Z97 Mini-ITX Review at $140: ASRock, MSI and GIGABYTE
by Ian Cutress on July 23, 2014 3:00 AM ESTCPU Benchmarks
Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things – better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal), at the expense of heat and temperature, but also gives in essence an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, memory subtimings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk which is clearly visible, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the purchase.
From our results it would seem that the MSI and GIGABYTE both enabled MCT by default, whereas the ASRock does not.
Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test: link
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores.
Due to the speed difference at a full multithreaded load, the ASRock takes a back seat compared to our other Z97 results.
Compression – WinRAR 5.0.1: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30 second 720p videos.
Nothing much separates the three mini-ITX motherboards in WinRAR
Image Manipulation – FastStone Image Viewer 4.9: link
Similarly to WinRAR, the FastStone test us updated for 2014 to the latest version. FastStone is the program I use to perform quick or bulk actions on images, such as resizing, adjusting for color and cropping. In our test we take a series of 170 images in various sizes and formats and convert them all into 640x480 .gif files, maintaining the aspect ratio. FastStone does not use multithreading for this test, and thus single threaded performance is often the winner.
While the MSI and GIGABYTE match their fast Z97 brethren, the ASRock seems to be slightly down here.
Rendering – PovRay 3.7: link
The Persistence of Vision RayTracer, or PovRay, is a freeware package for as the name suggests, ray tracing. It is a pure renderer, rather than modeling software, but the latest beta version contains a handy benchmark for stressing all processing threads on a platform. We have been using this test in motherboard reviews to test memory stability at various CPU speeds to good effect – if it passes the test, the IMC in the CPU is stable for a given CPU speed. As a CPU test, it runs for approximately 2-3 minutes on high end platforms.
While the ASRock had the lowest power consumption of the three, that translates into slightly lower performance as shown in POV-Ray.
Video Conversion – Handbrake v0.9.9: link
Handbrake is a media conversion tool that was initially designed to help DVD ISOs and Video CDs into more common video formats. The principle today is still the same, primarily as an output for H.264 + AAC/MP3 audio within an MKV container. In our test we use the same videos as in the Xilisoft test, and results are given in frames per second.
The difference in MCT makes the ASRock fall behind in low-quality conversion, but for 4K60 video, all three perform similarly.
Synthetic – 7-Zip 9.2: link
As an open source compression tool, 7-Zip is a popular tool for making sets of files easier to handle and transfer. The software offers up its own benchmark, to which we report the result.
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The_Assimilator - Friday, July 25, 2014 - link
Embedded boards' DC-to-DC circuitry won't handle the high amperages required by e.g. modern graphics cards. You also won't find people running 12-drive RAID arrays off them, for the same reason. It's certainly possible to increase the capacity of the DC-to-DC converters, but then you need heatsinks and whatnot and before you know it you've integrated a switching mode power supply into your motherboard.The_Assimilator - Friday, July 25, 2014 - link
BTX failed because it was merely a revision of the ATX form factor, not ATX power delivery. What we need is the reverse - leave the form factor alone (it ain't broke) but bring the obviously-outdated power delivery spec up to scratch.Oxford Guy - Saturday, January 23, 2016 - link
The form factor is subpar for GPU cooling.owan - Wednesday, July 23, 2014 - link
When I saw this review on the front page and saw the Z97n-wifi I got a bit nervous since I just purchased one of these to go along with a G3258 for a little overclocking/backup gaming system. Glad to see it fares well, I was just as pleasantly surprised by its layout as you wereDiHydro - Wednesday, July 23, 2014 - link
In the "GIGABYTE Z97N-WIFI Performance" section, what is the red colored "1m44" result for OCCT mean?DiHydro - Wednesday, July 23, 2014 - link
Oh, I think I see. It is the time the test ran before the thermal limit was reached.Wixman666 - Wednesday, July 23, 2014 - link
After 1 min 44 seconds it overheated and started throttling.abugarcia - Wednesday, July 23, 2014 - link
FYI, some of the links on the Test Setup table lead to the incorrect products when clicked (i7-4770k and MSI GTX 770 Lightning). Looks like its this way on some older reviews as well.Ian Cutress - Wednesday, July 23, 2014 - link
Ah rats, copy/paste error from some other test setup tables I had. Fixed here, will go back to some of the older reviews. Nice spot :)Ubercake - Wednesday, July 23, 2014 - link
As more and more controllers are integrated on the CPU, one value-add I wish the motherboard manufacturers would integrate with the system board is TV-tuner functionality.