a resolution of 1920x1080, FXAA turned on, Ultra Texture detail, 16x Aniso Texture Filtering, Ultra Dynamic Shadows, Normal Postprocessing, Light Shafts on, Ambient Occlusion set to ultra, and the Level of Detail set to Ultra as well.

Tomb Raider

 Using the Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool we run Tomb Raider on the “Xtreme” quality setting. This has a resolution of 1920x1080, Exclusive Fullscreen turned on, Anti-Aliasing set to 2xSSAA, Texture Quality set to Ultra, Texture Aniso set to 16x Aniso, Hair Quality set to TressFX, Shadow set to Normal, Shadow Resolution on High, Ultra SSAO, Ultra Depth of Field, High Reflection quality, Ultra LOD scale, Post Processing On, High Precision RT turned on, and Tessellation is also turned on. 

Hitman: Absolution

Using the Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool we run Hitman: Absolution on the “Xtreme” quality setting other than the MSAA setting is turned down from 8x to 2x. That setting puts the resolution at 1920x1080, MSAA is set to 2x, Texture Quality is set to High, Texture Aniso is set to 16x, Shadows are on Ultra, SSA is set to high, Global Illumination is turned on, Reflections are set to High, FXAA is on, Level of Detail is set to Ultra, Depth of Field is high, Tessellation is turned on, and Bloom is set to normal.

Sleeping Dogs

 Using the Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool we run Sleeping Dogs on the “Xtreme” quality setting. That means our resolution is set to 1920x1080, Anti-Aliasing is set to Extreme, Texture Quality is set to High-Res, Shadow Quality is High, Shadow Filter is set to high, SSAO is set to High, Motion Blur Level is set to High, and World Density is set to Extreme.

Subsystem Testing

RightMark Audio Analyzer

We use this to test the on board audio on all motherboard that come in, this gives us an idea of their audio performance beyond subjective testing. When testing we always have our audio set to 24 bit.

Crystal Disk Mark

We use this benchmark for USB 3.0 and SATA speed tests. Testing is done with Crystal Disc Mark with a Corsair Force GT 60 Gb. USB 3.0 testing is hooked up through a Thermaltake BlackX with USB 3.0 support

 

 

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #33819 29 Jan 2014 21:18
I hope everyone is having a good week. Today I take a look at a Z87 motherboard from Gigabyte. Check it out, let us know what you think!
Dreyvas's Avatar
Dreyvas replied the topic: #33873 03 Feb 2014 04:01
Strongly considering this for my next motherboard, thanks for the review.

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