Overclocked Performance Summary

I have really changed how I do my overclock testing with motherboards. Every single test you see in the main section is repeated in the section that follows, including power consumption. As I test more products, a good picture of overclocking efficiency should emerge, which should prove interesting when it comes to those products that are 100% overclocking-oriented. I have grouped the results into sections here, and all Intel products are tested with 4.6 GHz CPU speed. Memory speeds vary depending on the platform's ability.


Getting my reference 4.6 GHz overclock on the MSI Z87-GD65 GAMING was really easy, especially since there are pre-defined profiles in the BIOS for a multitude of speeds that most users will want to use. After enabling the 4.6 GHz profile in the BIOS, I adjusted the CPU voltage to 1.275 V and enabled XMP before saving the options and booting into my OS. I was pleased to find things mostly stable, but I had to increase the CPU voltage to 1.285 V and the ring voltage to 1.150 V for full stability. The MSI Z87-GD65 GAMING automatically adjusted the ring voltage to 1.120 V, but this wasn't enough. As always, what voltages YOU need will vary, but since I will be using the same CPU for all boards, the MSI Z87-GD65 GAMING now becomes the benchmark to which all other boards are compared.


When it comes time to try some memory overclocking, there are substantial gains to be had on the Z87 Chipset platform compared to the previous Intel Z77 Express platform, even when using the same DDR3 ICs. I tried to see what I could get with my old, reliable G.Skill TridentX 2666 C11 kit, and managed to get all 4 DIMMS operating at 2933 MHz without much issue, using just 1.65V. This is just a glimpse of what might be possible with the right memory and CPU combinations, and this was done using an early BIOS. For a GAMING board, that's pretty darn good, let me tell you.

AIDA64

CPU OC Performance

3D-Oriented OC Performance

3DMark06 and 3DMark Vantage

3DMark11 and PCMark 07

3DMark

Metro: Last Light

Sniper Elite V2

Shogun 2

F1 2010