Biostar TZ68K User Manual download pdf (Page 2)

Digit | November 2011 | www.thinkdigit.com

Motherboards Test

digital audio processor. It also

houses on-board ampliﬁers to

drive audio. On-board implemen-

tation of a good sound processor

is impressive for most users, but

hardcore audiophiles will be

disappointed and will invest in

a dedicated sound card anyway.

There’s a dedicated overclock

button on the back I/O panel to

overclock the processor on the

ﬂy without having to reboot the

system. Display ports are natu-

rally absent. And needless to say,

it’s high time Gigabyte revamped

the BIOS, Touch BIOS is a gim-

mick and is nothing like the expe-

rience on a UEFI BIOS.

The ASUS Maximus IV

Extreme Z belongs to the

Republic of Gamers (RoG) series.

Build Quality is top-notch with

attractive crimson-black heat

sinks with multiple ﬁns around

the CPU. The RoG logo glows red

when the system is powered on.

Eight fan-connectors on-board

will ensure sufﬁcient cooling

for your system.

The Maximus IV Extreme

houses an Nvidia NF200 chip

which controls second and fourth

PCIe16x slot, while the proces-

sor’s integrated controller con-

trols the ﬁrst and third. What this

means is that you can run two

cards in SLI at x16/x16 speed (slot

2 and 4), but there isn’t much of a

difference between the two con-

ﬁgurations as latency from the

NF200 chip has to be taken into

account. So, this shouldn’t be one

of the reasons for you to consider

this board. For those planning on

a three-way SLI setup, NF200

does help.

HOW WE TESTED

e believe that a motherboard’s per-

formance is completely a function of

its components. The higher specced

the components, the better the performance

that you’ll get. For the same chipset, the varia-

tion in performance is not very evident from our

scores. The difference is within the margin of

error. This can be easily understood by the fact

that benchmark scores from a `8,000 board are

quite similar to the benchmark scores from a

`30,000 motherboard, give or take ﬁve percent.

So it ultimately boils down to the feature set

you’re getting with the motherboard, the build

quality, ease of overclocking and other factors.

Keeping this in mind, we decided to not give any

weightage to the performance scores. We have

run the benchmarks, and the scores are shared

in the tables on the following pages. In our ﬁnal

evaluation though, we’ve not considered these

scores as they don’t give you an estimation of

the motherboard’s value.

Our Test Rig comprised of the following

components:

For Intel Z68 boards

Processor: Intel Core i7-2600K

HDD: WD Velociraptor 600 GB

RAM: 2x2GB Kingston HyperX RAM

Graphics Card: ZOTAC GTX 560

Power Supply: Cooler Master GX 650W

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64

For AMD Boards

Processor: AMD A8-3850

HDD: WD Velociraptor 600 GB

RAM: 2x2GB Kingston HyperX RAM

Graphics Card: Integrated GPU AMD

HD6550D

Power Supply: Cooler Master GX 650W

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate x64

The layout of the board was scored, we

checked if there was enough spacing around

the CPU region to comfortably attach the CPU

cooler and which direction the SATA ports

were pointing (those pointing up got a lesser

score). Spacing between the RAM slots and

the graphics card was checked. We also noted

the spacing between PCIe and PCI slots. If

a dual-slot card blocked the next PCIe slot,

marks were deducted.

For build quality we noted the sturdiness

of the heat sinks around the VRM (Voltage

Regulator Module) regions and the southbridge.

Motherboards lacking a heatsink around the

VRM region got a lesser score. Boards with all

solid state capacitors got a higher score. Back

panel I/O ports were noted and also the option

to expand USB ports. Fan connectors and SATA

connections were noted.

Overclocking features such as utilities and

on-board chip additions were taken into consid-

eration. Boards having more options to overclock

and tweak got a higher score. Also, the BIOS

user experience was noted. Boards which didn’t

have a UEFI BIOS got a lower score since that’s

the future.

We did a thorough checking and testing

(wherever applicable) of the feature set offered

by a motherboard and based on the price, have

decided on the winners.

Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3-iSSD

Automatic OC faceoff

Tom’s Hardware did a piece on automatic

overclocking and OC buttons on Mobos

http://goo.gl/7HQ4a

Source: photos.com

Bazaar

Acer S3 Ultrabook, G’Five

G20 gaming phone, Microsoft

Touch Mouse 2....

106

DIGIT

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