Although Intel’s A770 drivers installed easily and we set up our Valve Index, SteamVR refused to recognize the Index and Intel confirmed lack of Arc driver support. Fortunately, we were able to set up a Reverb G2, a WMR (Windows Mixed Reality) headset, and charted A770 performance versus the RTX 3060 using FCAT VR.

The Reverb G2 is a much more demanding headset than the Valve Index. We do not recommend using entry level VR cards like the A770 or RTX 3060 to drive it any more than we would for 4K pancake gaming, but the G2 is our only WMR headset. Fortunately, despite many crashes to desktop, we were able to benchmark six VR games on generally the lowest settings using FCAT VR.

VR Games & Settings

We benchmark using FCAT VR on Windows 11 Pro Edition 2H22 with Intel’s Core i9-13900KF, and 32GB of T-Force Delta RGB 6400MHz CL40 DDR5 2x16GB memory on an ASUS Prime-A Wi-Fi Z790 motherboard with fast SSD storage. All VR games and benchmarks are patched to their latest versions, and we use Intel’s most recent drivers.

For this review, we benchmarked the Reverb G2 using FCAT VR and allowed the default SteamVR 100% render resolution (3168×3096). It uses a factor of ~1.4X (the native resolution is 2160×2160) to compensate for lens distortion and to increase clarity. We are going to compare the performance of the A770 with the RTX 3060, generally at each game’s in-game lowest VR settings.

Here are the six VR games we tested.

VR Games

• Elite Dangerous
• F1 2022
• Moss: Book II
• Project CARS 2
• The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
• The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

IMPORTANT: BTR’s charts use frametimes in ms where lower is better, but we also compare “unconstrained framerates” – measuring only one important performance metric – which shows what a video card could deliver (headroom) if it wasn’t locked to either 90 FPS or to 45 FPS by the HMD. In the case of unconstrained FPS, faster is better.

In addition, FCAT VR does not distinguish between dropped and synthesized frames using the G2.

Let’s individually look at our 6 VR games’ performance using FCAT VR.

First up, Elite Dangerous.

Elite Dangerous (ED)

Elite Dangerous is a popular space sim built using the COBRA engine. It is hard to find a repeatable benchmark outside of the training missions.

A player will probably spend a lot of time piloting his space cruiser while completing a multitude of tasks as well as visiting space stations and orbiting a multitude of different planets. Elite Dangerous is also co-op and multiplayer with a dedicated following of players.

We picked the Lowest settings but we left the Field of View on its maximum.

Here are the frametimes.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR:

The A770 managed 69.73 unconstrained FPS with 3301 (40%) synthesized or dropped frames but no Warp misses.

The RTX 3060 delivered 77.41 unconstrained FPS with 4667 (50%) synthesized or dropped frames and no Warp misses.

Although the A770 delivers only ~10% less unconstrained frames per second, the Elite Dangerous VR experience is much better using the RX 3060. The A770 framerate delivery is uneven leading to visible stutters which break immersion.

Let’s look at F1 2022.

F1 2022

Codemasters has captured the entire Formula 1 2021 season racing in F1 2022, and the VR immersion is good. The graphics are customizeable and solid, handling and physics are good, the AI is acceptable, the scenery is outstanding, and the experience ticks many of the necessary boxes for a racing sim.

Here is the frametime plot for F1 2022.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR.

The A770 managed 38.58 unconstrained FPS with 5935 (61%) synthesized or dropped frames but no Warp misses.

The RTX 3060 delivered 59.13 unconstrained FPS with 6202 (54%) synthesized or dropped frames and no reported Warp misses.

The A770 falls way behind the RX 3060 in raw performance. The A770 framerate delivery is fairly even due to Motion Smoothing, but the artifacting is very annoying and there are immersion breaking stutters.

Stay tuned. Rodrigo has two not-to-be-missed in-depth major video card reviews coming shortly.

A personal note from BTR’s now retired E-I-C, Mark Poppin

After a great 15 years since ABT and then BTR were established, I am retiring from my duties as Editor-in-Chief and lead reviewer as of today, January 1, 2023. BTR’s has been acquired by JPR (Jon Peddie Research) splitting ownership with Mario who is now BTR’s manager, and Rodrigo is now the lead reviewer. I’ll continue to contribute some VR reviews regularly.

Thanks to all of our loyal readers who turn to BTR for the best reviews – It will get even better!

Happy New Year & Happy Gaming!

We received an Intel Arc A770 from JPR and were eager to put it through its paces. The drivers installed easily and we set up our Valve Index hoping that we could play VR games and also test performance against competing AMD and Nvidia video cards.

Unfortunately, we were greeted by the above image. Resetting the headset, cables, and moving to different USB ports, as well as trying SteamVR Beta and non-Beta plus installing Intel WHQL and Beta drivers made no difference.

Our next step was to contact Intel customer support. After a very brief waiting time on chat, we got connected with a Support agent who asked for a PC log file which we uploaded.

“Please know that Intel Arc graphics support for VR headsets continues to evolve as we ramp our products and add updates to our software stack”.

Contacting Intel’s representatives in charge of Arc gave us the same canned response with no ETA for VR support:

Intel Arc graphics support for VR headsets continues to evolve as we ramp our products and add updates to our software stack.

Although the A770 launched more than two months ago, there is still no proper SteamVR support from Intel. So if you are doing your last minute holiday shopping and want an Intel Arc video card to play your VR games using a native SteamVR headset like the Valve Index, you are probably out of luck.

However, BTR also tried the Reverb G2 which is a Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) headset, and it set up and works to get into VR, including into several SteamVR games we launched. BTR will test performance and give our experiences with the A770 and the G2 after the New Year.

Happy Holidays and Happy VR gaming!!

The GeForce Game Ready 465.89 driver added the PCI-Express Resizable BAR feature on all the GeForce RTX 30 Series’ GPUs. This performance analysis uses an RTX 3080, a Z390 motherboard, and an i9-9900K CPU to showcase 7 NVIDIA whitelisted PC games that are already part of our testing suite. We benchmark this feature, on versus off, with our latest recommended GeForce driver and the latest version of Windows 10.

Notes on NVIDIA Resizable BAR

To use NVIDIA Resizable BAR, users need a GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics card with a supported VBIOS, a compatible CPU, a compatible motherboard and SBIOS, and the latest Game Ready driver. With these requirements met, you need to enable Resizable BAR in your motherboard’s UEFI setup program and boot your PC in UEFI mode with CSM disabled for UEFI GOP support.

Note that both our motherboard and CPU have no official support yet for NVIDIA Resizable BAR. We asked NVIDIA directly, and they confirmed that Z390-based platforms are not officially supported. So in this review, we will see how the following NVIDIA’s disclaimer applies to our Z390 platform or similar unofficially supported configurations:

Please note, some motherboard manufacturers have unofficially extended Resizable BAR support to prior generation products. Your mileage may vary utilizing these solutions.

You can check if Resizable BAR is enabled using GPU-Z, the NVIDIA Control Panel, and Windows Device Manager. Below you can see what our testing system reports when Resizable BAR is enabled using the mentioned methods:

Our testing platform is a recent install of Windows 10 64-bit Pro Edition, an Intel Core i9-9900K with stock clocks, a Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO motherboard, and 32GB of Kingston DDR4 3333MHz. The games tested, settings, hardware, GeForce drivers, and Windows 10 build are identical except for the off versus on ‘Resizable BAR’ state we compare. We enabled and disabled Resizable BAR using the UEFI setup program for our testing.

Benching Methodology

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-9900K (Hyper-Threading/Turbo boost on; stock settings)
• Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO motherboard (Intel Z390 chipset, v.F12l BIOS)
• Kingston HyperX Predator 32GB DDR4 (2×16GB, dual-channel at 3333 MHz CL16)
• Gigabyte AORUS GeForce RTX 3080 MASTER 10GB (rev. 1.0); v.F4 VBIOS, stock clocks
• Samsung 500GB SSD 960 EVO NVMe M.2
• WD Blue 1TB SATA SSD
• Corsair RM750x, 750W 80PLUS Gold power supply unit
• ASUS ROG Swift PG279Q 27? IPS 2560 x 1440 165Hz 4ms G-Sync Monitor (G-Sync off, Fixed Refresh Rate on)

Test Configuration – Software

• NVIDIA GeForce 465.89 drivers; ‘High Quality’ and ‘Prefer maximum performance’ (on a per-game profile-basis); fixed refresh rate (globally).
• V-Sync application controlled in the control panel, V-Sync off in-game.
• AA and AF as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified.
• Windows 10 64-bit Pro edition, latest updates v20H2, High-performance power plan, HAGS off, Game Mode, Game DVR & Game Bar features off.
• GIGABYTE tools not installed.
• Latest DirectX
• All 7 games we tested are patched to their latest versions at the time of publication.
• CapFrameX (CX), the latest version
• RivaTuner Statistics Server (RTSS), the latest version
• ISLC (Purge Standby List) before each benchmark.
• TechPowerUp GPU-Z (GPU-Z), the latest version
• Nvidia Profile Inspector (by Orbmu2K), the latest version

GeForce Driver Suite-related

• We use the Standard Game Ready drivers.
• The display driver is installed.
• We install the latest version of PhysX.

Game Benchmarks-related

• We use the corresponding built-in or custom benchmark sequence.

Frametimes Capture & Analysis tool-related

• We use CapFrameX for capturing and analyzing the relevant performance numbers obtained from each recorded built-in or custom benchmark sequence.
• We perform consecutive runs until detecting 3 valid runs (no outliers) that can be aggregated by CapFrameX using the following method:
  • ‘Aggregate excluding outliers’:
    • Outlier metric: Third, P0.2 (0.2% FPS percentile).
    • Outlier percentage: 3% (the % the FPS of an entry can differ from the median of all entries before counting as an outlier).
• We compare and value the results and aggregated records in terms of percentages of gain/loss, by setting the following thresholds to consider a certain % value as significant (not within the margin of error) for our benchmarking purposes:
  • FPS Avg > 3% when valuing raw performance;
  • P1/P0.2 > 3% when valuing frame time consistency; after applying our custom formula

{[(LowPercentileFPS_2 / AvgFPS_2) / (LowPercentileFPS_1 / AvgFPS_1)] – 1} x 100

Benchmark Suite: 7 PC Games With NVIDIA Resizable BAR Support

From the above list, we benchmark the following NVIDIA whitelisted games (as of March 30, 2021) that are already part of our current testing bed (7 games):

• Borderlands 3 (BL3)

• Cyberpunk 2077 (CP2077)

• DIRT 5

• Godfall (GF)

• Horizon Zero Dawn (HZD)

• Metro: Exodus (MEx)

• Watch Dogs: Legion (WDL)

NVIDIA Resizable BAR Game Support: A games’ driver profile-based support approach

The support for NVIDIA Resizable BAR is ultimately profile-based. So, even if your system supports Resizable BAR (with capable SBIOS and VBIOS) and you have it enabled via your UEFI setup program, this PCI-E feature won’t work without a specific NVIDIA game profile on GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics cards and laptops.

