ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe Features Overview

Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
Model Number: P8Z77-V Deluxe
Product Name: Intel Z77 Express motherboard
Price: $274.99at Newegg

Full Disclosure: ASUSTek Computer Inc. provided the product sample used in this article.

Note: Benchmark Reviews offers the ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe Benchmark Performance Tests and Motherboard Components Review in separate articles.

The introduction of a new chipset is always something I look forward to, frankly even more than the introduction of new CPUs. The reason's not so much for the new features of the chipset (if any), but rather to see what the top-tier motherboard vendors will do with it. ASUS has always been one to push the boundaries in innovative features, and their Deluxe motherboards-- that is, any motherboard they make with Deluxe appended to the name-- are among the most interesting (and the most expensive).

True, a Deluxe motherboard generally won't get you any better performance than one of their budget motherboards (although it might overclock better). And for the only-benchmark-performance-matters crowd, there's always the Republic of Gamers series. But if you're not the kind of user who schedules for regular LN2 delivery to a tank in your garage, it's hard to see what you could want in a socket LGA1155 motherboard that the P8Z77-V Deluxe didn't deliver.

Every panel on this box (including the flip-up lid over the display window, through which you can see your shiny new motherboard without having to open the box) is covered with layer upon layer of feature and specification listings, and a lot of the type is pretty tiny! If ASUS had added any more features they'd have to add extra fold-out panels to accommodate them all.

Keep in mind that this article is only an overview of the extra features of this motherboard. Benchmark Reviews has separate reviews of this motherboard's overall components and benchmark performance for your reading pleasure.

Detailed Components

The extra features of the ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe motherboard depend to a large extent on extra components-- ASICs, third-party controllers, and other hardware on the motherboard. The image below shows some (not all!) of the extra chips ASUS adds. Starting at the top left, we have the custom chips ASUS provides for their power control including the power-saving EPU and performance-enhancing TPU chips, that work with the BIOS and the Windows-based Turbo V Evo utility. In the next row is a Nuvoton sensor controller, the very nice PLX PEX8608 chip which provides an extra eight lanes of PCI-E 2.0 goodness, and Realtek ALC898 sound chip, and last the Intel 82579 and Realtek 8111F chips, both of which are gigabit Ethernet controllers.

Intel's Z77 Express chipset gives users integrated Superspeed USB 3.0 for the first time, with four integrated ports that don't require PCI-E lanes. But ASUS adds two more ASMedia USB 3.0 controllers to give this board a total of eight USB 3.0 ports.

The WiFi Go! module is a separate item that plugs into a dedicated slot on the motherboard. The two black things you see poking out to the right are connectors for the WiFi and Bluetooth antennas. As you can see from the specs on the side of the unit, it doesn't matter what WiFi or Bluetooth networks or devices you have, this pretty much supports them all.

A Marvell 9128 SATA6G controller chip provides two extra SATA6 ports, for a total of four when combined with the two supplied by the Z77 Express chipset. These ports can be used for regular storage, but their primary function is to implement ASUS' SSD caching feature, courtesy of Marvell's HyperDuo firmware. Unlike Intel's "Smart Response Technology" (which this board also has and you can use if you wish), you don't have to set your SATA controllers to RAID mode and configure a pseudo-RAID with your hard disk and its cache SSD, nor are you limited to a 64G cache: just connect your primary hard disk and an SSD of any size you want to these two ports, enable Caching Now! in the Turbo V Evo program, and you're good to go. You can turn caching on or off at any time, which is really handy if you want to do something like upgrade to a larger SSD.

Thankfully, ASUS has gone to all PCI-E slots with the P8Z77-V Deluxe. The slot layout is identical to that of the MSI Z77A-GD65 motherboard Benchmark Reviews looked at recently. However, ASUS' setup is more useful since you can actually run a graphics card in the third (darker grey) slot for triple-card SLI or CrossFireX, thanks to the PLX chip. Stiil, the PLX chip's main function is not so much to provide the capability to run a third video card as to assure that there are enough PCI-E lanes to support all the board's ports and devices. Many enthusiasts don't realize that the limited number of PCI-E lanes inherent in LGA1155 systems sometimes means that you can't use all of a board's features at once: with lanes required for extra USB and SATA ports as well as other devices, users are surprised to find out that plugging a device into one port might disable another one. This won't happen on the Deluxe.

