| ASUS P8Z77-V Thunderbolt Motherboard |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Motherboards | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Written by David Ramsey | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tuesday, 17 July 2012 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
ASUS P8Z77-V Thuderbolt Motherboard Review
Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by ASUS. ASUS is all about slicing up the motherboard market into very fine divisions. Want a Z77 Express-based LGA1155 motherboard? ASUS has products for every possible market segment, ranging from someone building a mini-ITX home theater system to a full-sized gaming monster. With no fewer than 18 different Z77 Express motherboards to choose from, your biggest problem will be figuring out which one best suits your needs. Even the main P8Z77 line has 13 different options, ranging from the rather Spartan P8Z77-M micro-ATX motherboard to the Caligula-like excess of the P8Z77-V Premium.
In this lineup, the P8Z77-V falls about midway in ASUS' price-and-features set. It's tempting to consider this a "budget" motherboard, but it still retains a number of value-added ASUS features:
In addition to these features, there are the features Intel baked into the Z77 Express chipset:
The features ASUS left off this board are arguably things many would not miss on a motherboard, and the performance should be every bit as good as ASUS' pricier versions. Benchmark Reviews has previously tested the ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe motherboard and awarded it a Gold Tachometer. Let's see what this one is like. Closer Look: ASUS Z77 MotherboardThe ASUS P8Z77-V motherboard is a standard ATX-size board with the processor, RAM, and slots where you'd expect. Visually it's quite similar to other motherboards in the P8Z77 series, but there are differences, as we'll see later in this review.
The accessories package includes user guides for the motherboard and WiFi GO! module, a pamphlet on ASUS exclusive features, a driver CD, SLI bridge, back I/O cover, and some ASUS Q Connectors for the front panel header and one internal USB header. Considering that there are four internal USB 2.0 headers, it's disappointing that ASUS didn't include a rear panel USB 2.0 breakout as they do with some of their other motherboards. 
The CPU are is bounded on two sides by ASUS' signature aluminum VRM heatsinks. ASUS seems to tweak the design of these heatsinks for every board...as best I can tell they're unique to each model line. We can see here the VRMs for the 8-phase CPU power (the iGPU in Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge processors gets its own, separate 4-phase power). As with all recent ASUS motherboards, the P8Z77-V benefits from ASUS' fully digital power design for both the processor and RAM. At the lower right of this image you can see the two 4-pin PWM fan headers for the CPU cooler, a really nice feature to have given the increasing popularity of dual-fan coolers. 
Below the CPU socket area are the four RAM sockets, main ATX power connector, the Mem OK! button (which, when pressed, will resent memory timings to boot-safe defaults to make recovering from a failed memory overclock easier), the blue USB 3.0 header, and two more 4-pin PWM fan headers. ASUS has moved to all PWM fan headers on many of its boards to better utilize its Fan Xpert feature.
Of the seven slots, three are PCI-E x16, two are PCI-E x1, and two are standard PCI. The inclusion of old-school PCI slots might seem odd in a modern motherboard, but the dearth of PCI-E lanes in a Z77 Express system (indeed, in all LGA 1155 systems including the P67, P68, and Z68-based ones) means that there are limitations to the number of PCI slots the board can support without the use of an expensive PLX multiplexer chip as ASUS uses in the P8Z77-V Deluxe.
And here's what those limitations are. In the P8Z77-V BIOS, you can choose how many PCI-E lanes to allocate to the black PCI-E x16 slot. Note that in no case are there enough PCI-E lanes to keep everything functional; depending on your selection in this menu, you'll give up a PCI-E x1 slot and/or some of your SATA 6G ports. 
Let's take a closer look at this board's features in the next section. P8Z77-V Detailed FeaturesLike the Z68 chipset, the Z77 supports the integrated GPU of modern Intel processors. What video ports a board provides are up to the vendor; ASUS provides everything: VGA, DVI-D, DisplayPort, and HDMI outputs, any two of which may be used simultaneously. Starting from the left, there's a combination PS/2 port for a mouse or keyboard, two USB 3.0 sockets, two USB 2.0 sockets (with a sticker on top noting they should be used for USB keyboards and mice), a connector for the WiFi Go! module, the optical audio port along with the HDMI and DisplayPort outputs; the VGA and DVI-D outputs, Ethernet and two more USB 3.0 ports, and last the analog audio ports.
At the bottom edge of the board we can see the front panel audio connector, the largish Trusted Platform Module (TPM) connector, followed by the first internal USB 2.0 header.
