ASUS Z97-DELUXE Motherboard Performance Review By David Ramsey Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Product Name: LGA1150 Intel Motherboard Model Number: Z97-DELUXE Price As Tested: DELUXE $289.99 (Newegg), DELUXE NFC WLC $399.99 (Newegg) Full Disclosure: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. provided the product sample used in this article. Benchmark Reviews provided you with an early look at the hardware features built into the ASUS Z97-DELUXE LGA1150 motherboard in this article. However, due to embargoes in effect at the time, we couldn't provide performance figures. Now we can. With Intel being the sole supplier of chipsets for their processors, all motherboards with the same CPU and supporting chipset will provide pretty much the same performance at stock settings. Vendors strive to distinguish their products with additional features, which can be as disparate as a clever new BIOS or entirely new hardware capabilities grafted on via custom or third-party silicon. From a performance perspective, ASUS has historically added value with enhancements to standard interfaces, such as their accelerated USB 3.0, and hardware and software features that make overclocking easier, even for the novice. With the Z97-DELUXE they've even added entirely new high speed interfaces: M.2 and SATA Express. If you're looking for a future-proof board for your next rig, this could be it. Test Methodology However, in this article we're concerned with pure computational performance. I'll go over the features the motherboard provides to enable you to get the best from your silicon, and examine the variety of automatic tuning features it has. I'll run benchmarks with the board at its stock settings, as well as with the settings reached with its automated overclocking features. Last, I'll test under the highest overclock I can reach "by hand." Test System Motherboard: ASUS Z97-DELUXE Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K “Haswell” CPU System Memory: 8G (2x4G) DDR3-2133 at 11-12-11-30 timings Video Card: NVIDIA GTX580 reference card CPU Cooler: Thermalright Silver Arrow Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium x64 Benchmark Applications AIDA64 Enginner v4.30.2900 SPECViewPerf 11 x264HD 5.0 Let's start with a look at the UEFI BIOS in the next section. ASUS Z97 UEFI BIOS ASUS continues to improve their UEFI BIOS, even as their other features (switches on the motherboard and elaborate Windows-based utilities) reduce the need for all but the most technicallly-inclined users to actually go into it. Most of the Z97-DELUXE BIOS features and capabilities are the same as those introduced with ASUS' Z87 boards, and you can read an in-depth review of this BIOS in our Z87-Deluxe/Dual LGA1150 motherboard review here. Refining what is arguably the best UEFI BIOS out there, ASUS adds new features such as graphical fan tuning. One nice capability: ASUS' fan control now works with both 4-pin PWM and standard 3-pin fans, automatically detecting each fan type and using voltage to control the RPM of 4-pin fans and pulse-width modulation to control the RPM of four-pin fans. You can auto-tune your system from the BIOS, too. An EZ Tuning Wizard asks some questions about your intended system usage... ...as well as the type of cooling system you have, among other things: It will tell you what it thinks it can do before you commit to it: ASUS has completely reworked the EZ Mode screen, the first screen shown when you enter the BIOS (sadly ASUS appears to have removed the ability to go directly to the Advanced BIOS screens). There's a lot of information and controls on this screen, including CPU information, CPU temperature and voltage, memory specifications, the status and speed of connected fans, boot device order, and more. You can start system tuning the aforementioned EZ System Tuning control, and even set up a RAID array. One apparent problem in this early BIOS: sometimes the SATA information listed on this screen will show "N/A" for all devices, even though there are SATA devices connected and the system boots perfectly. The enthusiast will want to immediately dive into the Advanced section of the BIOS, invoked by pressing the F7 key. The main sections available-- My Favorites, Main, AI Tweaker, Advanced, Monitor, Boot, Tool, and Exit-- are the same as those we originally saw in ASUS' Z87 motherboard BIOSes. The color scheme has been updated and a few things moved around, but the only completely new feature I see is the Quick Note capability, invoked