We consider this driver profile-based support approach the most useful and the best possible in case of eventual performance inconsistencies and issues. In fact, that’s why NVIDIA claims that only their whitelisted games will officially support it and will show performance gains under officially supported CPU platforms.

So, if you are curious and want to check how Resizable BAR works with games that are not on the NVIDIA whitelist, or disable it at the GPU driver level for specific whitelisted games that eventually show performance issues on your gaming platform (probably, because your CPU and chipset are unofficially supported), you can use the following guide (credit goes to @chrcoluk):

How To Tweak Resizable BAR Game Support Settings

1. 1. Download and extract the latest version of Nvidia Profile Inspector (by Orbmu2k), a reliable third-party driver editor, to tweak its default settings and game profiles inside the internal database of the NVIDIA driver.
   2. Open and run Nvidia Profile Inspector (nvidiaProfileInspector.exe) and enable ‘Show unknown setting from NVIDIA Predefined Profiles’ in the toolbar of the program.
   3. Use the ‘Profiles’ search box in the toolbar to browse and select a game profile already present in the internal NVIDIA driver database or use the little arrow button next to ‘Home’ to open the drop-down menu and choose any game profile already available on your system and/or previously added through the NVIDIA Control Panel.
   4. Scroll down the game profile’s page until you locate the ‘Unknown’ section at the bottom and look for the following lines or driver flags:
      • 0x000F00BA
      • 0x000F00BB, and
      • 0x000F00FF
   5. Use these three driver flags for enabling or disabling the NVIDIA Resizable BAR support and functionality at the driver level. For the whitelisted games, these flags are already enabled, and for other games, the value will be 0x00000000 or blank.
   6. If you want to enable NVIDIA Resizable BAR driver support for a non already whitelisted game:
      1. Flip the first two flags (0x000F00BA and 0x000F00BB) to 0x00000001 value, and set the third flag, 0x000F00FF, to 0x0000000040000000 value.
      2. Click on the ‘Apply changes’ button.
   7. If you want to disable NVIDIA Resizable BAR driver support for an already whitelisted game:
      1. Flip the three flags (0x000F00BA and 0x000F00BB) to 0x00000000 value (select and erase the default value and type or copy and paste 0x00000000).
      2. Click on the ‘Apply changes’ button.

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the global NVIDIA Control Panel settings:

Both ‘High-Quality’ values for texture filtering-quality setting and ‘Prefer maximum performance’ for power management mode are set on a per-game or program profile-basis via Manage 3D Settings > Program settings tab.

The Performance Summary Charts with 7 Games with NVIDIA Resizable BAR Support

Below you can find the summary charts of 7 games whitelisted by NVIDIA with Resizable BAR support (as of March 30, 2021) that are part of our usual testing bed. We compare the games’ performance changes with ‘Resizable BAR’ enabled and disabled, using the AORUS RTX 3080 MASTER on an Intel Z390 platform.

You can see the list of graphics settings on the charts, and we run each built-in or custom game benchmark’s sequence at 2560×1440, except for Borderlands 3, tested at 150% resolution scaling. You may click on the chart to open a pop-up for best viewing.

Results give average framerates and higher is better. We display the low FPS percentiles (P1 and P0.2) below the corresponding averages. We use CapFrameX to record frametimes over time and to visualize and convert them into their corresponding average FPS and P1 and P0.2 FPS percentiles values. There are also columns showing percentages of gain/loss in both raw performance (average FPS) and, when applicable, in frametimes consistency or stability between the different testing scenarios. To calculate the gains or losses in stability we applied our custom formula:

{[(LowPercentileFPS_2 / AvgFPS_2) / (LowPercentileFPS_1 / AvgFPS_1)] – 1} x 100

We mark significant performance changes (higher than 3%) in bold and use purple or orange font for the significant improvements or regressions respectively.

Resizable BAR Performance Charts

Notes on NVIDIA Resizable BAR performance (On vs. Off)

From the charts, we see variability in the results. In fact, while some supported games don’t show significant performance changes with Resizable BAR enabled, others show significant performance gains or losses.

The games that show overall the same performance with Resizable BAR on and off are Borderlands 3 (DX11 mode), Cyberpunk 2077 (no RTX), DIRT 5 (no-DXR, and DXR), and Metro Exodus (DX12). On the other hand, although we see significant performance gains in raw performance on Cyberpunk 2077 (RTX) and Watch Dogs Legion (DX12 and DXR), we also see a significant regression in Horizon Zero Dawn. Finally, we find significantly worse frametime consistency in Borderlands 3 (DX12), Godfall (no-DXR, and DXR), Metro Exodus (DXR), and Watch Dogs Legion (DX12). Especially striking are the regressions in Borderlands 3 (DX12 mode) and Godfall, which cause severe stuttering.

Disclaimer

Please be aware that the following results, notes, and the corresponding NVIDIA Resizable BAR recommendations are valid for similar Ampere gaming rigs (with unofficially supported Z390 Intel motherboards) using GeForce Game Ready 465.89 driver and Windows 10 v20H2. Its representativeness, applicability, and usefulness on different testing benches, CPU platforms, GPU drivers, and MS Windows 10 versions may vary.

We reached out to NVIDIA for their thoughts on the variability of the results we are seeing. They pointed out that Resizable BAR is a PCIe feature that is not locked to any one GPU nor was it originally designed for general game performance enhancement since it ideally requires game developer integration to work best. Because of the quality assurance difficulty, NVIDIA’s current plan is to enable it only for Ampere GPUs. One may consider Resizable BAR as an opportunistic performance bonus where your mileage will vary from game to game and from system to system.

Final Thoughts

Based on our mixed and variable results and findings, although we recommend Resizable BAR for the NVIDIA whitelisted games if your CPU platform is officially supported, we cannot recommend its general use for platforms similar to ours (Z390) or for those that lack official support. If so, our recommendation would be to disable it globally or carry out your own tests. If the whitelisted game installed on your system worsens its performance with Resizable BAR on, deactivate it on a per-game basis, as explained in our guide.

Be safe, and let’s play!

***

Rodrigo González (aka “RodroG”) is an enthusiast gamer and tech reviewer interested especially in shooter games, open-world role-playing games, and software and hardware benchmarking. He is the author of the NVIDIA WHQL Driver Performance Benchmarks Series and founder and moderator of the r/allbenchmarks community on Reddit.

We have recently upgraded our Core i7-8700K/Coffee Lake platform to i9-10900K/Comet Lake, and have been testing it using an ASRock Z490 Steel Legend motherboard. Since we were unable to gain any performance from overclocking, we asked EVGA for a review sample of the Z490 FTW motherboard.

The last EVGA motherboard that BTR evaluated was the Z370 FTW which allowed our i7-8700K to reach 4.8 GHz on all cores for regular use and for benching. We are going to review the $329 EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard using a RTX 2080 Ti by comparing it with the midrange ASRock Z490 Steel Legend motherboard with our i9-10900K at stock, and then we will overclock it.

It has been a long road to a solid performance increase from a stable overclock that required us to not only change the motherboard, but we also had to make several other upgrades. Core i9-10900 “K” CPUs are multiplier unlocked and can be overclocked beyond their stock speeds with hiqh-quality cooling. At stock, although all 10 cores are rated to run at 3.7 GHz, individual cores each have the potential to reach much higher speeds by selectively using Intel’s Boost and Velocity Boost which means there is very little room for increasing performance by manually overclocking. We started out using a EVGA CLC 280mm CPU cooler in a Focus G case, and later we upgraded to a Phanteks P400 case to house a DeepCool 360mm AIO cooler.

Comet Lake is Intel’s latest tenth generation platform and it brings some new features over the Coffee Lake platform although their IPC for gaming are identical So far, we have found that the biggest advantage to the Comet Lake flagship i9 CPU over Coffee Lake’s flagship i7 processor are the extra four cores of the i9. A Core i9 Comet Lake gamer using 10 cores plus HyperThreading doesn’t have to consider background processes while gaming, and the extra four cores over Coffee Lake’s CPU may be helpful for better handling upcoming multi-threaded game ports from the next generation of console games. In addition, we are also looking for a higher all core clockspeed well-above the 4.8GHz day-to-day overclock of our i7-8700K.

EVGA’s Z490 Motherboards

EVGA has introduced another Z490 motherboard in addition to the FTW that we are reviewing – the $549 Z490 DARK – their top board. The Z490 FTW is currently available from EVGA for $329. The primary difference, besides several added features between the two motherboards, are a 18 phase power delivery system for the DARK while the FTW is 14 phase. The ASRock Z490 Steel Legend uses a 11 phase power design.

The EVGA Z490 FTW is a step down from the DARK. Besides using a 18 phase power delivery instead of 14, the DARK has two extra native SATA ports, an extra USB header, and overclocking support for DDR4 to 4600MHz instead of 4400MHz. The DARK also has an upgraded Ethernet, an additional PCIe slot, and the PCB is ten layers instead of six. These are not really major downgrades for most enthusiasts although an extreme overclocker would definitely pick the DARK over the FTW. A motherboard may make a difference to achieving a higher CPU overclock. The FTW Z490 MB was able to overclock our i9-10900K while our ASRock Z490 Steel Legend couldn’t.

EVGA Z490 boards include cable cutouts to make cable management easier. These boards also feature metal-reinforced PCIe slots for supporting heavy video cards, 2-Way SLI/CrossFire support, multiple RGB headers, M.2 slots, Intel Gigabit NICs, switchable dual-BIOSes, and Realtek’s upgraded 7.1 Channel 1220 audio. Here are the EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard’s features from their website.

