ASUS, BIOSTAR, GIGABYTE, and MSI Intel Z77 Motherboard Round Up

Mass Effect 3

Not everyone will survive. An ancient alien race, known only as “Reapers”, has launched an all-out invasion leaving nothing but a trail of destruction in their wake. Earth has been taken, the galaxy is on the verge of total annihilation, and you are the only one who can stop them. The price of failure is extinction. You are Commander Shepard, a character that you can forge in your own image. You determine how events will play out, which planets to explore, and whom to form alliances with as you rally a force to eliminate the Reaper threat once and for all. How you wage this war is completely up to you: go into combat with guns blazing or use cover to plan a more tactical assault. Utilize your squad to full effect or take a lone wolf approach. Rain death from a distance or go toe–to-toe with enemies using devastating melee attacks. Mass Effect 3 will react to each decision you make as you play through a truly unique experience of your own creation. The war for Earth has begun, decide how it ends.

The graphics settings in Mass Effect 3 are pretty limited. We had Antialiasing and Dynamic Shadows both enabled. In order to disable the VSync we edited the configuration file and added the lines; ‘UseVsync=False’ and ‘SmoothFramerate=False’. If you want to edit your configuration file you can find it at ‘C:Usersyour usernameDocumentsBioWareMass Effect 3BIOGameConfigGamerSettings.ini’.

Benchmark Results: There is a small performance margin between the various motherboards. Across all of the boards at 1280×1024 there are 3 frames per second or 2% separating the top spot and the bottom. At 1280×1024 the GIGABYTE Z77X-UD5H took the top spot with 152.525 frames per second. The lowest performance was the BIOSTAR TZ77XE4 with 149.55 frames per second, still more than enough to run Mass Effect 3 without a hitch. Once we fired up Mass Effect 3 at 1920×1080 the ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe slid up to the top spot with 109.492 frames per second followed by the GIGABYTE Z77X-UD5H with 108.55 frames per second, MSI Z77A-GD65 with 107.994 frames per second, and the BIOSTAR TZ77XE4 with 107.114 frames per second.