Testing methodology and overclocking
Comparison systems |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Motherboard | MSI Z77A-GD55 | Gigabyte Z77-D3H | |||||
| Motherboard BIOS | V1.30 | F10 | |||||
| Chipset driver | Intel Inf 9.3.0.1020 and IMEI 8.0.1399 | ||||||
| Processor | Intel Core i7-3770K | ||||||
| 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 |
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| 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 |
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| 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 |
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| 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
We're comparing the MSI's performance against the recently-reviewed Gigabyte Z77-D3H - a budget board that's pretty hot on performance. The best Ivy Bridge chip is in the socket and the best single-GPU graphics card will put the focus on the chipset implementation in our gaming benchmarks.