by pressing F9. This gives you a small, 9-line note pad for (short) notes you may want to keep and refer to later. The amount of information you can keep is very limited, but it's useful nonetheless. The section where you can adjust fun things is, of course, the AI Tweaker section. Here, ASUS has expanded the explanatory text that appears at the bottom of the screen as various options are selected. For example, if you're changing the multiplier used when three cores are loaded, the bottom of the screen will note "Configure the 3-core ratio limit that must be higher than or equal to the 4-core ratio limit. The 1-core and 2-core ratio limit must not be set to Auto." The text is not always this helpful, especially on more obscure parameters, but is still nice to have. Of course, ASUS provides more tools than a fancy BIOS. Let's take a quick look at the current version of the AI Suite Windows-based utility in the next section. ASUS AI Suite 3 AI Suite 3 is the latest iteration of ASUS' AI Suite utility. This was one of the first, if not the first, utility that allowed you to change things like the CPU multipliers and voltage directly from within Windows, without having to reboot the system, drop into the BIOS, make the changes, and boot again. A new feature this time is 5-Way Optimization. Invoking this feature-- which I will do in the next section-- optimizes CPU speed, fan operation, power savings, and the operation of ASUS' Digi+ Power digital power system. That's only four things, so what's the fifth? The fifth is a feature called Turbo App, and it lets you denote specific apps that will run at higher performance with different audio schemes and network priorities. For example, you can keep the system running cool and slow with routine applications (you don't need full power balancing your checkbook in Quicken), and automatically ramp up performance, adjust the audio, and set the networking to higher priority for online games. I do note, however, that Turbo App doesn't automatically decide which apps to support, nor how to do so; you need to make these changes yourself for each application. In the screen shot below, I'm setting the performance for Internet Explorer. Adjusting the CPU performance on the fly is the responsibility of ASUS' custom TPU chip... ...and in AI Suite 3 you can tweak pretty much anything you can do in the BIOS: You can set the multipliers using for 1, 2, 3, or 4 loaded cores, together or separately, as well as adjust the CPU and CPU cache power by both voltage and wattage. Flipping to the next screen allows you to adjust the CPU strap. Once you've adjust the CPU performance, it's time to drop into the power section to tweak ASUS' Digi+ Power digital power system. Here you can set the power phase control, VRM switching frequency, load-line calibration, and specify the CPU thermal control and current capability. Cranking these power settings up will really roast your processor, so a good cooling system is a must, preferably a water cooler. Of course, if you're going to be ramping up the CPU, you're going to generate more heat, so the Fan Xpert screen should be your next stop. ASUS can adjust the speed of both 3-pin fans (by adjusting the voltage) and 4-pin fans (using pulse-width modulation), and the Z97-DELUXE motherboard will automatically determine which type of fan is plugged into each header. You can make quick adjustments by choosing the broad settings-- Silent, Standard, Turbo, and Full Speed-- at the bottom of this screen, or adjust the curves manually based on the reading of various temperature sensors. Aside from the temperature sensor built into the Haswell CPUs, this motherboard adds sensors on the voltage regulation modules, the Z97 Express chipset, the motherboard itself, and even has a separate plug for an optional extra temperature sensor you can put any place you want. While not as elaborate as the "Thermal Radar" ASUS equips its TUF series boards with, this is still a step beyond what most other vendors provide. It's not all about performance, of course, and ASUS also lets you set your system to use its power efficiently, and to automatically ramp down to a low-power mode when no activity is detected for a while. In the next section I'll discuss overclocking this motherboard, and let ASUS' 5-Way Optimization loose to see what it can do. Overclocking the Z97-DELUXE One potential problem for new owners is the sheer number of overclocking mechanisms ASUS provides. I count no fewer than six different ways to overclock (and I may have missed one): Switches on the motherboard EZ Tuning Wizard in the BIOS Auto tuning in the BIOS Manual tuning in the BIOS Auto tuning using AI Suite 3 Manual tuning using AI Suite 3 Which should you select? It's not an obvious choice, especially if you're not an experienced overclocker. Heck, it's not an obvious choice to me and I am an experienced overclocker! Basically, these six methods fall into one of three categories: Apply a fixed, pre-defined overclock: motherboard switches, EZ Tuning Wizard in the BIOS "Tune" an overclock by changing settings, running a stress test, and looping until the system crashes: Auto tuning in the BIOS or AI Suite 3 Completely manual operation If you're a novice, first consider the switches on the motherboard. The Z97-DELUXE introduces a new switch that you should always set to On: Setting the EZ XMP switch to "On" will tell the system to automatically use the XMP profile in your memory DIMMs (if they have one). This is the Intel-defined Extreme Memory Profile that the memory vendor guarantees the memory will run at, typically with faster clock speed and tighter timings than the defaults. Since your memory's guaranteed to work with its built-in XMP profile, there's no reason not to leave this switch on permanently-- if your memory has no XMP profile, there's no effect. Next on the motherboard is the TPU switch, which gained a second position in ASUS' previous-generation Z87 motherboards. Setting this switch to position 1 will apply a fixed, rather conservative, overclock to the CPU using multiplier adjustment. Setting it to position II will apply both BCLK/strap and multiplier adjustments. If you're not looking to get the ultimate performance from your rig, the motherboard switches might be as far as you want to go. Really, everybody should use them, because free performance. But if you're an enthusiast who really wants to see what your particular slice of Haswell goodness can really do, not just what ASUS is sure will work with all 4700K processors, you can take it a little further. I'm going to use the automated tuning feature built into the latest version of ASUS' AI Suite Windows utility, and compare its results with the best I can do manually-- which I already know from much previous testing! Here are the specs for the test system: CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K (Haswell) Memory: Kingston HyperX DDR3, 2x4GB, 2133mHz, 11-12-11-30 Cooler: Thermaltake Silver Arrow Video: NVIDIA GTX580 reference card Here are the settings that change with various overclocking techniques: I checked at stock (using the motherboard defaults), with the TPU switch set to position 1 and position 2; after an AI Suite 3 auto-tune, and my manual tune. In all cases the memory was running at its XMP spec as shown above. Strap Power Phase Load Line Calibration 1 core 2 cores 3 cores 4 cores CPU Voltage Highest Clock Stock 100mHz Optimized Level 2 39x 39x 39x 39x 1.27v 3900mHz TPU 1 100Mhz Extreme Level 8 43x 43x 42x 41x 1.30v 4300mHz TPU 2 125Mhz Extreme Level 8 34x 34x 34x 34x 1.17v 4250mHz Auto Tune 100Mhz Extreme Level 8 44x 44x 43x 43x 1.31v 4400mHz Manual Tune 100Mhz Extreme Level 8 45x 45x 45x 45x 1.35v 4500mHz Now, what's interesting here is that the settings for stock, TPU 1 and 2, and the settings reached by AI Suite's "auto tune" feature are all identical to the settings I found when I tested the ASUS Z87 Deluxe Dual motherboard last year. That implies that ASUS has taken their various tuning and tweaking technologies about as far as they can go...for now. This pre-release version of AI Suite 3 had its problems, though. Although the 5-Way Optimization process worked perfectly, AI Suite 3 showed incorrect values for the strap, multiplier, and final CPU speed, as well as always informing me that I had increased performance by "000%". Let's see how the various settings perform in the next section. AIDA64 Benchmark Results I tested the ASUS Z97-DELUXE LGA1150 motherboard at four different settings: the stock setting, with the TPU switch set to the second position, with auto tuning performed by AI Suite 3, and with the best manual overclock I could achieve. Note that ASUS, like many other motherboard vendors, does play a little trick: at true stock settings, the Intel Core i7-4770K CPU under heavy load will run its cores with the 39x multiplier if one or two cores or loaded, but drop down to lower multipliers as three and four cores come under load. ASUS calls their "trick" ASUS Multicore Enhancement, and