ASRock Z77 OC Formula Review: Living In The Fast Lane
by Ian Cutress on January 15, 2013 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
- Z77
- Overclocking
Metro2033
Metro2033 is a DX11 benchmark that challenges every system that tries to run it at any high-end settings. Developed by 4A Games and released in March 2010, we use the inbuilt DirectX 11 Frontline benchmark to test the hardware at 2560x1440 with full graphical settings. Results are given as the average frame rate from 4 runs.
For AMD on Metro2033, the Z77 OC Formula performs reasonably well compared to other Z77 boards. In 3-way AMD, our third card is limited to an x4 PCIe 2.0 via the chipset rather than going via a PLX chip and getting a full set of PCIe 3.0 lanes.
For NVIDIA on Metro2033, the Z77 OC Formula comes in the top half in single and dual GPU scenarios.
Dirt 3
Dirt 3 is a rallying video game and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters. Using the in game benchmark, Dirt 3 is run at 2560x1440 with Ultra graphical settings. Results are reported as the average frame rate across four runs.
Similar to Metro2033, the Z77 OC Formula commonly comes in the top half of the benchmark results, although in 3-way configurations the third card is really limited by those x4 PCIe 2.0 lanes via the chipset.
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CeriseCogburn - Tuesday, January 15, 2013 - link
They keep getting better.Their old board line ups had the most diverse setups and options with cpu sockets, chipsets, ram options, and the like, from P4 through core2 it was a wild assortment.
They must have developed a lot of knowledge and attracted skill, and know we see it paying off.
Are they not nearly or perhaps the most innovative.
DanNeely - Tuesday, January 15, 2013 - link
About a decade ago most of the smaller boutique enthusiast mobo companies started going under. All of the large but poorly regarded budget mobo makers were able to snap up full teams of people who knew how to design good boards. While it's taken time to spread their knowledge company wide there aren't any true garbage mobos on the market like there used to be and even the traditional bottom end of the market companies are generally turning out high quality parts.Assimilator87 - Tuesday, January 15, 2013 - link
Man, I really miss Abit.IanCutress - Tuesday, January 15, 2013 - link
A lot of Abit went to Bitfenix. Now we get cases like the Prodigy to play with :)NichrolasHoult - Wednesday, January 16, 2013 - link
Love my job, since I've been bringing in $5600… I sit at home, music playing while I work in front of my new iMac that I got now that I'm making it online(Click on menu Home)http://goo.gl/5AA22
Happy New Year!
vwgtiron - Thursday, January 17, 2013 - link
I use to love me some Soyo motherboards. Then towards the end quality went off the end for AMD support anyways.Flunk - Thursday, January 17, 2013 - link
I had a lot of trouble with a SOYO KT400 Dragon Ultra. That was a pricey board and it was so unstable (even at stock clocks) that I actually replaced it.. with an ABit AN7, which was such a good board that I got my 2500+ (1.83ghz) up to 2.4Ghz on a Thermaltake silent boost.Ah, memories. I miss those companies.
I suppose ASUS is still around (and bigger than ever).
Flunk - Thursday, January 17, 2013 - link
As a follow up, I would say that boards are a lot more homogeneous now. You can get a good board easily, for cheap, but sometimes the pricey ones are no better than the cheap ones.The Gigabyte z68x-ud3h-b3 I have now is a really lousy board for overclocking. You can be stable for a week, then one day it refuses to post unless you reset stock settings. At which point you can set the same overclock again and it works fine. Lousy junk.
charliem76 - Tuesday, January 15, 2013 - link
I saw that line and raised an eyebrow. Is that something you weren't supposed to mention? Between the articles and the podcast, I don't recall hearing anything about that.I did theorize that one could cram two 2.5" platter drives into the space filled by one 3.5" drive and have room left over for a RAID controller to feed into one SATA port. Or with the space of an optical drive, even more 2.5" drives.
IanCutress - Tuesday, January 15, 2013 - link
The Mushkin 960GB Chronos is reported to have two 480GB SSDs inside with a RAID 0, and the already tested OWC Mercury Electra does as well:http://www.anandtech.com/show/6200/owc-mercury-ele...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6599/mushkin-announc...
Ian