Motherboard
AIDA 64
Read
AIDA 64
Write
AIDA 64
Copy
AIDA 64
Latency
3DMark
Firestrike
SuperPi 8M
CineBench
R15
Resident
Evil 6
Benchmark
ASRock Z97X
KILLER
39518
41726
38216
41,2
11057
1.25.672
706
17057
1.26.523
702
20315
Graphics:
13526
MSI Z97
GAMING 7
27679
33570
29469
42,7
11145
Graphics:
13660
"Aesthetics will
always be
subjective but
the MSI board
does look
wonderful in its
deep red and
black scheme"
PERFORMANCE
Here’s the tricky part of the
testing between these two. In
the BIOS, we have no choice
but to chalk this up to a win
for the Fatal1ty even if the
difference between the two is
mostly academic. It’s not that
the Gaming 7 BIOS is lacking, it
isn’t but navigating the ASRock
Fatal1ty BIOS screens is so
quick and simple, it just makes
it that much easier to get to
everything. Presentation wise,
they are about equal but if we
could only live with a single
UEFI interface it would have
to be what ASRock has on this
motherboard.
After we had configured
our system and ran all the
benchmarks it was very clear
that the ASRock board was
fast. Very fast in fact, with
a Super Pi time that was
bordering on just impossible.
Even after we had spent some
time tuning the memory on
the Gaming 7, we could not
run 1T command with this
particular memory and BIOS.
Over and above that however,
we used another Z87 board
for reference and the ASRock
Fatal1ty was faster in Super Pi.
We had a very strange situation
with the Fatal1ty where we
couldn’t get the motherboard to
operate at the full PCI-Express
3.0 16X link speed, so the 3D
benchmarks were obviously
lower than they should have
been. However this is clearly
a BIOS issue and it is most
certainly resolved by now.
We still had to show the
results we obtained, but
we have no doubt that
between these two as to
which is faster. So for sheer
performance, the Fatal1ty is
the one to have.
CONSLUSION
When looking at these two,
it’s fairly obvious to us which
one we would go for. The
Gaming 7 is just an overall
better product, even though
it costs more. The ASRock
motherboard is faster, but it’s
missing some basic things
that we have long since
learned to take for granted.
Still, if that $30 is making a
difference for you, then you’re
definitely better off choosing
the Fatal1ty board. If it was up
to us though and we wanted
to choose between the two for
the purposes of gaming and
a little overclocking perhaps,
we would go for the MSI Z97
Gaming 7.
[ TheOverclocker ]
Issue 30 | 2014 The OverClocker 29