Continuing along the edge of the board we see three more USB 2.0 connectors followed by the standard ASUS front panel connector. Just above the front panel connector is a 9-pin block labeled "TB_HEADER", which is how you'll connect ASUS' recently announced ThunderboltEX accessory card.
ASUS' EPU and TPU switches activate the power-saving and mild auto-overclocking features of this board, and are backed up by LEDs that indicate when they're on. The white connector immediately to the right is for an optional COM port, but really, when was the last time you needed a DB9 serial port? 
The main ATX power connector is in its usual place in front of the RAM slots; just to its left are the blue internal USB 3.0 header and two 4-pin PWM fan headers.
There are eight SATA ports. The four pale blue ports are SATA 3GB/s ports from the Z77 chipset, while the two white latching ports are the SATA 6GB/s ports from the Z77. The two dark blue ports are SATA 6GB/s ports supported by a separate ASMedia controller.
This mid-level board doesn't use as many custom and third party chips as some of ASUS' other offerings, but it does include an ASMedia ASM1042 USB 3.0 controller, an ASMedia ASM1083 PCI Express to PCI bridge, an ASMedia ASM1442 HDMI chip, a Nuvoton NCT6779D chip for voltage control and voltage/temperature monitoring, a socketed Winbond BIOS chip, and the TPU chip to support the TPU feature. 
ASUS adds a lot of value to their motherboards with a comprehensive software package. We covered this software package in some detail in our review of ASUS' P8Z77-V Deluxe motherboard. Intel Z77 Express ChipsetIt didn't take the Intel Z77 Express chipset long to become mainstream. This chipset replaces the Z68-- itself less than a year old-- which in turn replaced the P67. All three chipsets are tied to the LGA 1155 socket and motherboards based on these chipsets can support either Sandy Bridge CPUs or "Intel third generation Core CPUs". P67 and Z68 motherboards will require a BIOS upgrade for the latter processors, and most vendors have such updates available. The improvements over the previous-generation Z68 chipset are few, with the main ones being on-chip USB 3.0, finally, and more versatile use of PCI-E lanes. While the number and type of these lanes provided on a Z77 system remain the same-- 16 lanes from the CPU (PCI-E 3.0 in the case of an Ivy Bridge processor) and 8 PCI-E 2.0 lanes from the chipset, the chipset can lend four of those lanes to support an additional x4 PCI-E slot even when two graphics cards are using the CPU's available lanes in an 8x8 configuration. Disappointingly, Intel has not followed AMD's lead in making all of their SATA ports SATA 6Gb/s ports, and one does wonder why all the USB ports aren't USB 3.0, considering the newer, faster USB standard is completely backwards compatible. ASUS P8Z77-V SpecificationsSpecifications supplied by ASUSTek Computer Inc.
Let's take a closer look in the next section. Motherboard Testing MethodologyI tested the ASUS P8Z77-V against three other Z77 Express motherboards: the MSI Z77A-GD65, the Intel DZ77GA-70K, and ASUS' own P8Z77-V Deluxe. I used an Intel Ivy Bridge CPU, the Core i7-3770K, 8GB of Kingston HyperX Genesis memory, and a reference design AMD Radeon 5770 video card. For the ASUS P8Z77-V motherboard, I tested the performance at stock CPU speeds, as well as the best overclock I could achieve "by hand" (4.7GHz on all cores). Although the board supports Lucid Virtu MVP GPU virtualization, I ran all benchmarks in this section with the AMD Radeon 5770 card, since using the Ivy Bridge integrated GPU takes some cache from the CPU cores as well as bandwidth from main memory. Intel Z77 Express Test Platforms
Benchmark Applications
Let the tests begin! AIDA64 Extreme Edition TestsAIDA64 is a full 64-bit benchmark and test suite utilizing MMX, 3DNow! and SSE instruction set extensions, and will scale up to 32 processor cores. An enhanced 64-bit System Stability Test module is also available to stress the whole system to its limits. For legacy processors all benchmarks and the System Stability Test are available in 32-bit versions as well. Additionally, AIDA64 adds new hardware to its database, including 300 solid-state drives. On top of the usual ATA auto-detect information the new SSD database enables AIDA64 to display flash memory type, controller model, physical dimensions, and data transfer performance data. AIDA64 v1.00 also implements SSD-specific SMART disk health information for Indilinx, Intel, JMicron, Samsung, and SandForce controllers. All of the benchmarks used in this test- Queen, Photoworxx, ZLib, hash, and AES- rely on basic x86 instructions, and consume very little system memory while also being aware of Hyper-Threading, multi-processors, and multi-core processors. Of all the tests in this review, AIDA64 is the one that best isolates the processor's performance from the rest of the system. While this is useful in that it more directly compares processor performance, readers should remember that virtually no "real world" programs will mirror these results. 
