ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Motherboard - Testing - Part One
| Article Index |
|---|
| ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Motherboard |
| Specifications |
| Testing - Part One |
| Testing - Part Two |
| Final Thoughts and Conclusion |
ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Motherboard - Testing
In all of our testing of the Extreme4 motherboard we have used the following test system:
- Intel Core i7 2600k CPU
- ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Motherboard
- Onboard Intel HD 2000/3000 GPU
- 4GB OCZ PC3-17000 Gold XTE Memory
- OCZ Vertex 2 60GB SATA II SSD
- Ultra X4 850 Watt Modular Power Supply
- Windows 7 Ultimate x64
Also included in all of our test results is the exact same test system running the ASRock H61M/U3S3 Motherboard (a full review of this board can be found here).
- Intel Core i7 2600k CPU
- ASRock H61M/U3S3 Motherboard
- Onboard Intel HD 2000/3000 GPU
- 4GB OCZ PC3-17000 Gold XTE Memory
- OCZ Vertex 2 60GB SATA II SSD
- Ultra X4 850 Watt Modular Power Supply
- Windows 7 Ultimate x64
The primary focus of this testing will be to see the differences performance-wise between the more expensive (~$190 USD) ASRock Z68 Extreme4 motherboard and the less expensive (~$75 USD) ASRock H61M/U3S3 Motherboard. Both boards use the same CPU (Intel i7 2600k) and are based on the same LGA 1155 "Sandy Bridge" platform.
Testing - PCMark Vantage
This first test is a pretty standard benchmark from the folks at Futuremark that focuses on overall system performance.
We ran this test on the Z68 Extreme4 and the H61 boards from ASRock as well as an additional time with our Intel i7 2600k CPU running at 4.8 GHz (on the Z68 Extreme4 board).
As you can see in the chart above, the Z68 Extreme board was able to edge the H61M board out in most tests at stock speeds (with a couple exceptions). The performance increase from the H61M to the Z68 Extreme4 at stock speeds is pretty minimal and chances are good in everyday tasks those increases would probably be unnoticeable.
The real increases we saw was when we took the Intel i7 2600k CPU up to 4.8 GHz (stock speed is 3.6 GHz). In a few of the tests we saw performance increases of 10-20% and with increases like that in most tasks you would probably see a noticeable increase in performance. The ability to squeeze an extra 20% performance out of your system is probably going to be the reason you spend a little extra on a motherboard like the ASRock Z68 Extreme4.
Testing - 3DMark Vantage
This next set of testing will focus very heavily on the gaming abilities of our test system. We aren't expecting any amazing scores due to the fact that we are running the Intel HD 2000/3000 onboard graphics but that could be easily fixed by dropping in a nice ATI or NVIDIA card.....
In 3DMark Vantage the easiest way to get a bigger score is to add a bigger video card, obviously our integrated Intel HD graphics wasn't going to set any performance records in this test.
Just like in the PCMark testing we found both boards to be pretty close to each other at stock speeds while the overclocked results (especially in the CPU test) easily took the lead.
The overall 3DMarks and GPU testing really didn't increase much even when overclocked, these results (and this test) are much more heavily dependent on the GPU rather than the CPU.
