GIGABYTE Z97X-SOC Force Review
by Ian Cutress on June 17, 2014 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Gigabyte
- Overclocking
- Z97
Gaming Benchmarks
F1 2013
First up is F1 2013 by Codemasters. I am a big Formula 1 fan in my spare time, and nothing makes me happier than carving up the field in a Caterham, waving to the Red Bulls as I drive by (because I play on easy and take shortcuts). F1 2013 uses the EGO Engine, and like other Codemasters games ends up being very playable on old hardware quite easily. In order to beef up the benchmark a bit, we devised the following scenario for the benchmark mode: one lap of Spa-Francorchamps in the heavy wet, the benchmark follows Jenson Button in the McLaren who starts on the grid in 22nd place, with the field made up of 11 Williams cars, 5 Marussia and 5 Caterham in that order. This puts emphasis on the CPU to handle the AI in the wet, and allows for a good amount of overtaking during the automated benchmark. We test at 1920x1080 on Ultra graphical settings.
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Bioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite was Zero Punctuation’s Game of the Year for 2013, uses the Unreal Engine 3, and is designed to scale with both cores and graphical prowess. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
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Tomb Raider
The next benchmark in our test is Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider is an AMD optimized game, lauded for its use of TressFX creating dynamic hair to increase the immersion in game. Tomb Raider uses a modified version of the Crystal Engine, and enjoys raw horsepower. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
| Tomb Raider, 1080p Max | ||
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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?