3D Performance Results

Once we completed our CPU test suite, we took some time to play some games with the TPU community to get an overall feel for gaming on the Gigabyte Z77X-UP5 TH. After a couple of days we settled in to complete our 3D benchmarking, hoping that the Gigabyte Z77X-UP5 TH was going to do a bit better. Let's take a look at what numbers the board provided.

3DMark11

Once I ran 3DMark11, I again noticed underwhelming results. Mind you, it's obvious CPU performance is a bit lacking.

Civilization 5

Our first real-world 3D performance test comes in the form of Civilization 5, using the included benchmark. We let the game recommend us settings, and then disable V-SYNC and AA to eliminate bottlenecks introduced by the GPU itself. Here, the numbers were exactly as expected, with very little variation compared to previous results. A problem in this particular benchmark points to other issues, but the Gigabyte Z77X-UP5 TH passed with flying colors.

F1 2010

Our second real-world 3D performance test comes from CodeMasters, in the form of the "F1 2010" included benchmark. We let the game recommend us settings, which included 8xAA with our HD 6950 2GB from XFX. F1 2010 proves to be one of my personal favorites, and the Gigabyte Z77X-UP5 TH noticed, again, above-average performance compared to the other Intel Z77 Express products we've tested in the past few weeks, thanks to its memory optimizations. The only Z77 Express product that performed better ran with a modified turbo profile that boosted CPU speeds on all cores.

With the CPU and 3D performance compares out of the way, we took a closer look at the other performance features offered by the Gigabyte Z77X-UP5 TH.