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ASRock Z97 Anniversary motherboard – Easy to OC, but stripped to the bone

By Wong Chung Wee - 6 Aug 2014

Results - Gaming Benchmarks & CPU Performance

Results - Gaming Performances

For our gaming benchmarks, it was the synthetic benchmark scores in 3DMark (2013) that benefited from the upgrade of the processor, i.e., when we swapped out the new Pentium G3258 for the highest-end Intel Core i7-4790K chip. This is especially so for the Fire Strike portion of the test scores. Since 3DMark is well known to factor in CPU and GPU performance related testing, its results will naturally sway towards whichever system that's best equipped.

In terms of the PC game titles , it was Thief that recorded a substantial increment in the average frame rates recorded by its in-game benchmarking utility. However performance figures from Tomb Raider and Hitman Absolution hardly differed whether if you were to use the cheapest or the most expensive processors around. This proves that you don't really need a speedy CPU in all situations.

 

Results - CPU Performance

Due to the Pentium chip's lack of support for HyperThreading, the dual-core CPU fell fall behind the Devil Canyon's significantly. We note with interest that the Pentium chip's results were almost identical, be it when it was installed on the ASRock Z97 Anniversary or the ASUS B85-Pro Gamer. All of these tests scale well with CPU processing power and thus the results show that the motherboard used doesn't necessarily matter for these usage scenarios. But if you must nitpick, the ASRock Z97 Anniversary was just a hair speedier.

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6.0
  • Performance 7.5
  • Features 6
  • Value 5
The Good
BIOS UEFI utility allows for overclocking and system tweaking
Pentium Anniversary Boost feature allows for easy overclocking
The Bad
Rear I/O ports are limited
Multi-GPU configurations aren't supported
Overclocked performance could be better
Other boards offer more for the same price
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