DESIGN DETAILS

• • Supported CPUs – Intel® Socket 1200, 10th Generation Intel® Core i9/i7/i5
  • Socket Type – Intel® Socket LGA1200
  • PCH – Intel® Z490
  • DIMM QTY – 4 DIMM Dual-Channel
  • Memory Type – DDR4 4400MHz+
  • Memory Capacity – 128GB
  • 6.0Gb/s Ports/Controller – 4/Intel® Z490 PCH
  • RAID Support – RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10
  • SATA 6.0Gb/s Ports/Controller – 2 / ASMedia ASM1061
  • USB 2.0 Ports/Controller – 5 Ports (4 from internal headers / 1 from Update Port for flashing BIOS)/ Intel® Z490 USB Hub
  • USB 3.2 Gen1 Ports/Controller – 4 (2 from internal header / Intel Z490 PCH
  • USB 3.2 Gen2 Ports/Controller – 4x USB3.2 Gen2 Type-A/1x USB3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C/1x USB3.2 Gen2 Type-C (internal header)
  • Network Speed – 10/100/1000
  • Network Ports/Controller – Intel® i219V PHY
  • WiFi/BT – Intel® AX201 WiFi 6/BT 5.1 module, preinstalled in the • M.2 Key-E 32mm Slot
  • Audio – 7.1 Channel Realtek + EVGA NU Audio
  • Audio Controller – Realtek ALC1220 + SV3H615
  • Display Output – DP 1.2 / HDMI 1.4
  • PCIe Slot Arrangement – 2×16, 1×1
  • PCIe x16 Mechanical Slots – 2
  • PCIe x16 Mechanical Arrangement – 1×16/8, 1×8 PCIe x1 Mechanical Slots – 1
  • M.2 Key-M – 2x 110mm (Up to 32Gbps)
  • M.2 Key-E – 1x 32mm (Vertical)
  • Fan Headers – 7x 4-Pin (2x CPU PWM, 5x PWM/DC)
  • BIOS Type – Latest UEFI BIOS with mouse/keyboard control, OC Robot, In-BIOS Stress
  • Software – EVGA ELEET X1 Tuning Utility

KEY SPECS

• Supports Intel® Core 10th Generation Processor Family for LGA1200 socket
• 150% Increased Gold Content
• Intel® Z490 Chipset
• NVIDIA® SLI® Ready Enthusiast Layout
• 4 DIMM Dual-Channel up to 128GB 4400MHz+
• PCI Express® 3.0 Ready
• 5 USB 2.0 Ports (4 from internal headers/1 from Update Port)
• 4 USB 3.2 Gen1 Ports (2 rear panel, 2 from 1 internal header)
• 5 USB 3.2 Gen2 Ports (4 Type-A rear panel, 1 type-C Header)
• 1 USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Port (1 Type-C rear panel)
• 1 PS/2 (Mouse+Keyboard support)
• Intel® Optane Support
• 6 SATA 6.0Gb/s (4 on Intel® Z490 PCH/2 from ASMedia ASM1061)
• 2 M.2 Key-M 110mm up to 32Gbps
• 1 M.2 Key-E 32mm
• 1 DisplayPort 1.2 / 1 HDMI 1.4
• 1 Intel® i219V Gigabit NIC (10/100/1000)
• 1 Intel® WiFi 6/ BT 5.1 module, preinstalled

DIMENSIONS

• Width: 9.6in – 244mm
• Length: 12in – 305mm
• Form Factor: ATX Form Factor

ACCESSORIES

• EVGA Quick Installation Guide
• Rear Case I/O Panel
• 2 SATA 6G Data Cables
• 2x M.2 Thermal Pad
• 2x Antenna for WiFi
• Case Badge
• USB Flash Drive
• Contains Driver and Manual

###

The specs and the design look great. An important consideration for any enthusiast are the warranty and product support should anything go wrong.

Warranty & Support

EVGA’s Z490 motherboards come with a 3 year warranty, and registration is recommended. A further warranty extension
is available upon registration within 30 days of purchase. For more details please visit: www.evga.com/warranty/motherboards/.

In addition, EVGA provides outstanding support including a 24/7 telephone hotline staffed by helpful professionals. We have had multiple opportunities to use their hotline over the past decade, and we have always received high-quality and fast service – even on the weekends. EVGA is a rare company that will allow you as a seller to transfer the remaining portion of your warranty to the second-hand buyer, and they can even cross ship RMA products so you can get back up and running quickly!

The EVGA Z490 FTW is a good-looking motherboard with excellent specifications, so let’s unbox it for a closer look before we install, test, overclock, and benchmark it.

The EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard

Unboxing and Installation

The EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard is a good-looking industrial design board using silver components to contrast with a black PCB without using any stenciled designs on the board. There are typical component placements, and some of the traces are visible. The FTW includes a silver shroud over the back panel with vents that extend to the VRM heatsinks. There are 4 RAM slots supporting up to 128GB DDR4, and 2 PCIe slots that are full X16 slots that will support mGPU in an 8x+8x configuration. If you need a high bandwidth (HB) SLI bridge for two GeForce cards, make sure to get the bridge with the 2-slot spacing.

There are headers on the board for RGB strips. The memory slots as well as the two primary x16 PCIe slots (1×16/8, 1×8 in dual graphics mGPU mode) are reinforced in order to support heavy graphics cards. We do not like the placement of the right angle connectors at the bottom of the board as the spacing is too tight for many cases including the Focus G and the Phanteks P400. You may have to remove the PSU – or as with the P400, you may have to remove the motherboard just to replace or install a new fan. The only vertical socket is for the ATX power connector and we would have instead preferred that it be right angle.

There is also a third PCIe slot at the bottom using the bandwidth from the chipset. There are two Key M M.2 slots for PCIe storage – 2x 110mm (Up to 32Gbps) – and one Key E M.2 slot with an Intel AX201 WiFi 6/BT 5.1 module preinstalled. Storage options include six SATA ports (RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 support).

For convenience, there are seven 4-pin PWM fan headers (2x CPU PWM, 5x PWM/DC), and four are close to the CPU socket with the others at the bottom of the board. For audio, the FTW uses 7.1 Channel Realtek + EVGA NU Audio, and for networking, the FTW uses a single Intel I219-V PHY controller.

The EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard arrives in a rather plain box with the necessary components for a bare-bones installation.Bucking the modern trend, EVGA still supplies a separate rear case IO panel but we are used to the extra step. Besides the four SATA cables, IO rear panel cover, EVGA badge, mini-flash drive instead of a CD, quick-start guide and Wi-Fi antennas, the bundle is sparse. We really miss having a printed manual, but settled for the .pdf which is still rather basic for 163 pages. However, an experienced builder may not need it. The Z490 FTW is very similar to other EVGA motherboards, and anyone who has used one before will be familiar with its layout.

Here is the back of the FTW motherboard.

On the rear panel of the EVGA Z490 FTW, there is a Clear CMOS button, HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort 2.0 video outputs, four USB 3.2 ports (red), the USB 3.1 ports (blue), a USB Type-C port, the Intel network port, the audio jacks, and the two Wi-Fi antennas screw right into their corresponding bases.

Originally we started with an ASRock Z490 Steel Legend which is a mid-range board. We pre-installed the memory and the CPU together with the IO backplate and CPU cooler standoffs and securely fastened them using 9 screws to the standoffs in the Focus G. We used 2x16GB of T-FORCE DARK Z DDR4 at stock speeds of 3600 MHz using the automatic XMP profile 1 in the BIOS. We installed the AIO cooler using Arctic Silver 5 and attached the rest of the cables and wiring.

The ASRock Z490 Steel Legend motherboard was OK for running our i9-10900K at stock speeds but it was unable to attain any performance-gaining overclock with a EVGA CLC 280mm CPU cooler in a Focus G case, so we switched it out for the EVGA Z490 motherboard. We started our build by moving the hardware from our ASRock motherboard to the EVGA motherboard, and then installed it into the same Focus G case.

After the FTW build was completed, we got a decent overclock, but the temperatures were too high for the 280mm cooler. So we upgraded to a Phanteks case to house a DeepCool 360mm AIO cooler.

It was now a very easy transplant installation since we had learned to pre-install the HD audio and fan plugs into the bottom connectors before we installed the motherboard.

Well, it was soon time to turn it on. And it started right up and went to the BIOS screen. We picked Advanced and ignored the other three choices for now: Default, OC Robot, and Gamer Mode which sets a conservative overclock.

BIOS

Upon reaching the BIOS by pressing delete after powering on, you are presented with an overclocking-friendly screen. You can navigate the BIOS with a keyboard or mouse, and although it is fully-featured, it is still somewhat minimalist. It’s an advantage as the options are easy to understand and they give full control over a multitude of overclocking options. Usually, screenshots can be saved to a USB flash drive, but it never worked reliably for us so we captured photos of a few of the BIOS options and overclocking-related settings that we used.

Overclocking is simple. You switch from Automatic (3.7 GHz with multiple automatic stages of Boost) to Manual and are presented with options to set the multiplier up or down. Setting the overall CPU Multiplier setting sets the individual cores to the same frequency or they may be adjusted individually as shown above.

We settled a multiplier of 51 for 5.1 GHz on all cores. We also made sure the AVX Ratio offset was set to zero because we wanted all 10 cores to turbo to 5.1 GHz without any exception for demanding software or even for ‘power viruses’ like Prime95.

The BIOS offers options to set the BCLK Frequency but we only overclocked the core. Individual cores may have their HyperThreading enabled or disabled for those who want the ultimate in overclocking options. We enabled HT on all cores at 5.1GHz for overall better performance and benchmark repeatability although we were able to get a higher overclock on some cores by selectively disabling it .

Unlike with many motherboards that allow excessive voltage to flow to a highly overclocked CPU, the FTW is a rare board that did not allow excessive spikes even with the automatic setting at 5.1 GHz. However, we also found that setting the voltage manually to 1.335V in Vcore was enough to stabilize the CPU at 5.1 GHz although it still occasionally spiked. Disabling or enabling Vdroop made no difference to overall stability that we could notice. In the Advanced options, the user is given many options including to further fine-tune the CPU.

All of the other regular options are in the BIOS, and flashing is made easy by having a dual BIOS. We tried v1.04 but found that we got a better overclock with v1.03.

Overclocking, Voltage, and Temperatures

An i9-10900K overclocked all-core to 4.9GHz or higher requires additional voltage overstock, and temperatures rise dramatically as the voltage is increased to maintain stability for higher overclocks. The ASRock motherboard could not hold a stable overclock without throttling. Although 5.1GHz could be applied, throttling by what we suspect is uneven power delivery caused the CPU cores to throttle significantly, and the overclocked performance was lower than stock performance even though temperatures were not excessive.

Our favorite new EVGA tool is the OC Robot. Watching it closely as it ran through the frequencies told us exactly where to start with our manual overclock and what approximate voltages worked, as well as letting us know where the CPU got into thermal trouble. Here is 4.9GHz.Only 1.247V are needed for all-cores at 4900MHz. Watch what happens when the OC Robot tests 5.0GHz.

It now takes 1.3V to stabilize an all core 5000MHz OC with the temperatures peaking at 85C. So the Robot continues.

The OC Robot settled on 5.1GHz since 5.2GHz raised the voltage and temperatures dramatically. OC Robot’s 5.1GHz OC is exactly the same overclock that we were able to finally achieve after spending hours manually trying setting after setting. The only difference is that we were able to stabilize 5100MHz at 1.335V instead of 1.355V, and thus we got lower temperatures. Overall, we would give the OC Robot an A- for being a time-saver and for being reasonably accurate. The OC Robot’s result is a great place for an experienced overclocker to begin manual testing and fine-tuning.