The Queen and Photoworxx tests are synthetic benchmarks that iterate the function many times and over-exaggerate what the real-world performance would be like. The Queen benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and misprediction penalties of the CPU. It does this by finding possible solutions to the classic queen problem on a chessboard. At the same clock speed theoretically the processor with the shorter pipeline and smaller misprediction penalties will attain higher benchmark scores. Like the Queen benchmark, the Photoworxx tests for penalties against pipeline architecture. The synthetic Photoworxx benchmark stresses the integer arithmetic and multiplication execution units of the CPU and also the memory subsystem. Due to the fact that this test performs high memory read/write traffic, it cannot effectively scale in situations where more than two processing threads are used, so quad-core processors with Hyper-Threading have no real advantage. The AIDIA64 Photoworxx benchmark performs the following tasks on a very large RGB image:
This first benchmark reveals a pattern that will remain consistent through the rest of these tests: the P8Z77-V performs more or less identically to its more expensive cousin, the P8Z77-V Deluxe. 
Similar results in the ZLIB and Hash tests... ...but virtual parity in the AES test. Surprisingly, overclocking doesn't significantly help scores here, with my manual overclock providing only a 2.2% improvement. 
Let's move on to the PCMark 7 benchmark. PCMark 7 TestsPCMark 7 is Futuremark's successor to PCMark Vantage. The full suite of tests comprises seven different sequences with more than 25 sub-tests that exercise your system's abilities in storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. It was developed with input from the designers, engineers and product managers at AMD, Compal, Dell, Hitachi GST, HP, Intel, NVIDIA, Samsung, Seagate, Western Digital and many other well-known companies. For this benchmark I chose the PCMark test suite, which provides a number indicating total system performance, as well as the Productivity, Creativity, and Computation test suites. Productivity TestThe Productivity test is a collection of workloads that measure system performance in typical productivity scenarios. Individual workloads include loading web pages and using home office applications. At the end of the benchmark run the system is given a Productivity test score. The Productivity test consists of:
Creativity TestThe Creativity test contains a collection of workloads to measure the system performance in typical creativity scenarios. Individual tests include viewing, editing, transcoding and storing photos and videos. At the end of the benchmark run the system is given a Creativity test score.
Computation TestThe Computation test contains a collection of workloads that isolate the computation performance of the system. At the end of the benchmark run the system is given a Computation test score.
It's important to note that since PCMark 7 was designed as a system test, the scores are dependent on the configuration of the entire system being tested, including things like the memory, hard disk, and graphics cards used: it's not an isolated test like most of the other benchmarks I'm using in this review. However, since all other hardware (CPU, video card, memory, hard disk, etc.) was identical, with only the motherboards being changed, any performance differences here can be attributed to differences in motherboard performance. 
Except in the Computation section, overclocking doesn't help the scores that much. It does boost the Creativity score by 7.6%, but that won't be noticeable outside benchmark use. But in Computation, we get a nice 25% boost. At stock clock speeds, the ASUS P8Z77-V ties for the fastest in Computation and loses to other boards in Productivity and Creativity. However, note that the largest difference in scores is less than 4%, a difference you're not going to notice without a stopwatch In the next section I run everyone's favorite benchmark: CINEBENCH! CINEBENCH R11.5 BenchmarksMaxon CINEBENCH is a real-world test suite that assesses the computer's performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on Maxon's award-winning animation software, Cinema 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. Maxon software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many more. CINEBENCH Release 11.5 includes the ability to more accurately test the industry's latest hardware, including systems with up to 64 processor threads, and the testing environment better reflects the expectations of today's production demands. A more streamlined interface makes testing systems and reading results incredibly straightforward. The CINEBENCH R11.5 test scenario comprises three tests: an OpenGL-based test that models a simple car chase, and single-core and multi-core versions of a CPU-bound computation using all of a system's processing power to render a photo-realistic 3D scene, "No Keyframes", the viral animation by AixSponza. This scene makes use of various algorithms to stress all available processor cores, and the CPU performs all rendering: the graphics card is not involved except as a display device. The multi-core version of the rendering benchmark uses as many cores as the processor has, including the "virtual cores" in processors that support Hyper-Threading. The resulting "CineMark" is a dimensionless number only useful for comparisons with results generated from the same version of CINEBENCH.
