Fatal1ty Z77 Professional-M, G1.Sniper M3 or Maximus V Gene?

[cadaveca]

ok but using single link DVI does not somehow prohibit me from using a combination of the igp and a discrete videocard? (virtu mvp)

It should not, in theory. In practice, I have yet to test, but there is no reason for me to believe it would. The issue revolves around the number of TMDS links available, and how they work.

 

[illli]

Out of those, if you game, the Sniper is the best choice, if you are looking to benchmark I would go with the MVG. If the Fatality-M is as good as its full sized brother, thats also a good choice.

To me it honestly comes down to features you NEED as all boards will overclock IB or SB quite well. Just the Sniper offers better sound and NIC so thats why I picked that if you primarily game.

i was going to post here asking about ASUS Maximus V GENE vs. all the others, and which one was better etc. i think this helped answer my question

 

[Steven B]

BTW 4-pin power is more than enough, even from some extreme:

How does this mean anything? Let me explain beucase it is my setup. BTw no need to call me crazy, i have already been reminded.

those two readouts on top of the PSU are two zalman current monitors, the read the 12v rail(in this case set to watts) for the CPU power connector. Each can only read up to about 260W, so i use too for big watt CPU systems like SBe or BD. That is the power(like 98% of it) being pulled by the CPU in the motherboard as modern CPUs need clean input power, and to reduce interference manufacturers tend to use the 12v-4 or 8 pin power input just for the CPU VRMs, so the iGPU, VTT/SA, and VCore will get their power from the 12v CPU pin, and that is what those two are measuring. You have to add them together, as it seems power really doesn't like to equally disburse itself in actual practice.

Anyways that is all going through the 4-pin, call me crazy but that is almost 250W, i highly doubt you can even burn out that connector no air with ivy Bridge, it uses less power than sandy bridge, as sandy bridge was able to pull 200W+ on air with high 5G+ OC, Ivy wont be doing 5G+ on air/waters for 24/7 anyways, unless you are super lucky, which even if you are 4-pin is okay. Also those 6 phase VRM is just fine. It just looks like it can't OC lol, but i understand confidence is a big factor.

I say go either M3 or M5G.

NVM yea display port is the only way to get above 1920x1200 on these boards, i think both M5G and M3 have displayport, right?

BTW one more thing, the M3 has a different slot layout than the other micro Z77 boards, I think GB did it this way to facilitate its use in a full size case with two triple slotted GPUs(i guess so it really is just a cheaper G1 board), but the first and last 16X slots are to be used for multi-GPU, so the middle slot is a 4x to the PCH, but 8x to the CPU like on the M5G and others.