MSI Z87I Review: Mini-ITX Haswell for $140
by Ian Cutress on August 27, 2013 10:15 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- MSI
- Mini ITX
- Z87
Metro2033
Our first analysis is with the perennial reviewers’ favorite, Metro2033. It occurs in a lot of reviews for a couple of reasons – it has a very easy to use benchmark GUI that anyone can use, and it is often very GPU limited, at least in single GPU mode. Metro2033 is a strenuous DX11 benchmark that can challenge most systems that try to run it at any high-end settings. Developed by 4A Games and released in March 2010, we use the inbuilt DirectX 11 Frontline benchmark to test the hardware at 1440p with full graphical settings. Results are given as the average frame rate from a second batch of 4 runs, as Metro has a tendency to inflate the scores for the first batch by up to 5%.
Dirt 3
Dirt 3 is a rallying video game and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters. Dirt 3 also falls under the list of ‘games with a handy benchmark mode’. In previous testing, Dirt 3 has always seemed to love cores, memory, GPUs, PCIe lane bandwidth, everything. The small issue with Dirt 3 is that depending on the benchmark mode tested, the benchmark launcher is not indicative of game play per se, citing numbers higher than actually observed. Despite this, the benchmark mode also includes an element of uncertainty, by actually driving a race, rather than a predetermined sequence of events such as Metro 2033. This in essence should make the benchmark more variable, but we take repeated in order to smooth this out. Using the benchmark mode, Dirt 3 is run at 1440p with Ultra graphical settings. Results are reported as the average frame rate across four runs.
Civilization V
A game that has plagued my testing over the past twelve months is Civilization V. Being on the older 12.3 Catalyst drivers were somewhat of a nightmare, giving no scaling, and as a result I dropped it from my test suite after only a couple of reviews. With the later drivers used for this review, the situation has improved but only slightly, as you will see below. Civilization V seems to run into a scaling bottleneck very early on, and any additional GPU allocation only causes worse performance.
Our Civilization V testing uses Ryan’s GPU benchmark test all wrapped up in a neat batch file. We report the average frame rate of a 5 minute test.
Sleeping Dogs
While not necessarily a game on everybody’s lips, Sleeping Dogs is a strenuous game with a pretty hardcore benchmark that scales well with additional GPU power due to its SSAA implementation. The team over at Adrenaline.com.br is supreme for making an easy to use benchmark GUI, allowing a numpty like me to charge ahead with a set of four 1440p runs with maximum graphical settings.
GPU Conclusions
Despite the computational discrepancies we have seen on the Z87I, the gaming benchmarks perform well – very few of our benchmarks show much difference when dealing with a single discrete GPU at 1440p. The only ‘low’ result is perhaps Sleeping Dogs using a 7970, although the difference between 27.60 FPS and 28.10 FPS will not be noticeable.
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Meaker10 - Wednesday, August 28, 2013 - link
No they are not, while the devices will plug into both slots, a mSATA drive will not work in a mini PCI-E slot and a mini PCI-E card will not work in an mSATA slot meaning they are physically compatible but not electrically compatible.There are a few SSDs that have a SATA to PCI express bridge and these will only work in mini pci express slots and wont be bootable.
Jason33 - Wednesday, August 28, 2013 - link
mSATA and mPCIe are electrically compatible. You only need to mux the data signals on the motherboard to either go to the SATA controller or the PCIe controller.Using this mux chip on the motherboard would work: http://www.nxp.com/documents/application_note/AN11...
Meaker10 - Thursday, August 29, 2013 - link
Yes they are compatible with a MUX, so how is that going to help with an mSATA/PCI-E slot that is not muxed?I have yet to see a consumer device with that muxed in so it's a pointless argument to make.
Jason33 - Thursday, August 29, 2013 - link
Several ThinkPads and notebooks for a few years now have done this. I'm running an mSATA drive in my ThinkPad that used to have a mPCIe WWAN card. There are also mini motherboards that can accept either type of card.Jason33 - Friday, August 30, 2013 - link
Also, I do agree that slots that don't have a mux will only allow one type of card. However, most consumer boards, notebooks and pre-built systems I've personally encountered that support mSATA cards also support mPCIe cards for the same slot.To answer kwrzesien's original question, MSI doesn't advertise it as supporting mSATA. If it did, they'd definitely say so. No reason to not advertise a feature. If you really want a Z87 ITX board with an mSATA slot then the ASRock Z87E-ITX has a full height mSATA/mPCIe slot in addition to the half height mPCIe slot holding the 802.11ac WiFi module.
1Angelreloaded - Thursday, August 29, 2013 - link
You are right and wrong, MSATA was initially made to use as a caching flash for Laptop hardrives, an MSATA port is different from MPCIe look at the combo card Asus gives in its ROG series Mobos, trust me they are incompatible.1Angelreloaded - Thursday, August 29, 2013 - link
No different channel slot type , do yourself the favor pay 50$ more and get the Asus Maximus Impact, much better.DanNeely - Tuesday, August 27, 2013 - link
Something's not consistent here:6 x USB 3.0 (Chipset) [4 back panel, 1 header]
4 x USB 2.0 (Chipset) [2 back panel, 2 header]
Assuming the totals are correct you're counting USB3 headers on one line, and USB2 ports from headers on the second.
IanCutress - Tuesday, August 27, 2013 - link
Ah yes, I normally have a header equal to two ports unless otherwise stated. Table is fixed.Ian
The Von Matrices - Tuesday, August 27, 2013 - link
Unfortunately a few of the motherboard articles posted in the past few weeks are incorrect regarding the Flex IO configuration. In this article, it states "This amount of extra network controllers is due to the Flex IO allocation – as the board only has four SATA 6 Gbps and six USB 3.0 from the chipset, this gives the other 8 Flex IO lanes all the PCIe 2.0 for these controllers." However, the Flex I/O allocation in the specifications table states that there are 6/4/8 SATA/USB 3/PCIe 2.Similarly, the review of the ASRock Z87 Extreme6/AC is incorrect in this regard as well. It states that "Out of our total 18 PCH Flex IO ports on board, this means we have six for SATA 6 Gbps ports, we also have four for USB 3.0 (PCH are headers, ASMedia on Rear IO) leaving eight for PCIe 2.0 lanes." I own a Z87 Extreme6, and I can tell you that this is not correct. The Flex I/O allocation in this board is 6/6/6 SATA/USB 3/PCIe 2. The rear USB 3.0 ports are driven by an ASMedia ASM1074 USB hub, not an ASMedia PCIe USB 3 controller, as would be implied by the Flex IO table in the article.