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. I'll report it here if a board fails to pass one of these tests, I need to increase voltages, or am perhaps allowed to drop voltages.


Overclocking with the MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX was really easy. I simply replicated the same settings I have used with other Intel Z87 MSI boards I've already posted reviews of and everything booted up right away. I did notice better memory capabilities compared to the other boards I've tested, but the BIOS still needs some work. MSI needs to release more BIOSes with better optimizations to improve this board's performance to the public...but doesn't. Check the results and you'll see why I feel this way. I did touch base with MSI about this board's BIOS needing some attention multiple times and have received some BETA BIOSes for testing, but the fixes don't seem to have made their way into public releases yet, and that's a shame.

AIDA64

CPU OC Performance

3D-Oriented OC Performance

3DMark06 and 3DMark Vantage

3DMark11 and PCMark 07

3DMark and PCMark08

Metro: Last Light

Sniper Elite V2

Shogun 2

F1 2010