MSI Z97M Gaming Motherboard Review
Test System and Testing Procedures
| Processor | Intel Core i7-4770K (Retail) |
| CPU Cooler |
Noctua NH-u12S with Noctua NT-H1 thermal compound |
| Power Supply |
NXZT Hale v2 1000W 80 Plus Platinum PSU |
| Memory | 16 GB Kingston HyperX Beast DDR3 2100 MHZ CL11 |
| Storage | Plextor M6e M.2 PX-G256M6e SSD, Samsung Evo 840 256 GB, Kingston Data Traveler USB 3.0 |
| Graphics | Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 WindForce OC |
| Drivers | 0406 BIOS, Intel Chipset Driver 10.0.3, NVIDIA 335.23 WHQL drivers. |
| Motherboards | MSI Z97M Gaming, MSI Z97 Mpower MAX AC, ASUS Z97-A |
| Network | Cisco WS-C2960G-8TC-L |
| Operating System | Windows 7 x64 Ultimate SP-1 with latest patches and updates |
Latest working BIOS, updates and drivers were used at the time of the review. Each test was conducted at least three times for accuracy.
Comparison benchmarks in this review are shown between the stock performance and manual multiplier overclock of 4.5GHz at 1.248Vcore. This is the maximum overclock achievable on this specific chip on a tower air cooler without throttling under load (under AIDA64 stability test) although it can safely boot up to 4.7GHz with 1.375Vcore. This will also serve as a baseline OC test for cross comparison with other Z97 motherboards down the road.
Tests conducted are separated in three sections: System benchmarks (CPU benchmarks, memory tests, compression benchmarks, media encoding and 3D rendering tests), Subsystem testing (storage, network and audio performance tests), and Gaming Benchmarks (semi-synthetic and real gameplay tests).
System Benchmarks
- wPrime 1.55 32M
- Aida64 Engineer 4.30.2900
- CineBench R15
- PCMark 8 v2.0.228
- WinRAR 5.01
- Handbrake 0.9.9
- x264 FHD 1.0.1
Subsystem Testing
- CrystalDisk Mark for SATA and USB tests
- DPC Latency
- Rightmark Audio Analyzer 6.4.0
- Passmark Performance Test 8.0 – Network Speed Graph
- JPerf 2.0.2
- LAN Speed Test 3.4
Gaming Benchmarks
- 3DMark11 v1.0.132 – Performance and Extreme Preset
- 3DMark (Firestrike test) v1.2.362 – Default Preset
- Tomb Raider – Built-in Benchmark, Low preset on 800×600
- Bioshock Infinite – Built-in Benchmark, Low preset on 640×480
- Sleeping Dogs – Built-in Benchmark, Low preset on 640×480