Overclocking helps a lot in the multi-core rendering benchmark, increasing the P8Z77-V's score by about 19%; in the single-core benchmark, the score increases by 20%. Let's take a look at some media encoding benchmarks in the next section. Handbrake Media EncodingIt's a truism that consumer-level computer performance reached the "fast enough" point years ago, where increases in system performance don't make thing any faster for most people. Web browsing, e-mail, word processing, and even most games won't benefit dramatically from a super-fast CPU. There are some exceptions, though, and media encoding is one of them: transcoding video, especially high-definition video, can bring the strongest system to its knees. Fortunately, media transcoding is one of those things that (depending on the design of the code, of course) that scales really well with both clock speed and the number of cores, so the more you have of both, the better your results will be. The free and open-source Handbrake 0.96 video transcoder is an example of a program that makes full use of the computational resources available. For this test I used Handbrake 0.96 to transcode a standard-definition episode of Family Guy to the "iPhone & iPod Touch" presets, and recorded the total time (in seconds) it took to transcode the video.
This was the one test where the P8Z77-V scored noticeably worse than its Deluxe cousin, turning in a stock clocked score just over 6% slower. Overclocking improves the score by 20%, though, and in fact is identical with the 97-second time I achieved when I benchmarked the overclocked Deluxe board. Go firgure. x264 HD Benchmark 3.19Tech ARP's x264 HD Benchmark comprises the Avisynth video scripting engine, an x264 encoder, a sample 720P video file, and a script file that actually runs the benchmark. The script invokes four two-pass encoding runs and reports the average frames per second encoded as a result. The script file is a simple batch file, so you could edit the encoding parameters if you were interested, although your results wouldn't then be comparable to others.
The situation is reversed here, with the plain-Jane P8Z77 board posting scores about 8% better than the Deluxe board in the first two runs. 
...and in the last two runs as well. On average, my manual overclock increased the scores by about 23.8% across all runs. SPECviewperf 11 testsThe Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation is "...a non-profit corporation formed to establish, maintain and endorse a standardized set of relevant benchmarks that can be applied to the newest generation of high-performance computers." Their free SPECviewperf benchmark incorporates code and tests contributed by several other companies and is designed to stress computers in a reproducible way. SPECviewperf 11 was released in June 2010 and incorporates an expanded range of capabilities and tests. Note that results from previous versions of SPECviewperf cannot be compared with results from the latest version, as even benchmarks with the same name have been updated with new code and models. SPECviewperf comprises test code from several vendors of professional graphics modeling, rendering, and visualization software. Most of the tests emphasize the CPU over the graphics card, and have between 5 and 13 sub-sections. For this review I ran the Lightwave, Maya, and Seimens Teamcenter Visualization tests. Results are reported as abstract scores, with higher being better. LightwaveThe lightwave-01 viewset was created from traces of the graphics workloads generated by the SPECapc for Lightwave 9.6 benchmark. The models for this viewset range in size from 2.5 to 6 million vertices, with heavy use of vertex buffer objects (VBOs) mixed with immediate mode. GLSL shaders are used throughout the tests. Applications represented by the viewset include 3D character animation, architectural review, and industrial design. MayaThe maya-03 viewset was created from traces of the graphics workload generated by the SPECapc for Maya 2009 benchmark. The models used in the tests range in size from 6 to 66 million vertices, and are tested with and without vertex and fragment shaders. State changes such as those executed by the application- including matrix, material, light and line-stipple changes- are included throughout the rendering of the models. All state changes are derived from a trace of the running application. Siemens Teamcenter Visualization MockupThe tcvis-02 viewset is based on traces of the Siemens Teamcenter Visualization Mockup application (also known as VisMockup) used for visual simulation. Models range from 10 to 22 million vertices and incorporate vertex arrays and fixed-function lighting. State changes such as those executed by the application- including matrix, material, light and line-stipple changes- are included throughout the rendering of the model. All state changes are derived from a trace of the running application.