what it does is run all four cores at 39x under load. ASUS Multicore Enhancement is enabled by default on this motherboard, so that's how I ran with the "stock" settings. AIDA64 Engineer AIDA64 is a full 64-bit benchmark and test suite utilizing MMX, 3DNow! and SSE instruction set extensions, and will scale up to 32 processor cores. An enhanced 64-bit System Stability Test module is also available to stress the whole system to its limits. For legacy processors all benchmarks and the System Stability Test are available in 32-bit versions as well. Additionally, AIDA64 adds new hardware to its database, including 300 solid-state drives. On top of the usual ATA auto-detect information the new SSD database enables AIDA64 to display flash memory type, controller model, physical dimensions, and data transfer performance data. AIDA64 v1.00 also implements SSD-specific SMART disk health information for Indilinx, Intel, JMicron, Samsung, and SandForce controllers. All of the benchmarks used in this test- Queen, PhotoWorxx, ZLib, and hash- rely on basic x86 instructions, and consume very little system memory while also being aware of Hyper-Threading, multi-processors, and multi-core processors. Of all the tests in this review, AIDA64 is the one that best isolates the processor’s performance from the rest of the system. While this is useful in that it more directly compares processor performance, readers should remember that virtually no “real world” programs will mirror these results. We see nice scaling in the Queen test, with a 12% performance increase with Auto Tuning, and a 17% increase with manual tuning. Photoworxx, as we've seen previously, responds oddly and unpredictably to CPU speed increases. The ZLIB and Hash benchmarks both scale nicely. Let's see how things go with one of my favorite benchmarks, SPECViewPerf... SPECViewPerf 11 Test Results The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation is “…a non-profit corporation formed to establish, maintain and endorse a standardized set of relevant benchmarks that can be applied to the newest generation of high-performance computers.” Their free SPECviewperf benchmark incorporates code and tests contributed by several other companies and is designed to stress computers in a reproducible way. SPECviewperf 11 was released in June 2010 and incorporates an expanded range of capabilities and tests. Note that results from previous versions of SPECviewperf cannot be compared with results from the latest version, as even benchmarks with the same name have been updated with new code and models. SPECviewperf comprises test code from several vendors of professional graphics modeling, rendering, and visualization software. Most of the tests emphasize the CPU over the graphics card, and have between 5 and 13 sub-sections. For this review I ran the Lightwave, Maya, and Seimens Teamcenter Visualization tests. Results are reported as abstract scores, with higher being better. Lightwave The lightwave-01 viewset was created from traces of the graphics workloads generated by the SPECapc for Lightwave 9.6 benchmark. The models for this viewset range in size from 2.5 to 6 million vertices, with heavy use of vertex buffer objects (VBOs) mixed with immediate mode. GLSL shaders are used throughout the tests. Applications represented by the viewset include 3D character animation, architectural review, and industrial design. Maya The maya-03 viewset was created from traces of the graphics workload generated by the SPECapc for Maya 2009 benchmark. The models used in the tests range in size from 6 to 66 million vertices, and are tested with and without vertex and fragment shaders. State changes such as those executed by the application- including matrix, material, light and line-stipple changes- are included throughout the rendering of the models. All state changes are derived from a trace of the running application. Siemens Teamcenter Visualization Mockup The tcvis-02 viewset is based on traces of the Siemens Teamcenter Visualization Mockup application (also known as VisMockup) used for visual simulation. Models range from 10 to 22 million vertices and incorporate vertex arrays and fixed-function lighting. State changes such as those executed by the application- including matrix, material, light and line-stipple changes- are included throughout the rendering of the model. All state changes are derived from a trace of the running application. Lightwave scales nicely, although Maya and TCVIS seem bound more by the video card than