When we manually overclocked further to 5.2 GHz, the voltage requirements exceeded 1.4V and temperatures spiked into the 90sC under a full gaming load and near 100C under full load synthetic benches. These benches are often called power viruses and may include OCCT, the Blender Benchmark, and Prime95.

We were unable to use our EVGA 280mm CLC even with a modified aggressive fan profile at 5.2GHz, so we switched out the AIO to a 360mm DeepCool AIO and a larger Phanteks case. Although the temperatures dropped by 5-8C or better, thermal throttling still took place, and the 5.2GHz overclock resulted in overall lower performance than at 5.1GHz. We also tried 5.3GHz with a 2AVX offset, but we couldn’t get the i9 completely stable. So we settled on a maximum stable 10900K overclock with all 10 cores at 5.1GHz and set about benching and comparing performance with stock settings.

Driver Installation

The included EVGA motherboard drivers and programs are no longer on CD but on a flash drive, and they work quickly and painlessly to install all needed drivers. The latest drivers can always be found on EVGA’s website which are what we used before we discovered the tiny flash drive at the bottom of a plastic bag.

Let’s look at our test configuration before we do any benching

Test Configuration

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-10900K (HyperThreading/Turbo boost On; stock and overclocked. Rocket Lake DX11 CPU graphics)
• EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard (Intel Z490 chipset, v1.3 and v1.4 BIOSes, PCIe 3.0/3.1/3.2 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x), supplied by EVGA
• ASRock Z490 Steel Legend motherboard (Intel Z490 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 3.0/3.1/3.2 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x)
• DEEPCOOL Castle 360EX AIO 360mm liquid CPU cooler
• EVGA 280mm CLC AIO liquid CPU cooler, supplied by EVGA
• T-FORCE DARK Z 32GB DDR4 (2x16GB, dual channel at 3600MHz), supplied by Team Group
• RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition 11GB, stock clocks, on loan from NVIDIA
• 1TB Team Group MP33 NVMe2 PCIe SSD for C: drive
• 1.92TB San Disk enterprise class SATA III SSD
• 2TB Micron 1100 SATA III SSD
• 1TB Team Group GX2 SATA III SSD
• 500GB T-FORCE Vulcan SSD, supplied by Team Group
• ANTEC HCG1000 Extreme, 1000W gold power supply unit
• BenQ EW3270U 32 Inch 4K HDR FreeSync Monitor
• SAMSUNG LC27G75TQSNXZA 27″ 2560 x 1440 240Hz 1ms G-Sync Monitor
• Fractal Design Focus G mid-tower PC case
• Phanteks Eclipse P400 ATX mid-tower

Test Configuration – Software

• Nvidia’s GeForce 451.67 WHQL drivers. High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display
• VSync is off in the control panel
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games
• Windows 10 64-bit Pro edition; latest updates v2004
• Latest DirectX
• MSI’s Afterburner, latest version.
• CPUZ
• HWiNFO
• Intel XTU

Game-related

• Grand Theft Auto V
• Civilization Vi
• Anno 1800
• 3DMark – Time Spy & Physics
• Superposition
• VRMark Cyan

Synthetic

• Sandra 2020
• AIDA64
• PCMark 8
• PCMark 10
• RealBench
• Cinebench
• NovoBench
• Blender Benchmark
• Wprime

We used MSI’s Afterburner to set the RTX 2080 Ti’s power and temp limits to their maximums.

Let’s head to our performance charts.

Synthetic Benches

SiSoft Sandra 2020

To see where the CPU and motherboard performance results differ, there is no better tool than SiSoft’s Sandra 2020. SiSoftware SANDRA (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a consummate information & diagnostic utility in a single complete package. It is able to provide all the information about your hardware, software and other devices for diagnosis and for benchmarking. Sandra is derived from a Greek name that implies “defender” or “helper”.

There are several versions of Sandra, including a free version of Sandra Lite that anyone can download and use. It is highly recommended! Sandra 2020 R8 is the latest version, and we are using the full engineer suite courtesy of SiSoft. Sandra 2020 features continuous multiple monthly incremental improvements over earlier versions of Sandra. It will benchmark and analyze all of the important PC subsystems and even rank your PC while giving recommendations for improvement.

We ran Sandra’s intensive benchmarks and charted the results summarizing our CPU-related benchmark testing. As with all of the following charts, the performance results of the ASRock Steel Legend motherboard at stock CPU speeds are first compared with the stock performance results of the EVGA FTW motherboard at stock and then with an all-core 5.1GHz i9 overclock.

Generally Z490 motherboards using the same CPU will give very similar results. Interestingly, the power management efficiency of the ASRock motherboard is higher than the EVGA board, and the FTW’s efficiency decreases as the power demands go up from overclocking.

A faster CPU has better results when it plays a major part in the calculations. When the tests are GPU oriented, the graphics card does most of the work. In the Sandra CPU benchmarks, overclocking the 10900K to 5.1GHz brings higher performance over stock.

We next feature AIDA64.

AIDA64 v6.00

As the successor to Everest, AIDA64 is an important industry tool for benchmarkers. Its memory bandwidth benchmarks (Memory Read, Memory Write, and Memory Copy) measure the maximum available memory data transfer bandwidth and its custom CPU benchmarks measure performance and give scores to compare against other popular CPUs.

AIDA64’s benchmark code methods are written in Assembly language, and they are extremely optimized for every popular AMD, Intel and VIA processor core variants by utilizing the appropriate instruction set extensions. We use the Engineer’s full version of AIDA64 courtesy of FinalWire. AIDA64 is free to to try and use for 30 days.

The AIDA64 Memory Latency benchmark measures the typical delay beginning from when the CPU reads data from the system memory. Memory latency time means the time is accurately measured from the issuing of the read command until the data arrives to the integer registers of the CPU. It also tests Memory Read, Write, and Copy speeds besides Cache.

CPU Queen is an integer benchmark that focuses on the branch prediction capabilities of the CPU. It finds the solutions for the classic “Queens problem” on a 10 x 10 chessboard. CPU PhotoWorxx performs common tasks used during photo processing which stresses the SIMD integer arithmetic execution units of the CPU and also the memory subsystem. ZLib is a compression benchmark, while AES focus on Advanced Encryption Standard data encryption. SHA3 benchmarks use a standard hashing algorithm.

Here is the summary chart of the multiple AIDA64 memory benchmarks.As the CPU is overclocked, the bandwidth increases and the benchmark scores also scale favorably with overclocking. The performance results are similar between the ASRock and the EVGA motherboards when the CPU is at the same stock clocks, but the FTW’s 5.1GHz overclock delivers consistently higher performance.

Let’s look at PCMark 8 next to see if its benchmarks can reflect CPU speed increases.

PCMark 8

PCMark 8 has a great Creative test which uses real world timed benchmarks including web browsing, video group chat, photo, batch, and video editing, music and video tests, and even mainstream gaming. Since the PCMark 8 Storage Test does not test the CPU, we only used the Creative benchmark suite.

Here are the ASRock Steel Legend results with the i9 at stock settings – 9137.

Overclocking the i9-10900K to 5.1GHz in the ASRock motherboard brought no performance increase and delivered the same score.

Next are the stock i9 results in the FTW motherboard – 9715.

It’s a somewhat shocking comparison that may lead one to suspect that some of the demanding and prolonged PCMark 8 benchmarks may cause the ASRock motherboard to also throttle the i9 clocks even at stock settings.

Here are the results of the i9-10900K on the FTW motherboard now overclocked to 5.1GHz – 9967

In contrast to using the ASRock motherboard, overclocking the i9 to 5.1GHz in the FTW motherboard brought increased performance as evidenced by the improved score. Here is the summary chart.

We may perhaps infer from the summary chart that increasing the CPU speed to 5.1GHz with an all core overclock may help increase overall PCMark 8 performance as reflected by the results.

PCMark 10 is next.

PCMark 10

The PCMark 10 benching suite is the follow-up to PCMark 8 and it also uses real world timed benchmarks which include web browsing, video group chat, photo, batch, and video editing, music and video tests, and even mainstream gaming. The PCMark 10 test offers two primary tests and we chose the extended version.

First up is the i9–10900K at stock in the ASRock Steel Legend motherboard – 9848.

Next we overclock the i9–10900K to 5.1GHz in the ASRock Steel Legend motherboard – and it loses performance again – 9636.

Overclocking the i9 to 5.1GHz in the ASRock motherboard resulted in lower performance than at stock settings. So let’s look at the same i9 at stock and also overclocked in the FTW motherboard.

Next are the stock 10900K results in the EVGA Z490 FTW board – 10079.

Now lets see the results after we overclock the i9 to 5.1GHz in the FTW motherboard –10568.

Overclocking the i9-10900K CPU from stock to 5.1 GHz in the FTW motherboard makes for a decent performance improvement judging by the increased scores. Here is the summary chart.

We suspect that the ASRock motherboard may not throttle the CPU at stock speeds as it did with PCMark 8’s much longer tests, but overclocking it to 5.1GHz is a waste of time in a vain attempt to gain performance. We found the same issue with our other benchmarks and cannot recommend the Steel Legend for overclocking the i9-10900K based on our experiences with it.

Let’s look at our next synthetic test, RealBench.

RealBench v2.56

RealBench is a benchmarking utility by ASUS Republic of Gamers which benchmarks image editing, encoding, OpenCL, and Heavy Multitasking. Afterward, it gives individual results and an overall score for easy comparison off or online. Some of these tests are affected by CPU and memory speeds.

Here is the summary chart.

The stock results are close between the motherboards, but the performance and the scores generally increase with higher CPU clocks.

Next we benchmark using Cinebench.

Cinebench

CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s professional 3D content creation suite, CINEMA 4D. This latest R20.0 version of CINEBENCH can test up to 64 processor threads accurately and automatically. It is an excellent tool to compare both CPU/memory and graphics OGL performance. We focus on the CPU whose results are given is cb, and higher is always better.

Here is the summary chart.

The ASRock motherboard scores higher but when we overclocked it to 5.1GHz, the score dropped to 5738! In contrast, the same overclock brought a small performance increases using the FTW motherboard. Next up, Novabench.

Novabench

Novabench is a very fast benching utility that spits out a 4 test results and an overall system score. We will focus on the CPU score and bandwidth speeds.

Overclocked, the i9-10900K gains performance overall. Here is the summary chart.

On to Wprime and number crunching.

WPrime v2.10

WPrime is a multi-threaded benchmark which may show the differences in IPC or clockspeeds between CPUs. Here are the tests using 10 threads, and we choose to calculate 1024 million digits and 32 million digits showing multiple runs.

Here is the summary chart:

An overclocked CPU calculates faster than a stock CPU and in all cases of calculation, overclocked is faster than at stock frequencies enabling the CPU to crunch numbers a little faster.

Let’s take a look at Blender.