I'll start looking at ASUS' unique features in the next section.

P8Z77-V Deluxe Features

There are so many features on this motherboard that even in a separate review I won't be able to cover all of them. But I'll try to hit some of the high points. Most of ASUS' special features are accessed through the Windows-based utility ASUS calls AI Suite. Clicking the Tool button will pop up a menu listing the tools you have available. Note that some of these tools, like WiFi Go!, are separate installations, and won't appear on this menu unless you've installed them.

Let's start, in no particular order, with Fan Xpert 2.

Fan XPert 2

Many enthusiasts use separate dedicated fan controllers to adjust the fans in their systems. Fan XPert 2 renders these devices superfluous on ASUS motherboards. It will detect any fans connected to any of the P8Z77-V Deluxe' seven four-pin fan headers. You can assign each fan a name and describe where it is in the chassis.

Once you've done this, you perform a "fan calibration" procedure. The motherboard will ramp every fan connected to a motherboard fan header up and down through its full RPM range, so that it "knows" the capabilities of the fan, and so that setting "70%" speed for that fan will actually spin it at 70% of its maximum speed. This works, by the way, with both three-pin and four-pin fans.

You can then custom-tailor response curves for each fan based on temperatures reported from the various on-board temperature sensors. This feature is not quite as elaborate as the "Thermal Armor" versions on ASUS' TUF series motherboards (which have many more onboard temperature sensors to work with), but is still extremely useful. You can choose from some pre-defined response curves like "Quiet" and "Performance", or create your own curve by dragging the dots around as shown in this image.

WiFi Go!

If you thought that all a WiFi port on a motherboard was good for was saving you from having to run an Ethernet cable, well, look at this screen shot from my iPad:

WiFi Go!, in addition to providing simple network connectivity, also lets you control your PC from an iPhone, iPad, or Android device using a free app available in your device's application store. You can use your PC as a DLNA-enabled streaming media hub; use your iPhone, iPad, or Android devices as a remote keyboard and mouse; transfer files between your computer and the aforementioned iOS or Android device, control your computer with "Smart Motion Control", and replicate your computer's display on your device with the Remote Desktop capability.

WiFi Go! is very ambitious and at this point in time is still a "work in progress". Although I was able to use the DLNA Media Hub, Remote Keyboard and Mouse, and File Transfer features without problem, the Remote Desktop feature would crash on my iPad every time, and Smart Motion Control isn't currently implemented.

WiFi Go! also has Bluetooth connectivity. It supports the latest Bluetooth 4.0 +HS standard, which allows for special low-power connections as well as "high speed" connections over an 802.11 link (i.e. the Bluetooth traffic piggybacks on a WiFi signal). Since it supports 802.11n, dual-band operation (2.4GHz and 5GHz) is a given.

Turbo V Evo

ASUS' "overclock from Windows" feature is of course Turbo V Evo. As I've mentioned in previous ASUS reviews, there are almost an absurd number of ways to overclock an ASUS motherboard: you can use CPU Level Up!, Auto Tuning, or manual overclocking from the BIOS, and there are Windows equivalents of these in Turbo V Evo as well.

Here you see the Manual Mode tuning of voltages and the BCLK frequency. Of course as we know the BCLK is of very limited use when overclocking Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge processors. And you'll probably want to drop by the Digi + Power Control section after adjusting the voltages here.

The real overclocking fun starts when you adjust the CPU ratios. You can determine the maximum turbo frequencies used by one, two, three, or all four cores simply by dragging the "fluid level" in the virtual glass tubes on the screen. Clicking the "Lock" button will lock the core frequencies together so that they all run at the same turbo frequency.

Beginning overclockers can simply invoke Auto Tuning. Once this process starts, Turbo V Evo will start ramping up voltages, frequencies, current limits, and so on, following each adjustment with a short stress test. If the test succeeds, the overclock is incrementally increased; if the computer crashes or locks up, the previous overclock is restored once the system reboots. It's about the best auto-overclocking implementation I've seen and took my system to 4.4GHz. However, it still can't quite equal the overclocks possible with manual tweaking...I achieved 4.7GHz on my own.

Motherboard Features Continued

Digi+ Power Control

Digi+ is an umbrella term that covers all of ASUS' advanced power control features. ASUS provides full digital controll of CPU/VRM power, iGPU power, and DRAM power, even going so far as to provide thermistors to monitor the VRM temperature (ASUS says it's easy to overheat the VRMs on an overclocked Ivy Bridge system, which can lead to CPU throttling).

