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Review: ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe

by Tarinder Sandhu on 19 June 2012, 11:38 3.5

Tags: ASUSTeK (TPE:2357)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qabig5

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Testing methodology

Comparison systems
Motherboard ASUS P8Z77V Deluxe Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H Gigabyte Z77-D3H MSI Z77A-GD55
Motherboard BIOS 1206 F8c F10 V1.30
Chipset driver Intel Inf 9.3.0.1020 and IMEI 8.0.1399
Processor Intel Core i7-3770K ES
Memory G.Skill 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3
Memory timings 9-9-9-24-2T @ 1,600MHz
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2GB and Intel HD 4000 Graphics
Graphics driver ForceWare 301.10 and Intel 8.15.10.2696
Disk drive Corsair V128 SSD
Optical drive Sony AD-7263S
Chassis Corsair Graphite 600T
Power supply Corsair AX750
Operating system Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit

CPU and memory benchmarks
AIDA64 v2.30.1900
 Benchmark that analyses memory bandwidth and latency
MediaEspresso 6.5
 Encodes 720p episode (55m) into BlackBerry Bold-friendly 480x360 version in mp4
PCMark 7
 An all-encompassing test to evaluate system performance
HEXUS.PiFast
 Our number-crunching benchmark stresses a single core by calculating Pi to 10m places
wPrime 2.0.8 Another number-crunching benchmark that stresses all available CPU cores/threads
CINEBENCH 11.5 Using Cinebench's multi-CPU render, this cross-platform benchmark stresses all cores

GPU benchmarks
3DMark 11 b1.1 DX11, run with the performance preset
3DMark Vantage b1.2 DX10, run at the default performance preset
Just Cause 2 DX10, 1,280x720 low/medium and 1,920x1,080 high settings
Batman: Arkham City DX11, 1,920x1,080 with very high quality settings

General benchmarks
Storage performance USB 3.0 read and write speed, SSD average read and write speed
Power consumption While idling and when running wPrime and 3DMark Vantage

Notes

Our fourth look at a Z77 chipset-based motherboard pits the ASUS against well-established competition from Gigabyte and MSI.

Full-on Overclocking

We've used exactly the same methodology to overclock the Core i7-3770K chip as with the three previously-reviewed boards. The toasty nature of an over-volted Ivy Bridge processor puts the onus more on the cooling than the smooth-as-silk power-delivery system of a motherboard. As such, with the same cooling in place, we managed to hit a stable 4.6GHz with 1.175V, 4.7GHz with 1.25V and 4.8GHz with 1.35V. Going any higher on the voltage simply pushed temperatures to a level that couldn't be cooled by a decent aftermarket heatsink.

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