Overclocking

Overclocking with the MSI Z77 MPower was a bit less fun than I had expected. Getting the CPU to 4.6 GHz required 1.225 V, while I also had to boost VCCIO to 1.15 V and VCCSA to 1.125 V to pull 2666 MHz stable. This made my test CPU run a bit hotter than it has on other boards, so I wasn't exactly impressed. Sure, it was stable at 4.6 GHz, but I have had better.

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 products are tested with 4.6 GHz CPU speed. Memory speeds vary depending on the platform's ability.


Power consumed when overclocked was a bit higher because of higher voltages. And yes, the board really did require more since it was easy to check voltages with the provided read points.

AIDA64

When overclocked, memory bandwidth was actually very good, with Write and Copy performance posting top results. Latency was a bit high, however.

CPU OC Performance

CPU overclock performance was actually decent, with HandBrake and wPrime being wins, but Cinebench was not very exciting. SuperPi and WinRAR were pretty decent though.

3D-Oriented OC Performance

Pure 3D performance was pretty good, as was PCMark performance, but MSI's 3DMark11 performance was not that great. I expected pretty good 3DMark scores, but I got the worst of the bunch instead.