The SPECviewperf suite is a good example of a real-world test of applications that would normally be the province of a high-end workstation: the individual tests comprise code and models from real applications, running scripts that do real work. SPECapc LightwaveSPECapc (Application Performance Characterization) tests are fundamentally different from the SPECviewperf tests. While SPECviewperf tests incorporate code from the various test programs directly into the benchmark, the SPECapc tests are separate scripts and datasets that are run against a stand-alone installation of the program being benchmarked. SPECapc group members sponsor applications and work with end-users, user groups, publications and ISVs to select and refine workloads, which consist of data sets and benchmark script files. Workloads are determined by end-users and ISVs, not SPECapc group members. These workloads will evolve over time in conjunction with end-users' needs and the increasing functionality of PCs and workstations. For this test, I ran the SPECapc "Lightwave" benchmark against a trial installation of Newtek's Lightwave 3D product. The benchmark, developed in cooperation with NewTek, provides realistic workloads that simulate a typical LightWave 3D workflow. It contains 11 datasets ranging from 64,000 to 1.75 million polygons and representing such applications as 3D character animation, architectural review, and industrial design. Scores for individual workloads are composited under three categories: interactive, render and multitask. The benchmark puts special emphasis on processes that benefit from multi-threaded computing, such as animation, OpenGL playback, deformations, and high-end rendering that includes ray tracing, radiosity, complex textures and volumetric lighting. The test reports three scores: Animation (multitasking), Animation (interactive), and Rendering. The numeric scores represent the time it took to complete each section of the benchmark, in seconds, so lower scores are better. I've found the SPECapc Lightwave 3D test to be an excellent indicator of overclock stability. In many cases, overclocked systems that will make it through every other benchmark here will crash in this test. It's also one of the most "fun" benchmarks to watch, as multiple windows with various complex rendering tasks appear and disappear on your screen. 
This is one of the most "real" benchmarks, since it's just a set of scripts that control a standard Lightwave installation (SPECviewperf uses embedded Lightwave code). BlenderBlender is an open-source, free content creation suite of 3D modeling, rendering, and animation capabilities. Originally released in 2002, it's available in versions for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and several Unix distributions. It supports rigid and soft-body objects and can handle the draping and animation of cloth, as well as the rendering and animation of smoke, water, and general particle handling. Our Blender test renders multiple frames of an animation of a rotating chunk of ice, with translucency and reflections. Rendering of this model uses ray-tracing algorithms and the program reports the rendering time for each of the animation's 25 frames. The results are a summation of the rendering times for all frames and the lower the score, the better. 
The MSI Z77A-GD65 is 8% slower than the ASUS P8Z68V-Pro at stock speeds, but manual overclocking improves its score by 32%. POV-RayThe Persistence of Vision ray tracer is a free, open source 3D modeling program that uses ray-tracing algorithms to generate realistic three-dimensional images. Ray tracing is very computationally intensive, and the POV-Ray program has a handy built-in benchmark to let you check the performance of your system.
In the next section I'll describe my overclocking experience and give my final thoughts on the board. P8Z77-V OverclockingThis is going to be a boring section, I'm afraid. By now the overclocking limitations of first-generation Ivy Bridge desktop processors are well known. Although nobody seems to know the real reason for the problem, informed speculation has it that Intel used an inferior thermal bonding agent or paste between the silicon processor core and the metal heat spreader. The result is that although the CPU runs very cool at stock clocks, temperatures spike alarmingly under load when it's overclocked, and standard cooling solutions (i.e. big air coolers or water cooling) don't seem to help. What this means is the CPU, rather than the motherboard, is the limiting factor. The motherboard may be capable of great things, supplying stable power under heavy loads and dealing with the thermals this produces in the rest of the circuitry, but we won't know with this processor.
As with other Z77 motherboards I've tested, the CPU would easily go to 4.7GHz on all cores under load with only a multiplier adjustment-- no voltage tweaks required. With the Prolimatech Super Mega cooler and a high-speed fan, core temperatures drifted into the high 90s under load, just under the 100 degrees Celcius throttling limit. This is the same result I saw when using the massive Thermalright Silver Arrow cooler on previous Z77 motherboards. So the true overclocking potential of the ASUS P8Z77-V motherboard remains a mystery...at least with Ivy Bridge processors. Z77 Express Final ThoughtsAs we've seen from the test results, the $179.99 ASUS P8Z77-V motherboard turns in performance scores identical to its $274.99 big brother P8Z77-V Deluxe. The question then becomes "What does the extra $95 buy me?", and it's a good question. Here are some of the major features the Deluxe board has than this board doesn't:
Both boards offer the same selection of ASUS software: Turbo V Evo, Fan XPert2, WiFi Go!, and so forth. Both offer the ability to use an ASUS ThunderboltEX add-in Thunderbolt card.