Blender 2.83

Blender is a very popular open-source 3D content creation suite. It supports every aspect of 3D development with a complete range of tools for professional 3D creation.

We have seen Blender performance increase with faster CPU speeds, so we decided to try several specific Blender 2.83 benchmarks which can measure CPU performance by timing how long it takes to render production files.

For the following chart, lower is better as the benchmark renders a scene multiple times and gives the results in minutes and seconds. This time, we tested the overclocked ASRock motherboard as well as multiple speeds of the 10900K on the FTW motherboard.

From the chart, the Blender benchmark performance is highest with the i9-10900K overclocked to 5.1GHz in the EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard. Overclocking beyond 5.1GHz delivers less performance.

Next, we move on to game-related benchmarks and games

Game Related Benching

Let’s look at quasi game-related benchmarks starting with 3DMark next.

Fire Strike Physics & Time Spy

Fire Strike Physics depends less on the GPU and more on the CPU which can benefit from increased CPU speeds while Time Spy is more dependent on the video card.

Overclocking again brings performance increases. Let’s look at VR next.

Virtual Reality (VR)

Superposition

Superposition is benchmarked at 720P low settings and we see no real difference in the scores between motherboards other than a small boost by overclocking the i9.

VRMark – Cyan Room

There is virtually no performance difference between motherboards or by CPU overclocking with VR. It is mostly dependent on the graphics card.

Although a VR experience depends on the GPU, a wireless adapter may make a faster CPU vital to an untethered VR experience. We are going to test our Vive Pro’s Wireless Adapter and will benchmark and compare its VR performance between using an i7-8700K at 4.8GHz and an i9-10900K at 5.1GHz later this month.

Let’s look at three PC games that may scale by increasing CPU speeds.

Gaming Performance Benchmarks

Below is the summary chart of three games that use accurate built-in benchmarks which also appear to be sensitive to scaling by increasing CPU clocks.

The highest settings are used, and the benches were run at 1920×1080 using a stock RTX 2080 Ti Founders Edition. Civilization 6’s built-in graphics benchmark uses frametimes but its AI benchmark measures the turn time in seconds – in both cases, lower is better. Anno 1800 is benched using OCAT and so the averages and the minimums are also expressed in frametimes where lower is better. The Grand Theft Auto V average/minimum results are given in FPS where higher is better.

Although the benchmarking margin of error may cloud the results, there is a trend showing that faster CPU clocks will increase framerates and improve frametimes for certain CPU-dependent games. We are going to follow up this review with an expanded review focusing on gaming as we compare a i7-8700K at 4.8GHz to the i9-10900K at 5.1GHz.

All Summary Charts

Here are all of the Summary charts.

If you are a primarily a gamer, you will get much higher framerates from overclocking your video card than from overclocking your CPU. If you game at 2560×1440, 3440×1440, or especially at 4K, you won’t notice any framerate increase from CPU scaling. However, for other tasks that primarily involve the CPU, overclocking may provide more dramatic results.

Let’s head for our conclusion.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that overclocking an i9-10900K from its stock frequencies of 3.7 GHz – even with Turbo and Velocity Turbo boost – to all-core 5.1GHz provides more performance. But any increased performance from overclocking is dependent on proper voltage delivery and stability from the motherboard plus well-controlled thermals.

We are impressed that the EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard was able to stably take our i9-10900K to 5.1 GHz after we failed to improve CPU performance by any manual overclock with our ASRock Steel Legend motherboard. Of course, there is a large price difference between the FTW and the Steel Legend, but it throttled excessively even at relatively cool temperatures; something the FTW motherboard never did.

As gamers, we see that CPU scaling is evident for the three highlighted games that are not GPU-bound with a small framerate increase when we increase our CPU’s core clocks to 5.1GHz from default. However, since there are issues with running a CPU at high frequency and with higher temperatures which will shorten a CPU’s life, each overclocker needs to balance the negatives against increased performance.

An extreme overclocker who wants every last bit of performance from his CPU will no doubt consider delidding their CPU to attempt to achieve an all core 5.3GHz overclock with watercooling. But a even dedicated watercooling may be insufficient on EVGA’s top motherboard to hit this overclock unless he wins the silicon lottery with a golden CPU.

Intel has pushed the i9-10900K right to its edge to maintain its gaming performance crown. Others may choose to moderate their overclocks, and for us, an all-core 5.1GHz OC provides a good balance for our general benchmarking tests and for 24/7 use with a reasonable voltage and with good temperatures under a full gaming load.

If you are upgrading to an i9-10900K, the EVGA Z490 FTW is an excellent choice as a fully-featured motherboard that will provide clean power and great features for overclockers. Intel did not leave a lot room for overclocking, but the FTW will help you maximize what is available.

EVGA Z490 FTW – Pros and Cons

Pros

• The EVGA Z490 FTW is a good-looking conservative industrial design motherboard at a competitive price
• The EVGA Z490 FTW is a fully-featured motherboard with premium components, and it has proved itself to be solid in providing stability for our i9-10900K at 5.1 GHz
• EVGA gives great 24/7 telephone support and 3 years of warranty service if you need help with your motherboard or if you need to RMA. You can also transfer your warranty to the next buyer and set up advanced RMAs for shorter down times
• In multi-tasking, encoding and almost every other task that we tested including gaming, an all core 5.1GHz overclocked Core i7-10900K is faster than at stock, and the FTW has the right overclocking tools to stabilize it
• Plenty of fan headers are available and cable management is easy using the provided FTW motherboard cutouts
• Dual BIOSes are very useful, and together with an external CMOS reset are very helpful for testing extreme overclocks
• The FTW BIOS continues to improve over earlier editions, and it has become less complex, easier to navigate, and more intuitive. Most overclocking tools are in the BIOS.
• The OC Robot is EVGA’s new star overclocking tool for inexperienced as well as well-seasoned overclockers

Cons

• We would have liked more room at the bottom of the board for right angle connectors without having to remove the PSU.
• The external Wi-Fi antennas are a funky solution and they get in the way of other connections.

We feel that EVGA has delivered another good overclocking motherboard in the form of the Z490 FTW. If you are an overclocker, you can choose this board with confidence. The EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard has become BTR’s flagship motherboard and we feel that it deserves BTR’s Editor’s Choice Award. After all, we are satisfied with our i9-10900K overclock and we will continue to use the FTW for benchmarking.

We have not finished benching the 10900K. We are going to continue by focusing on gaming as we compare our i7-8700K at 4.8GHz with our i9-10900K at stock and overclocked to see if it is a really worthwhile upgrade.

First we want take a close look at 240Hz gaming with our new Samsung 27″ 2560×1440 display to see if we can tell the difference from a really fast refresh rate compared to gaming at 120Hz or 100Hz. We certainly can tell the difference from playing our 32″ 4K BenQ FreeSync 2 display at 60Hz to a more fluid experience at 120Hz or even 100Hz on our ACER Predator 34″ G-SYNC 3440×1440 display.

Stay tuned!

Happy Gaming!

This evaluation has been a long time in the making, and it has taken us a full month to run all the benchmarks with our updated 33-game benchmark suite. We received a Core i7-4790K as an upgrade from Intel for our Core i7-4770K which we originally could stably only overclock to 4.2GHz in our Z87 ECS flagship “Golden” motherboard. Since i7-4790K is a drop-in upgrade for the ECS flagship motherboard, we will compare our i7-4770K and i7-4790K – stock and overclocked – in this motherboard, as well as in Intel’s latest Z97 platform using a new ASUS Z97-E motherboard that we purchased from Newegg on Black Friday for $100.

We shall also see if the newest Haswell Z97 platform can allow our i7-4790K to top the performance of 4770K in our Z87 motherboard at 4.2GHz, as well as Ivy Bridge’s Core i7 3770K at 4.6GHz using the EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard. Compared with our benchmarks in the past, we have a much faster video card, the GTX 980, which is able to differentiate between CPU speeds at 1920×1080 and at 2560×1600 resolutions. We also use GTX 980 SLI to test SLI scaling with our stock and overclocked CPUs in our three test motherboards.

In this evaluation we shall use 2x8GB of Kingston’s Hyper-X Beast RAM at its XMP Profile 1 speed of 2133MHz. We want to see if it is worth it for a gamer to upgrade his CPU platform for Devil’s Canyon, and we will test 33 games, including our 8 newest games which have been added since October. And we shall also benchmark using 3 synthetic gaming tests to determine the progress that Intel has made with their latest Haswell CPU in performance, as well as giving a quick nod to CPU temperatures and overclocking.

Since the Z97 chipset is an incremental upgrade over Z87, we will focus on fast graphics. The Z97 chipset’s only notable improvements include future Broadwell support and slot M2 support which is a potentially much faster upgrade for the mSATA connector commonly used in the Z87 chipset and even in the Z77 chipset. Since we have two 128GB Kingston mSATA drives that we usually use for caching our 2TB hard disk drives, we purchased a mSATA to M2 adapter from Amazon.com for $16.75 which is pictured (from Amazon) to the left. We did not use hybrid caching for this review.

Intel released the Ivy Bridge CPU architecture on 22nm in late April of 2013. We were able to briefly compare its performance in more than 20 games against our aging flagship 45nm Core i7-920 CPU at 4.2GHz by using a GTX 680 and GTX 690 on both platforms. We are going to build on our earlier evaluations to carry out a Z87 to Z97 platform upgrade to compare our older ECS motherboard’s performance directly against the newest chipset in the ASUS Z97-E motherboard.

We shall also attempt to reach higher clockspeeds with our Core i7-4770K and will compare further overclocked performance above 4.2 GHz to test Haswell CPU scaling in gaming. We are continuing to help answer the question, if an overclocked Core i7-3770K at 4.5GHz (and perhaps Sandy Bridge CPUs also) should be upgraded when paired with the very fastest available video cards at the resolutions that gamers play at. We shall also test at maximum details to determine if there are any significant framerate differences between our platforms at settings that gamers actually use.

Devil’s Canyon Core i7-4790K

The Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770K processor is offered in a 22nm 1155-land LGA package (H2) while Core i7-4770K and 4790K are also 22nm and are offered in a non-compatible 1150-land LGA package, which means you must upgrade your motherboard from Sandy or from Ivy Bridge to support a Haswell CPU. Haswell is Intel’s “tock” which is new microarchitecture, whereas Ivy Bridge was Intel’s “tick” – a die shrink of Sandy Bridge’s 32nm architecture.

There are important differences between Haswell and Ivy Bridge CPUs, including an integrated voltage regulator in Haswell that was formerly part of the Ivy Bridge chipset. Intel has focused on mobile which means lower temperatures and power savings for notebooks, but not so much on Haswell desktop performance by overclocking.

