MSI Z97I Gaming AC Mini-ITX Motherboard Review

Cinebench R15

Using MAXON’s animation software Cinema 4D, Cinebench is a great choice to look at your computer’s performance using a cross platform test suite. You have most likely seen what MAXON’s Cinema 4D can do as it is used by many studios for 3D content creation; many blockbusters have utilized it. Iron Man, District 9, Smurfs, Serenity, and many others have utilized MAXON’s software.

Cinebench has two tests built into it, OpenGL and CPU. The CPU test uses all of the available processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene that contains around 2,000 objects and 300,000 polygons, there are many light effects included in this test. The OpenGl is a 3D scene of a car chase that measures the performance of the graphics card in OpenGL mode. There are nearly 1 million polygons in this demo, along with a large number of textures and other effects. These two tests combined should give a good overview of the performance of the CPU and GPU on your system.

Benchmark Results: In both tests conducted by Cinebench R15, the MSI Z97I Gaming AC edged out the other Z97 board tested. With the CPU difference coming in around 2% and the OpenGL test around 10%. If you are doing a lot of things with OpenGL the 10% performance difference can be a big reason to look towards the MSI Z97I Gaming AC motherboard.