Some of the extra hardware features of the Deluxe model are pretty nice, while some are less useful. There are several features that I think fall into a class that some users will consider absolutely essential but most users would consider superflous. The second Ethernet port on the Deluxe model is a good example of this. I'm more of a computer geek that almost anybody I know and I've never had occasion to use a secondary Ethernet port, although it's easy to think of situations where it could be useful. Ditto for the secondary internal USB 3.0 header, and even the onboard power and reset buttons. Such buttons are terribly convenient for reviewers like me, but once you've got the board buttoned up into a case, they're kinda useless. To me the features that would tip the decision between this board and the Deluxe model are the SSD caching and the PLX chip. I used ASUS' SSD caching on my X79-based system and it makes a pretty dramatic performance improvement. And the PLX chip means you never have to choose between a PCI Express sound card and your SATA 6G or USB ports. ASUS seems to have priced the board well for its target market. MSI's MSI Z77A-GD65 is a little less expensive at $159.99, and has the Realtek ALC898 audio chip, dual switch-selectable BIOSes, a POST code display, and voltage measuring points as well as being an all PCI-E slot design, but has nothing to compete with ASUS' amazing array of utility software, including things like Turbo V Evo, Fan XPert2, Wifi GO!, Digi+ Power Control, and more. This is the same software included with more expensive members of the family, and Benchmark Reviews has previously covered this software in our reviews of other ASUS motherboards, as well as the performance improvement offered by ASUS' USB 3.0 Boost feature. ASUS P8Z77-V ConclusionIMPORTANT: Although the rating and final score mentioned in this conclusion are made to be as objective as possible, please be advised that every author perceives these factors differently at various points in time. While we each do our best to ensure that all aspects of the product are considered, there are often times unforeseen market conditions and manufacturer changes which occur after publication that could render our rating obsolete. Please do not base any purchase solely on our conclusion, as it represents our product rating specifically for the product tested which may differ from future versions. Benchmark Reviews begins our conclusion with a short summary for each of the areas that we rate. ASUS wants you to be able to find a Z77 Express motherboard that's perfect for you in their lineup. The P8Z77-V represents their mid-range board, and tries to hit the price/features sweet spot. Although the value of the board will vary among users depending on what features they consider essential and what features are mere frippery, overall ASUS seems to have done a pretty good job overall in hitting their target. 
EveIn typical ASUS fashion, the board's construction quality is excellent. Granted, this is true of most mainstream motherboards these days, but I have seem a few that are obviously a step down. This isn't one of them. The board's functionality includes extra USB 3.0 and SATA 6G ports, which are a welcome addition to the paucity of same Intel offers in the Z77 Express chipset. This is the first motherboard I've seen to support all four major video outputs (DisplayPort, HDMI, analog VGA, and DVI-D), which means that no matter what kind of monitor you have, you can plug it into this board to use the CPU's integrated graphics. All-PWM fan headers, ASUS' iconic TPU and EPU switches, integrated WiFi, and a Thunderbolt header are additional features; and let's not forget ASUS AI SuiteII utility software. ASUS' motherboards have series-specific aesthetics, and like other boards in the P8Z77 line, the P8Z77-V stays with a blue and black theme and "cityscape" heat sinks on the voltage regulator modules. It's a pleasant, relatively low-key design. Unsurprisingly, the raw performance of this board was identical to its more expensive cousin. Given the same chipset, CPU, memory, hard disk, and video card, this shouldn't be surprising. It's possible that the Deluxe might be able to hit higher stable overclocks on a Sandy Bridge processor with its 16-phase CPU power circuitry (as compared to this board's 8-phase circuitry), but that remains a theoretical item. For $179.99 (Newegg/Amazon), the P8Z77-V falls rougly in the middle of ASUS' P8Z77 range and is priced similarly to other comparable Z77 motherboards. As with other Z77 motherboards, there's really no compelling reason to upgrade if you're already using a Z68 rig. But if you're building a new system from scratch, and don't want to spend much more money for an X79 Express-based system, Z77 is definitely the way to go, and the ASUS P8Z77-V for $179.99 would make an excellent foundation for it. Pros:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Comments
Big fan of ASUS motherboards, looks like I'll be sticking with them a while longer.
Although I'll steer clear of their GPU's after 3 fried on me, their funky unique PCB's seem to have issues sometimes.
Would love to hear your feedback on the issues you had with the GPUs. We strive to provide a very high quality PCB and VRM assembly especially in our non reference designs. Overall this helps to ensure superior performance, and reliability so it is interesting to read such a high failure rate.