While there are some boosts to IPC (instructions-per-clock) and to performance, Haswell wasn’t designed for overclocking under high load. Devil’s Canyon Core i7-4790K is the result of Intel’s effort to rectify the relatively weak overclocking of the 4770K, and improvements were made to the voltage regulators for extreme overclocks and to the thermal interface material (TIM). We are interested to see if we can hit a higher overclock with our Core i7-4770K in the ASUS Z97 motherboard over the 4.2GHz that we settled for in the ECS Z87 motherboard as well as to see how far the i7-4790K can reach in both motherboards.

The ECS Golden Series Z87H3-A2X is ECS premium enthusiast Z87 motherboard that includes their “non-stop” technology and premium 99-hour replacement service. We hit 4.6GHz with our i7-4770K but our overclock was not completely stable and the temperatures bordered on dangerous under load.

Even at 4.4GHz, the i7-4770K ran too hot for daily use. 4.2GHz was settled upon as its highest stable overclock, and we picked 4.0GHz for our regular benchmark runs which approximated the same performance of our i7-3770K at 4.5GHz.

The ASUS Z97-E is a no-frills basic Z97 motherboard that has the same overclocking capabilities of the more expensive ASUS boards. Since it was offered for $100 at Newegg on Black Friday, we purchased it to test. It is pictured above, image courtesy of the ASUS website.

The EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard is a somewhat finicky motherboard that was built for extreme overclocking. We were able to hit 5.0GHz with our i7-3770K using a Cooler Master Seidon 240 water cooler, but the temperatures were much too high. There is a very slight advantage to using SLI on this motherboard as it has a PLEX chip which supplies a bit more bandwidth than the regularly configured Z87 and Z97 8x+8xPCIe 3.0 chipsets.

In our testing even 4.8GHz was likewise too high for Ivy Bridge although repeatable “suicide” benchmarks could be run, and 4.6GHz was settled upon as the highest regular overclock which we also used in this evaluation.

Overclocking

Core i7 3770/4770/4790 “K” CPUs are multiplier unlocked and can usually easily be overclocked beyond 4GHz. On the other hand, the non-K CPUs are locked and cannot be overclocked in the traditional manner. Only the base clock may be overclocked which overclocks the entire system. Overclocks of 3-5+% with stability are reported and there can be a small performance boost. The Core i7-4770K and 4790K also have an unlocked base clock although we did not attempt to adjust it.

System RAM and Overclocking

When setting CPU overclocks it is recommended to move the RAM speeds to default, 1600MHz, or lower. However, we found no stability difference either way and we kept our Kingston HyperX Beast DDR3 at its XMP Profile 1 default 2133MHz clocks for Haswell. The FTW motherboard could only stably accept 1866MHz speeds as its top speed with the same Kingston RAM.

The Ivy Bridge 3770K Overclock versus Haswell’s 4770K (vs. Bloomfield, i7-920) versus Devil’s Canyon 4790K

The highest overclock we could manage with our Core i7-920 was 4.2GHz and it was accomplished stably with our Thermaltake Frio OC CPU cooler. To achieve the same 4.2GHz with Core i7-3770K we only needed .03V more added over default to stabilize our system. To reach 4.8GHz required an additional.13V and we needed our Noctua NH-DH14. If the reader is interested, they can check out the Noctua NH-DH14 evaluation to see how we reached our maximum overclock with Core i7-3770K, or the Frio OC evaluation to check out the i7-920 overclock.

In contrast, we were able to reach 4.2GHz and benchmark with our Core i7-4770K with stock voltage, but needed 1.300V to pass Linpack stress testing. At 4.2GHz, temperatures peak in the upper 70s under maximum load, a few degrees over stock settings. To reach 4.4GHz required 1.320V and temperatures peaked above 85C under Linpack’s load. 4.5GHz required 1.335V and Linpack peaked above 89C. To benchmark games at 4.6GHz required 1.360V although our i7-4770K wasn’t stable under Linpak and temperatures climbed into the low 90s. 4.7GHz wasn’t possible with any voltage nor with tweaks suggested by ECS. There wasn’t much difference with the ASUS motherboard and we settled on 4.4GHz as the top stable speed for the i7-4770K in this evaluation.

In contrast, the Devil’s Canyon i7-4790K overclocked, with no extra added voltage needed, to 4.6GHz in the ASUS Z97-E motherboard. Interestingly, it couldn’t overclock at all beyond stock in the ECS motherboard which turboed all its cores to 4.2GHz and potentially two of them to 4.4GHz when temperatures allowed it. On the other hand, the ASUS Z97-E motherboard synced all 4 cores to 4.4GHz at its otherwise stock settings, so an extra 200MHz is not surprising.

Even at 4.6GHz, the i7-4790K in the ASUS Z97-E motherboard maxed out and remained in the middle to upper 80C under full Linpack load, and with complete stability using the Cooler Master Seidon 240 CPU water cooler. Gaming temperatures were much lower. We found that 4.7GHz was achievable but required extra voltage and the temperatures moved out of the 80sC and into the hot zone under full load. We decided to stop at 4.6GHz and not bother with the extra voltage, heat, and noise the extra 100MHz would bring us.

Test Configuration

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i7-4790K (reference 4.0GHz, HyperThreading and Turbo boost is on to 4.4, 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4GHz; also overclocked to 4.6GHz; DX11 CPU graphics), supplied by Intel
• Intel Core i7-4770K (reference 3.5GHz, HyperThreading and Turbo boost is on to 3.7GHz; also overclocked to 4.2GHz and to 4.4GHz; DX11 CPU graphics), supplied by Intel.
• Intel Core i7-3770K (reference 3.5GHz, HyperThreading and Turbo boost is on to 3.7GHz; also overclocked to 4.6GHz; DX11 CPU graphics), supplied by Intel.
• ASUS Z97-E motherboard (Intel Z97 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 3.0 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x)
• ECS GANK Domination Z87H3-A2X motherboard (Intel Z87 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 3.0 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x) supplied by ECS
• EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard (Intel Z77 chipset, latest beta 03-12-13 BIOS, PCIe 3.0 specification; CrossFire/SLI 16x+16x using Plex chip), supplied by EVGA.

• Kingston 16 GB HyperX Predator DDR3 PC2100 RAM (2×8 GB, dual-channel at 2133MHz for Ivy Bridge, supplied by Kingston)
• Two GeForce GTX 980, 4GB (reference clocks), supplied by Nvidia
• Two 2TB Toshiba 7200.12 hard drives
• Cooler Master Platinum Pro 1000W PSU, supplied by Cooler Master
• Thermaltake ToughPower 775W power supply unit supplied by Thermaltake
• Cooler Master Seidon 240 CPU watercooler, supplied by Cooler Master
• Onboard Realtek Audio
• Genius SP-D150 speakers, supplied by Genius
• Thermaltake Overseer RX-I full tower case, supplied by Thermaltake for Haswell platform
• Thermaltake Chaser MK II, full tower case, supplied by Thermaltake for Ivy Bridge platform
• Philips DVD SATA writer
• HP LP3065 2560×1600 thirty inch LCD
• ASUS 1920×1080 120Hz 3D Vision ready display, supplied by ASUS/Nvidia

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce WHQL 344.45 drivers; High Quality; Single-display Performance mode; Prefer Maximum Performance, Vsync off. No overclocking; power and temperature targets set to maximum with stock voltage and fan profiles. DSR used for Shadows of Mordor and The Crew.
• Windows 7 64-bit; very latest updates
• Latest DirectX
• All games are patched to their latest versions.
• Vsync is forced off in the control panels.
• Varying AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are specified with 16xAF always applied; 16xAF forced in control panel for Crysis.
• All results show average frame rates
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games.
• Windows 7 64, all DX9 titles were run under DX9 render paths, DX10 titles were run under DX10 render paths and DX11 titles under DX11 render paths.

The benchmarks

The 33 Game benchmarks & 3 synthetic tests

• Synthetic
  • 3DMark 11
  • Firestrike – Basic & Extreme
  • Heaven 4.0
  DX9
  • The Witcher 2
  • Borderlands 2
  • Aliens: Colonial Marines
  DX10
  • Crysis
  DX11
  • STALKER, Call of Pripyat
  • Civilization V
  • Max Payne 3
  • the Secret World
  • Sleeping Dogs
  • Hitman: Absolution
  • Far Cry 3
  • CoD: Ghosts
  • Tomb Raider: 2013
  • Crysis 3
  • BioShock: Infinite
  • Metro: Last Light
  • Battlefield 4
  • Splinter Cell: Blacklist
  • ArmA 3
  • Total War: Rome II
  • Batman: Arkham Origins
  • Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
  • Thief
  • Sniper Elite 3
  • Watch_Dogs
  • GRID: Autosport
  • Middle Earth: Shadows of Mordor
  • Alien Isolation
  • Assassin’s Creed Unity
  • Civilization Beyond Earth
  • Far Cry 4
  • Dragon’s Age: Inquisition
  • The Crew

  We have added 8 new games since October and are still benching several older games to maintain continuity with our older reviews that will be dropped from our next evaluation.

Next, we move on to game-related benchmarks and to our big picture.

Game benchmarks

All of our benchmarks are run with a stock GTX 980 and with stock GTX 980 SLI. We test our Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770K at stock (3.5GHz/3.7GHz) and also overclocked to 4.6GHz in our EVGA Z77 FTW (x16+x16 PCIe 3.0) motherboard. Likewise, the 4770K is tested at stock and overclocked in our ECS Z87 motherboard while Devil’s Canyon i7-4790K is tested in the ECS Z87 and (since it didn’t overclock in the ECS MB) also in the ASUS Z97-E motherboard.

We are going to start out with our Big Picture first. And since there is so much information available in one place, it might prove confusing, so we will break it down into smaller charts also.

Here is all of our testing in one place – we call it, “The Big Picture”. All games have their setting completely maxed out and levels of AA are identified on the chart. The GTX 980 nd GTX 980 SLI are run at reference clock speeds. Z77 refers to the i7-3770K exclusively as benchmarked in the EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard at stock clocks and also overclocked to 4.5GHz. Z87 refers to the ECS Z87 Golden Motherboard used to test both the stock and overclocked i7-4770K and 4970K; and Z97 refers to the ASUS Z97-E motherboard also used to test both the stock and overclocked i7-4770K and 4970K.

The chart is labeled first to differentiate the GTX 980 from GTX 980 SLI and then further subdivided by CPU speed, stock and overclocked; and by motherboard, Z77 for i7-3770K and Z87 (ECS) and Z97 (ASUS) for i7-4770K and 4790K. Stock speeds are expressed as base clocks/turbo clocks and overclocked speeds have all 4 cores synced. The ASUS motherboard generally syncs all 4 cores to 4.4GHz with a single tweak, while the ECS motherboard manages to reach 4.2GHz.