While even most overclockers won't need to dive too deeply into this, all the controls are there for those who want to. There are even capabilities most enthusiasts wouldn't think of, such as the ability to limit the current draw of a processor, which is amusingly on the same screen as the "OC Now!" button.

Overclockers will spend time in this screen, where they can set the load-line calibration and current capability for both the CPU as well as the integrated GPU in Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge processors.

And, of course, there are the power settings for the DRAM. Honestly I don't know what "voltage frequency" means in this context!

Sensor Recorder

Here's a feature I haven't seen before: the ability to make records of various sensor readings. You can choose to monitor voltage, temperature, and fan speed of various points on the motherboard.

In the screen shot above, it's pretty obvious from the yellow CPU temperature trace when I started AIDA64's built-in system stress test. The fans on the Thermalright Silver Arrow cooler ramped up and brought the temperature down about 10 degrees from its initial spike, but you can see it's slowly climbing again.

You're not limited to real-time inspection, either. You can make long-term records as shown in the shots above. For overclockers, getting multi-hour temperature recordings when you're stress-testing your new settings is invaluable. For the rest of us, it's just cool.

Network iControl

This feature is probably most useful for gamers. It allows you to prioritize the network traffic for your computer. The most basic use of this feature is to give highest priority to the foreground program, as shown below.

But it's much more versatile than that. You can assign network priority on a program-by-program basis. For example, you could keep a long process like a program download at low priority, and a network game at high priority, so that playing online doesn't interrupt the download, but at the same time the download doesn't destroy your ping time. If you have a slower Internet connection and like to watch TV or videos online, you can use this feature to prioritize packets for these applications.

USB 3.0

ASUS' USB 3.0 implementation really has two parts: the four ports provided by the Z77 Express chip and four more ports provided by the two ASMedia 1042 controllers. With eight USB 3.0 ports, you're not likely to run out of places to plug in your high speed USB peripherals any time soon! ASUS enhances the performance of these ports with their own USB 3.0 Boost technology, and Benchmark Reviews looked into these ports and their performance in detail in our performance review of the ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe motherboard here. In addition to the performance, ASUS also provides AI Charger and USB Charger Plus features that provide extra power on these ports to more rapidly charge devices like tablet computers. This rapid charging feature is not limited to Apple devices as it is on some other motherboards, and it will also work even if the computer is asleep or hibernating.

In the last section I'll provide my final thoughts on the features of this motherboard.

Motherboard Features Final Thoughts

In the computer industry, innovation rapidly becomes commoditization: today's cool new features unique to a single vendor's products can spread until they become standard. Even features protected by patents are often functionally duplicated. And then there's the "is this features relevant?" question. For example, on ASUS' own Rampage IV Extreme motherboard, the Subzero Sense connector allows the user to directly measure the subzero temperatures parts of the motherboard will experience with liquid nitrogen cooling. Sure, there are people who actually use this feature, but I'd guess 9 out of 10 Rampage users don't.

That's why I like ASUS' Deluxe motherboards: their enhanced features are actually real-world useful. Fan XPert 2 is a revelation in fan control, and the WiFi Go! capabilities, while still at an early and imperfect stage, make it possible for a computer to integrate into your existing entertainment and networking systems, including mobile devices, with an amazing degree of functionality. And there are features I haven't even covered, such as the DTS Ultra PC II 7.1 surround sound (although at my advanced age I doubt I could discern the finer points of its operation), or USB BIOS Flashback, which lets you reflash the BIOS without needing a CPU or RAM installed on the motherboard...

Of course, all this capability doesn't come cheap. For $274.99 at Newegg, this is the second-most expensive Z77 motherboard Newegg currently offers, beaten only by ASUS' own P8Z77 WS workstation motherboard at $339.99.

But be aware that there are Z77 Express motherboards on the market that will offer similar performance at well under half the price ASUS is asking for this motherboard, and consider whether you really need the extra features it offers. If you do, you'll have a system whose capabilities will likely exceed what you'll use, rather than a system you might find yourself upgrading in the near future. Enthusiasts with the need and the money will find this motherboard the cream of the Z77 Express crop.

Benchmark Reviews invites you to leave constructive feedback below, or ask questions in our Discussion Forum.

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