the CPU. In the next section I'll try some video transcoding... X264HD 5.0 Test Tech ARP’s x264 HD Benchmark comprises the Avisynth video scripting engine, an x264 encoder, a sample 1080P video file, and a script file that actually runs the benchmark. The script invokes four two-pass encoding runs and reports the average frames per second encoded as a result. The script file is a simple batch file, so you could edit the encoding parameters if you were interested, although your results wouldn’t then be comparable to others. This is another example of a useful benchmark that’s based on real-world code. I like encoding benchmarks since they’re one of the few tests that can measure a real-world use of the power of modern multi-core processors. I like this particular benchmark since it’s the best “overclock killer” I’ve seen: systems that will run most stress tests all day long with a given set of overclock settings will crash on this benchmark. Here we can really see the performance benefits of overclocking. Just flipping a switch on the motherboard raises the Run 1 performance by almost 8% and the Run 2 performance by almost 9%. Auto tuning gives a 9% and 10% boost, respectively, while my manual overclock hits 17% and 15% increases. Join me in the next section for my final thoughts and conclusion. ASUS Motherboard Final Thoughts As we mentioned in our hardware review of this motherboard, Intel didn't give vendors a lot new to work with with the Z97 Express chipset. Its main feature-- support for forthcoming Broadwell desktop CPUs-- isn't useful yet, and a couple of extra USB 3.0 and SATA 6G ports isn't that exciting. If you have a Z87 or even a Z77 based motherboard, there's little compelling reason to upgrade. That said, if you're building a new rig, there's no reason not to get the latest and greatest, and ASUS has upped the ante by including support for SATA Express and M.2 storage technologies. Granted there are no SATA Express SSDs actually available now, but the optional Hyper Express enclosure will let you connect two M.2 SSDs to the SATA Express ports. Given the multitude of overclocking options and mechanisms, one thing I'd like to see ASUS offer is a "Gentle Introduction to Overclocking", which would explain the various options in detail, estimate the amount of performance improvement each was capable of, and help a new user progress along the way from simply flipping switches on the motherboard to changing unpronounceable settings in the BIOS. In my testing, all the built-in overclocking features made the exact same settings to my 4770K CPU as did the same features on the ASUS Z87-Deluxe/Dual motherboard, and the CPU-bound performance was pretty much the same (the SPECViewPerf benchmark scores are different because different video cards were used on the two motherboards). That's probably just because ASUS has taken automatic overclocking further than anyone else; I consistently get better results from the auto overclocking features of ASUS boards than I do from other boards. From a pure performance point of view, this is about the best you can do short of one of ASUS' Rampage Extreme motherboards with its liquid nitrogen feature set. Z97-DELUXE Conclusion Although the Z97 chipset isn't as exciting as Intel's previous chipset launches, ASUS has used the opportunity to buff the shine on their motherboard range by adding features like SATA Express support and tweaking their already excellent BIOS as well as their Windows utilities. Is it possible to have too many features on a motherboard? I don't know, but the Z97-DELUXE certainly seems to be trying to answer than question. From a performance point of view, the Z97-DELUXE offers the same performance and auto-tuning capabilities as ASUS' previous Z87-based motherboards. This isn't a bad thing; it just shows how far ASUS has pushed the envelope in this area. The "5-Way Optimization" feature in ASUS' AI Suite 3 utility considers system power and cooling along with CPU frequency for a balanced, stable approach. Granted, you can still do better with hand-tweaking for your particular workload, but in most cases the performance improvement this gets you will be something you'll only see in benchmarks. The Z97-DELUXE is an excellent motherboard that offers superior automatic performance tuning as well as all the features and capabilities an enthusiast user could want. At the time of this writing, the Z97-DELUXE version was available for $289.99 (Newegg), and the Z97-DELUXE NFC & WLC sold for $399.99 (Newegg).