The Big Picture

Let’s break it down. First, let’s look at the differences between motherboards. And let’s limit ourselves to GTX 980 single GPU results first. For these series of tests we used i7-4770K and 4790K at stock and overclocked, in the Z87 ECS motherboard and also in the ASUS motherboard. At stock settings, the ASUS mother board will sync and turbo all 4 cores to 4.4GHz if any tweaks are made, even under load. On the other hand, the ECS motherboard usually turbos two cores to 4.4GHz, one to 4.3GHz and the other core to 4.2GHz; but usually all four cores to 4.2GHz under load.

Single GTX 980 results

Now let’s focus just on GTX 980 SLI scaling:

GTX 980 SLI Scaling

Finally, let’s put some relevant information in the charts next to each other in a variation of the Big Picture.

The Last Chart

We see good overall scaling related to CPU core speeds and much more differentiation at 1920×1080 than at 2560×1600. The GTX 980 is sufficient to differentiate between CPU speeds and GTX 980 SLI much more so. Some games are very GPU dependent and vary little whereas others are somewhat CPU-limited.

If you are a gamer, you can definitely get by with an older CPU, such as a highly overclocked Bloomfield Core i7-920. However, we saw the need to upgrade to Haswell and to Ivy Bridge more strongly indicated by many tasks other than gaming, not to mention efficiency, which we did not explore in this evaluation. Let’s head for our conclusion.

Conclusion

There is absolutely no doubt that Haswell is faster clock-for-clock than Ivy Bridge and by extension, Sandy Bridge and earlier CPUs. All of the processors scale similarly but it is noticeable even at the same stock 3.7GHz, that the i7-4770K is faster than the i7-3770K, and that the performance differences becomes more noticeable as the clock speeds go up. It appears that the approximately “ten percent faster” clock-for-clock (IPC) improvements of Haswell means that the more-difficult-to-overclock i7-4770K Haswell doesn’t need to clock as high as Ivy Bridge – Core i7-4770K at 4.0GHz is generally faster in gaming than Core i7-3770K at 4.5GHz. And Devil’s Canyon at 4.6GHz, running cool and stable without any voltage increase, certainly is the first choice of our three tested processors.

We also see that the Devil’s Canyon Core i7-4790K is what enthusiasts had hoped for with the Core i7-4770 originally. Here we have the 4790K, a more overclocking friendly chip than the 4770K, that runs cooler at a lower voltage. However, it doesn’t appear to be able to reach much higher in ultimate frequency either under air or by using watercooling. We did manage a reasonable overclock +200MHz over the 4790K’s 4.4GHz turbo boost and +400MHz over the 4.2GHz that the stock settings for the ECS motherboard offers us which is nice, but nothing special considering that our i7-4770K managed to benchmark stably at 4.4GHz, although with significantly higher core voltage and increased temperatures.

From previous testing, we noted that a GTX 680 is not powerful enough to differentiate an i7-4770K from an i7-3770K even at 1920×1080 with maxed-out settings that gamers usually choose although a GTX 980 is. However, paired with a pair of really powerful video cards in SLI, the Core i7-4790K is the perfect match for high-end gaming at its stock speeds. Should you upgrade? Probably not from Ivy Bridge, but if you are a gamer that is buying a new CPU and motherboard now, the i7-4790K is probably the best choice to pair with an overclocking friendly Z97 motherboard like our ASUS Z97-E which is also able to handle the next generation of Intel CPUs, Broadwell, with a BIOS update.

Final Thoughts

We feel that the Devil’s Canyon Core i7-4790K deserves BTRs Editor’s Choice Award, and together with the ASUS Z97-E motherboard and our mSATA to M2 adapter, it is now our flagship benching platform.

We believe that the Intel Devil’s Canyon Core i7-4790K/Z97 platform is incrementally better than the older i7-4770K/Z87 platform and it has already become BTR’s newest testing platform. All of our evaluations will be performed on this platform, and we will benchmark games generally at its stock speeds of 4.0GHz which are allowed to turbo to 4.4GHz.

We are looking forward to completing our restoration of BTR’s last two major lost evaluations this week here – the Kingston mSATA review and the Maxwell GTX 980 introduction. In testing for our next brand new evaluation of the GALAX GTX 970 EXOC, we discovered that the latest Nvidia 347.09 WHQLs drivers brought some nice performance increases over the last 344.75 WHQLs and we will have a very short mini-evaluation published here by this Friday. We are also benching a pair of R9 290Xes with AMD’s latest Omega drivers for a SLI versus CrossFire showdown to be published here in a week or so.

This editor is playing KoTOR on SHIELD currently.

Happy Gaming!

Mark Poppin

BTR/ABT Editor-in-Chief

In April of 2014, Kingston announced the addition of 240GB and 480GB capacities to the existing SSDNow mS200 line. Kingston’s SSDNow mS200 mSATA solid-state drive gives enthusiasts a noticeable cost-effective performance boost with quicker boot time and application loads while requiring less power than hard disk drives (HDDs). We already tested this mS200 240GB drive the very next month using VisionTek’s mSATA pocket-sized USB 3.0 adapter. However, USB 3.0 only has transfer speeds up to 300MB/second (3.0Gbps) and the mS200 mSATA drive can theoretically achieve up to twice faster speeds.

The mS200’s small-form factor is perfect for notebook, tablet and Ultrabook PCs, as well for the desktop. It is on sale right now at Tiger Direct for $178.99. In fact many newer motherboards since Sandy Bridge have their own mini-slot for mSATA. It can also be used as a caching device with motherboards that support Intel’s Rapid Storage Technology (RST, as part of Intel’s Smart Response Technology, SRT) to improve system performance. Since we have tested SSDs many times previously, SSD caching is what we are now most interested in.

During the preparation for this evaluation, we learned how to easily take almost any hard drive originally set up on ACHI, and turn it into a much faster RAID hybrid system – without reinstalling Windows! We used the mS200 240GB SATA SSD, not only for it’s 64MB of super-fast cache, but the rest of the SSD – 160GB – is partitioned for use as an SSD. Best of all, regularly played games load as quickly as if they were installed on a SSD even though they remain on the HDD! Talk about having your cake and eating it too!

These Kingston mS200 mSATA SSDs all have a caseless, PCB-only design with no moving parts and are backed by a two- or three-year warranty, free technical support, and Kingston reliability. And we got great technical support from Kingston who helped us on our journey to a hybrid drive system that boots over twice as fast as before, while leaving Windows on the HDD. No new or re-installation of Windows was necessary, and our most used applications now load much faster.

Of course, we shall also look at the SSDNow mS200 mSATA performance besides summarizing our results with a hybrid drive system. First, here are the features and specifications from Kingston:

SSDNow mS200 mSATA Features & Specifications:

• LSI SandForce 2241 (30GB, 60GB, 120GB) and 2281 (240GB, 480GB) controller with SATA Rev. 3.0 (6Gb/s) interface: twice as fast as the previous generation, yet more cost-efficient
• mSATA interface: fully compliant with industry standard, easy to fit, guaranteed to work
• NAND Flash memory based: shock-resistant with low power consumption
• Supports Intel’s SRT: combines capacity advantage of HDD with performance improvements of SSD in dual-storage configuration
• Supports S.M.A.R.T.: monitors the status of your drive
• Supports TRIM: maintains maximum performance on compatible operating systems
• Interface: SATA Rev. 3.0 (6Gb/s), SATA Rev. 2.0 (3Gb/s), SATA Rev. 1.0 (1.5Gb/s)
• Capacities¹: 30GB, 60GB, 120GB, 240GB, 480GB
• Automatic Encryption (AES 128-bit): Password at the drive level ensures secure data protection

Sequential Read/Write: 30GB – 550 MB/s / 510MB/s

• 60GB – 550 MB/s / 520MB/s
• 120GB – 550MB/s / 520MB/s
• 240GB – 540MB/s / 530MB/s
• 480GB – 530MB/s / 340MB/s

Maximum 4k Read/Write²:30GB – up to 86,000/ up to 77,000 IOPS

• 60GB – up to 86,000/ up to 79,000 IOPS
• 120GB – up to 86,000/ up to 48,000 IOPS
• 240GB – up to 72,000/up to 40,000 IOPS
• 480GB – up to 72,000/up to 18,000 IOPS

Random 4k Read/Write²: 30GB – up to 7,500/71,000 IOPS

• 60GB – up to 14,000/77,000 IOPS
• 120GB – up to 17,000/45,000 IOPS
• 240GB – up to 21,000/41,000 IOPS
• 480GB – up to 21,000/13,000 IOPS

• PCMARK^® Vantage HDD Suite Score: 60,000
• Power Consumption: 0.4W Idle / 1.2 (TYP) Read / 1.8W (TYP) Write
• Storage temperature: -40°C ~ 85°C
• Operating temperature: 0°C ~ 70°C
• Dimensions: 50.88mm x 30mm
• Weight: 6.86g
• TRIM Supported
• Vibration operating: 2.17G
• Vibration non-operating: 20G
• MTTF: 1,000,000 Hrs
• Warranty/support:

30GB – two-year warranty with free technical support

60GB, 120GB, 240GB, 480GB – three-year warranty with free technical support

• Total Bytes Written (TBW)³:

• 30GB: 121TB 3 DWPD⁴
• 60GB: 218TB 3 DWPD⁴
• 120GB: 337TBW 2 DWPD⁴
• 240GB: 585TBW 2 DWPD⁴
• 480GB: 1562TBW 2 DWPD⁴

¹ Some of the listed capacity on a Flash storage device is used for formatting and other functions and thus is not available for data storage. As such, the actual available capacity for data storage is less than what is listed on the products. For more information, go to Kingston’s Flash Memory Guide

² Based on “out-of-box performance.” Speed may vary due to host hardware, software and usage.

³ Total Bytes Written (TBW) is derived from the JEDEC Workload (JESD219A).

⁴ Drive Writes Per Day (DWPD)

Let’s take a close look at unboxing the Kingston SSDNow mS200 drive, setting it up, and finally its performance as a stand alone SSD and also as a caching drive using Intel’s RST.

Unboxing

The Kingston SSDNow mS200 mSATA comes in a very basic blister pack which doesn’t include mounting screws nor advertise its features.

Here is the pack, opened.

Inside of the pack is the mSATA PCB and a Getting Started leaflet. You can see the drive is tiny compared with a regular SSD.

If you are using a Z77, Z87 or Z97 Intel motherboard, there is a good chance that you have a mini-SATA slot. Just insert it and lock it down with two screws. That’s it!

If you are going to use your mS200 mSATA drive as a regular SSD, you may have to initialize it. If you are going to use it as a caching drive, do not initialize it.

We will cover the steps that we needed to use this drive as a caching drive after we give the results of the SSDNow mS200 mSATA performance evaluation using it only as a dedicated SSD.

