ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Review

Testing Methods

With the exception of ATTO, which we use to measure the performance of a motherboard's SATA controllers, all of our benchmarks use real applications that give you a great idea of how well a product fares when performing the tasks for which you're likely to use it.

We test with our own Media Benchmarks suite, which can be downloaded so that you can test your own system. It uses a combination of Gimp image editing, H.264 encoding with Handbrake and multi-tasking with 7-Zip file compression combined with HD video playback. Finally, for our game testing we benchmark the board running Arma II, and record the minimum and average frame rates.

Our benchmarks include stable overclocked results too, so you can gauge how much performance potential there is in the motherboard, and how much value this adds to your purchase.

Test Setup:

Motherboards:

• ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 (LGA1155)
  
• Gigabyte Z68A-D3H-B3 (LGA1155)
  
• Biostar TP67XE (P67) (Intel LGA1155)
  
• Asus P8P67-M Pro (Intel LGA1155)
  
• MSI P67A-GD53 (B3) (Intel LGA1155)
  
• ASRock P67 Extreme4 (Intel LGA1155)
  
• Asus Sabertooth P67 (Intel LGA1155)
  
• Asus P8P67 (Intel LGA1155)

Common Components:

• Intel Core i5-2500K (32nm, 6MB L3 cache, 32x100MHz; 3.2GHz)
  
• 4GB DDR3 1,600MHz C8 at motherboard SPD settings
  
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 590 3GB
  
• PC Power and Cooling Silencer 750W PSU
  
• Western Digital Caviar Black 2TB SATA hard disk
  
• OCZ Vertex 3 240GB (used for storage controller tests only)
  
• Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
  
• Nvidia Forceware 267.91 WHQL

Overclocked Settings:

• ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 - 5GHz, 100MHz Base Clock, 50x multiplier, 1,600MHz dual-channel DDR3 memory at 8-8-8-24-74-1T
  
• Gigabyte Z68A-D3H-B3 - 5GHz, 100MHz Base Clock, 50x multiplier, 1,600MHz dual-channel DDR3 memory at 8-8-8-24-74-1T
  
• Biostar TP67XE (B3) - 4.9GHz, 100MHz Base Clock, 49x multiplier, 1,600MHz dual-channel DDR3 memory at 8-8-8-24-74-1T
  
• Asus P8P67-M Pro - 5.1GHz, 100MHz Base Clock, 51x multiplier, 1,600MHz dual-channel DDR3 memory at 8-8-8-24-74-1T
  
• MSI P67A-GD53 (B3) - 5GHz, 100MHz Base Clock, 50x multiplier, 1,600MHz dual-channel DDR3 memory at 8-8-8-24-74-1T
  
• ASRock P67 Extreme 4 - 4.9GHz, 100MHz Base Clock, 49x multiplier, 1,600MHz dual-channel DDR3 memory at 8-8-8-24-74-1T
  
• Asus Sabertooth P67 - 4.9GHz, 100MHz Base Clock, 49x multiplier, 1,600MHz dual-channel DDR3 memory at 8-8-8-24-74-1T
  
• Asus P8P67 - 5GHz, 100MHz Base Clock, 50x multiplier, 1,600MHz dual-channel DDR3 memory at 8-8-8-24-74-1T