Gigabyte Z97-D3H Motherboard Review

Subsystem and Gaming Benchmarks
All SATA3 connections on the Gigabyte Z97-D3H are provided by the Intel Z97 chipset and performs as expected.

USB 3.0 ports are also natively provided by the Intel Z97 chipset.

On-board Audio

Before proceeding with audio benchmarks, Deferred Procedure Call latency must be first checked to make sure that the system is capable of producing useable results when the Rightmark Audio Analyzer benchmark was run. DPC is a Windows function that involves prioritizing tasks within the OS and high DPC latencies can be caused by several things including hardware device conflict. The DPC checker graphically displays the latency level of the system in real time so as long as the bars are in the green, the system should be able to handle audio and video streaming without drop outs or stutters.

After leaving the system running for one hour, the absolute maximum peaked at 199 microseconds while the system average for the most part stayed well below that in the low 30’s. This means that there should be no hardware related issues or interruptions in terms of audio/video streaming performance while running the motherboard. Now we can run RightMark Audio Analyzer tests using a short 3-inch 3.5mm audioloop cable that goes in the rear line-in and line-out ports for a loopback test to objectively test internal audio performance. The highest 24-bit 96kHz and 192kHz settings were used.

Network Connectivity

Network testing was conducted with a 4-port Cisco E3200 Gigabit Dual-Band Wireless N router and a pair of 10-ft long Cat5E cables connecting the server PC and the test motherboard. The server system is running an Intel Core i7-3960X processor on an ASUS P9X79 WS motherboard with an Intel 82574L Gigabit LAN Controller. Interrupt Moderation was disabled. First set of tests were done without the cFos traffic shaping program installed, and the second set is with the cFos program calibrated.

Very good performance out of the gate already with the Intel i217-V Ethernet, CPU usage topped out at 4% during the tests and the jPerf test shows some dips during the duration of the test but LAN Speed Test results and Performance Test 8 results are very high.

Network performance has improved slightly with the Network Performance Test 8 with the average rate increasing slightly at the cost of higher CPU usage now peaking at 10% . jPerf results showed a much smoother result with no dips but LAN Speed Test shows a much lower benchmark result.

Gaming Tests

Futuremark’s 3DMark is a semi-synthetic gaming benchmark that calculates both graphics and CPU-bound physics in a controlled series of tests and provides scores that can be compared with other gaming platforms.

Instead of showing real-world gaming performance, a gaming test at the lowest resolution where CPU performance difference can be gauged due to the reduced reliance on the discrete GPU was conducted.