Gigabyte Z97X-UD3H-BK Motherboard Review

Futuremark 3DMark – FireStrike Extreme

3DMark has been a staple of the benchmark world for many years. The latest version includes multiple benchmarks depending on the system. We will be taking a look at the FireStrike Extreme benchmark that is geared towards high performance gaming PC’s with overclocked processors.

The Graphics Test focuses on tessellation and volumetric illumination along with smoke simulations for dynamic particle illumination. The Physics Test runs 32 simultaneous simulations of soft and rigid body physics on the CPU. The Combined Test is exactly what it sounds like, the combination of the Graphics Test and Physics Test to stress the CPU and GPU.

3DMark provides an Overall score, and also breaks out the scores for the three different tests. We’ll take a look at the Overall score and the Combined score.

Benchmark Results: 3DMark shows less than a 1% difference in performance between the three Z97 test systems. The physical motherboard doesn’t make much of a difference at base speeds. It comes down to the build quality and added features; at least according to 3DMark.