GIGABYTE Z97X-SOC Force Review
by Ian Cutress on June 17, 2014 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Gigabyte
- Overclocking
- Z97
Scientific and Synthetic Benchmarks
2D to 3D Rendering –Agisoft PhotoScan v1.0: link
Agisoft Photoscan creates 3D models from 2D images, a process which is very computationally expensive. The algorithm is split into four distinct phases, and different phases of the model reconstruction require either fast memory, fast IPC, more cores, or even OpenCL compute devices to hand. Agisoft supplied us with a special version of the software to script the process, where we take 50 images of a stately home and convert it into a medium quality model. This benchmark typically takes around 15-20 minutes on a high end PC on the CPU alone, with GPUs reducing the time.
Console Emulation –Dolphin Benchmark: link
At the start of 2014 I was emailed with a link to a new emulation benchmark based on the Dolphin Emulator. The issue with emulators tends to be two-fold: game licensing and raw CPU power required for the emulation. As a result, many emulators are often bound by single thread CPU performance, and general reports tended to suggest that Haswell provided a significant boost to emulator performance. This benchmark runs a Wii program that raytraces a complex 3D scene inside the Dolphin Wii emulator. Performance on this benchmark is a good proxy of the speed of Dolphin CPU emulation, which is an intensive single core task using most aspects of a CPU. Results are given in minutes, where the Wii itself scores 17.53 minutes.
Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test: link
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores.
Encryption –TrueCrypt v0.7.1a: link
TrueCrypt is an off the shelf open source encryption tool for files and folders. For our test we run the benchmark mode using a 1GB buffer and take the mean result from AES encryption.
Synthetic – 7-Zip 9.2: link
As an open source compression tool, 7-Zip is a popular tool for making sets of files easier to handle and transfer. The software offers up its own benchmark, to which we report the result.
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apertotes - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
I am glad to know that they moved fan control out of Easy Tune. Do you know if this improvement will carry on to Z87 motherboards also?Lucian2244 - Wednesday, June 18, 2014 - link
I think they already did, on my mobo (z87mx-drh) i see the system information viewer available for download, the last time i checked easy tune it didn't have the smart fan option anymore.GeorgeH - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
Do I need to calibrate my monitor? I already knew that the graphics cards are not included (4-Way graphics support picture, 1st page).isa - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
Boards have really become things of beauty that are also well thought-out like the colocation of all the OC buttons on this board. But I'm a bit stumped that there are OC boards distinct from gaming boards: aren't gamers the primary customers of OCing? Not just a nit: I wanted the best effort on audio on this, and it's not available because this isn't a gamer board?Flunk - Tuesday, June 17, 2014 - link
No, there is a group of people who just try to get the most out of their hardware for no real reason. Just so they can say they did. These are the same people cooling with liquid nitrogen, which is totally impractical. They don't care about performance or what they're doing with the computer. It's all about the numbers and bragging rights.If you're a gamer your needs would be better served with a gaming-focused board. The only reason a gamer would want to pick this up is if it was going really cheap.
BMNify - Wednesday, June 18, 2014 - link
ian, can you check please the ram compatibility as regards using 4 generic 1333 dimm's in all these gigabyte boards, as it seems that many have a big problem even posting with 4 dimms installed including my gigabyte Z87M-D3H that's had all the bios installed through factory to currently 11a for that board an still only 2 dimms (in the dimm3 and dimm4 slots) will post and work in single channel mode, no matter what 3 or 4 dimms will not even post never mind boot and function for a time before as per other reports crashing....it seems many gigabyte boards with 4 dimm slots have massive problems with no sign of a bios fix that actually works for generic (fully tested individually as god) 1333 dimm's
cylemmulo - Wednesday, June 18, 2014 - link
How the hell would you get the front panel connectors on when you had quad cards?bj_murphy - Wednesday, June 18, 2014 - link
Just FYI, I think you linked an i7-4820K instead of an i7-4770K in your build sheet.Narg - Thursday, June 19, 2014 - link
I'm still waiting for a bare-bones power board. All the performance, but no extra features that I really don't need or want. The most important one is on-board sound. Don't need it, don't want it. I will ALWAYS use a card for sound. Always. Video on-board is not needed either.Wall Street - Saturday, June 21, 2014 - link
This is about as bare bones as you will find. Much of the HD audio and networking functionality is built into the chipset. Although an ethernet PHY and an audio DAC are required to implement this, it would be a waste not to include this functionality because it is basically "free" with 90% of the digital side of these functions happening in the Z97 chipset itself. It would be like a motherboard maker not including any PCI-E or USB 3 ports, if Intel does all of the work, why not?