Intel Z97 Motherboard Roundup with ASUS, Biostar, Gigabyte and MSI

SiSoftware Sandra Memory Bandwidth & Cinebench R15

The Sisoftware Sandra 2012 SP3 benchmark utility just came out a few weeks ago and we have started to include it in our benchmarking. Sandra 2012 comes with support for Virtualisation (Virtual PC/Server, Hyper-V, VMware) and GPGPU (OpenCL, DirectX 11 DirectCompute), but today we will be using the program to look at memory and CPU performance!

Benchmark Results: The BIOSTAR Hi-Fi Z97WE stepped up to the plate and made a play for the top spot in SiSoftware Sandra Memory bandwidth. The BIOSTAR Hi-Fi Z97WE has an aggregate performance of 28.6 GB/s while the GIGABYTE Z97X-UD5H hit an aggregate of 28.13 GB/s and the MSI Z97 Gaming 7 hit 28.12GB/s.

Cinebench R15

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your 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 Iron Man 3, Oblivion, Life of Pi or Prometheus and many more.

Benchmark Results: The GIGABYTE Z97X-UD5H took the top spot in Cinebench R15 with a multi-core score of 805, which is tied with the MSI Z97 Gaming 7. The GIGABYTE board was a hair faster in the single core score with 158 points while the MSI Z97 Gaming 7 hit 157. The BIOSTAR Hi-Fi Z97WE was the lowest performing board of all of our boards with a multi-core score of 752, though the single core score wasn’t the slowest with a score of 155 points+