It is not likely that most end users will buy a mSATA drive for use in a desktop PC as its main feature is for saving space. However, in a small desktop with multiple drives, filling an otherwise unused mini-PCI slot dedicated to a mSATA drive might make good sense. What we are attempting to do here with this Kingston SSDNow mS200 mSATA might apply to any SSD.

First, check out our Test Configuration.

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i7-4770K (reference 3.5GHz, HyperThreading and Turbo boost is on to 3.7GHz; overclocked to 4.0GHz; DX11 CPU graphics), supplied by Intel.
• ECS GANK Domination Z87H3-A2X motherboard (Intel Z87 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 3.0 specification, CrossFire/SLI 8x+8x) supplied by ECS

• Kingston 16GB HyperX Beast DDR3 PC2133 RAM (2×8 GB, dual-channel at 2100MHz, supplied by Kingston)
• Nvidia GTX 780 Ti, 3GB reference design and clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• Kingston 240GB SSDNow mS200 mSATA SSD, supplied by Kingston
• 2TB Toshiba 7200 rpm HDD
• Cooler Master 1000W power supply unit, supplied by Cooler Master
• Thermaltake Water2.0 Pro CPU watercooler, supplied by Thermaltake
• Onboard Realtek Audio
• Genius SP-D150 speakers, supplied by Genius
• Thermaltake Overseer RX-I full tower case, supplied by Thermaltake
• ASUS 12X Blu-ray SATA writer
• HP LP 3065 2560×1600 thirty-inch LCD

Test Configuration – Software

• Nvidia GeForce WHQL 344.16 drivers. High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display.
• Intel RST 13.2.4.1000
• Windows 7 64-bit; very latest updates
• Latest DirectX
• All software are patched to their latest versions.

The Benchmarks Synthetic

• SiSoft Sandra 2014
• AS SSD benchmark
• ATTO benchmark
• HD Tune
• HD Tach
• Windows start up and shut down times timed by stopwatch

Benchmarking the mS200 mSATA drive and how we tested it

Since we used our main PC with Windows installed on a 2TB HD coupled with 64GB of the mS200 mSATA SSD used as a caching drive, it is not possible to give exact comparisons of application loading between the hybrid system and the regular hard drive. The caching system is somewhat variable and we can only give averages and estimates.

Intel’s RST functions like an actual cache using a the most frequently accessed logical block addresses (LBA). As it reads a block enough times, or writes to it repeatedly, those accesses will get priority for the SSD cache until it is full. When full, the least recently used data is overwritten, making room for new data.

Gaming frame rates between a SSD or SSD caching system and a HDD are the same, except for level load times. Playing and finishing Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel required 60 hours over 6 days, and reloading it became nearly instantaneous after dying. This worked for all games. Playing with RST caching enabled became an identical experience to actually installing the game on the SSD. Admittedly, the games we tested reloaded quickly enough on a 7200 rpm HDD, although the hybrid caching system was generally quicker by a few seconds. This is a big deal as SSDs are capacity constrained, and games take up a lot of HD space. Now you can leave your games on the hard drive and they will load levels as quickly as if they were installed on the SSD.

Since SSDs use NAND flash, the cache data remains in its memory between reboots and even after complete power off cycles. Data stays in the cache until it is moved out by more recent data. If you use certain applications regularly as we did playing Borderlands for a week, those applications will have priority and generally will be quickly available from the SSD cache. Although gaming load times noticeably improved, the best reason for us to use a caching system was much faster Windows start up and shut down times.

Initialization

When you first plug in a brand new SATA drive, it may need to be initialized by Windows before it becomes recognizable and plug and play. However, do NOT initialize your SSD before setting it up in RAID; rather initialize the partitioned portion after you dedicate 64GB to a cache using Intel’s RST.

First, we will treat our mS200 240GB mSATA drive as a regular SSD and compare key benchmarks against our 2TB Toshiba HDD. We will rely on synthetic benchmarks to highlight the differences.

The Benchmarks

SiSoft Sandra 2014

We want to see exactly where the SSDNow mS200 mSATA and the Hard disk drives differ, and there is no better tool than SiSoft’s Sandra 2014.

There are several versions of Sandra 2014, including a free version of Sandra Lite that anyone can download and use. It is highly recommended! SiSoft’s Sandra 2014 was released November 25, 2013. It has quite a few improvements over Sandra 2013 and there are regular service packs released to keep it up to date.

First we run the 2014 Sandra benchmark suite with the ECS Golden Z87 motherboard and Core i7-4770K as in all of our benches at 4.0GHz, first with the 2TB Toshiba HDD, and then again using the SSDNow mS200 mSATA drive.

Here are the Physical Disks Read results with the HDD.

Here are the Physical Disks Read results with the Kingston 240GB SSDNow mS200 mSATA SSD.The mSATA drive isn’t even in the same ballpark as the HDD is measured in milliseconds while the SSD is measured in microseconds although the Drive Scores are almost identical with previous HyperX SSD testing.

The next test is up, File System I/O, first the HDD.

Now the File System I/O, using the SSDNow mS200 mSATA SSD.

Now the last Sandra test, File System bandwidth, first using the hard disk drive.

Next up is the the mS200 mSATA SSD:

We note that the 240GB Kingston SSDNow mS200 mSATA drive performs much faster as expected of an SSD. From our experience, although Sandra has gone through several revisions since we last tested SSDs, this mSATA drive performance sits close to the SSDNow V300 SSD series, and below HyperX performance, yet solidly faster than any HDD.

Crystal Disk Mark

CrystalDiskMark is a HDD benchmark utility for your hard drive that enables you to measure sequential and random read/write speeds. Here are some key features of “CrystalDiskMark”:

• Measure sequential reads/writes speed
• Measure random 512KB, 4KB, 4KB (Queue Depth=32) reads/writes speed

First up is the Hard Disk Drive:

Of course, the Kingston SSDNow mS200 mSATA SSD is faster in every metric. Read/Write for the HDD is 146.7/144.0 MB/s while it scores 396.7/219.4 for the mSATA SSD. The Kingston SSDNow mS200 mSATA SSD is performing well in line with expectations and compared with other Kingston vNow SSDs, it is well above the Read/Write speeds of the SSDnow V200’s 250/200MB/s but below the 490/240MB/s we experienced with the HyperX SSDs. Let’s check out HD Tune next.

HD Tune

HD Tune is a hard disk utility which has the following functions:

• Benchmark measures the performance of:
  • Transfer Rate
  • Access Time
  • CPU Usage
  • Burst Rate
  • Random Access test
  • Write benchmark
• Hard Disk information which includes partition information, supported features, firmware version, serial number, disk capacity, buffer size, transfer mode
• Hard Disk Health
  • S.M.A.R.T. Information (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology)
  • Power On Time
• Error scan
• Temperature display

The HDD is up first:

The SSDNow mS200 mSATA SSD is up next.

We see what we have come to expect; a much faster experience with the SSD at 345MB/s compared to the HD’s 152.6MB/s. These speeds are the highest we have seen so far, topping HyperX SSD speeds at 324.2MB/s.

Now we benchmark using AS SSD.

AS SSD

AS SSD is especially designed for Solid State Drives (SSD). The tool contains synthetic and practice tests. The synthetic tests determine the sequential and random read and write performance of the SSD without use of the operating system caches. In Seq-test the program measures how long it takes to read and write a 1 GB file.

In the 4K test, read and write performance for random 4K blocks are determined. The 4K-64-thrd test are similar to the 4K procedure except that the read and write operations on 64 threads are distributed as in the usual start of a program. In the copying test, two large ISO file folders are created, programs with many small files, and a games folder with small and large files. These three folders are copied by the OS copy command with the cache turned on.

The practice tests show performance with simultaneous read and write operations AS SSD gives an overall “score” after it runs the benchmarks. These scores and comparisons are summed up in the performance summary charts.

First we display the HDD results, as usual:

Next up is the SSDNow mS200 mSATA drive.

The HDD tests appear to take forever with AS SSD and they score very low compared to any SSD. The mSATA drives scores almost identically to Kingston’s SSDNow V300 series SSD, but well below the near 700 figure attained by the HyperX SSDs. On to ATTO.

ATTO

ATTO is a disk benchmark. The ATTO Disk Benchmark measures a storage system;s performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Options are available to customize the tests, including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode.

First up is the 2TB Toshiba HDD:Next are the SSDNow mS200 mSATA SSD results:

Again, the SSDNow mS200 mSATA SSD is much faster than the hard drive and close to SSDNow V300 speeds. Now to HD Tach.

HD Tach

HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random access read/write storage devices including SSDs and HDDs. HD Tach uses custom device drivers and low level Windows interfaces to determine the physical performance of the device. It is no longer supported and needs to be run in compatibility mode for Windows 7.

Here are the HDD results: 163.3MB/s average read.

Now we repeat the same test with the SSDNow mS200 mSATA SSD: 356.9 MB/s average read.

Using HD Tach, our mSATA SSD scores about the same as a HyperX or right at SSDNow V300 speeds.

In our previous evaluation using the mSATA drive installed in the VisionTek enclosure, we found very good transfer rates over USB 3.0, and now we find that the Kingston mS200 SSDNow mS300 mSATA SSD provides excellent performance when tested as a stand alone drive over the SATA 6.0 bus. In every single case, using it as a SSD on the native SATA 6Gbps port, it scored significantly higher than using it as a USB 3.0 3Gbps drive.

These are the basic benchmarks for the Kingston SSDNow mS200 mSATA drive. It fits well into Kingston’s SSDNow line-up with very decent performance for a SSD in a mini-SATA form factor. It will be a very noticeable performance upgrade over a mechanical hard disk drive.

Let’s now set it up as a caching drive and see if we can achieve a dual purpose SSD, since we only have 240GB total usable space and it is not practical for a gamer to install Windows on it along with more than a very few games.

Setting up a Hybrid caching drive system

We want to send out a big thank-you to Kingston’s technical support staff who helped us with this project. They were also able to replicate our efforts on their own test PCs twice. We had decided to see if it was possible to use our current 2TB hard disk drive together with the SSDNow mS200 mSATA drive for caching, without doing a clean install of Windows.

As with most systems, our 2TB Toshiba hard drive was originally set up using ACHI (by default), but it is now necessary to prepare Windows for RAID when the BIOS setting is changed or you will get a Blue Screen of Death (BSoD). Changing from ACHI to RAID is generally a simple procedure, but it is important to create a restore point AND image Windows to a back-up drive before changing the system to RAID in the BIOS as that operation usually deletes the data on both the data and on the SSD/mSATA drive. We used Acronis to create an image of our Toshiba 2TB HDD on a back-up identical drive which we restored to the HDD after the RAID operation was completed in the BIOS.

The most reliable information for configuring RST and SRT are found on Intel’s site. If you are considering using your SSD as a caching drive, be sure to read up on it as ours is the most basic of primers and may not work for all systems.

Make sure you start with a clean, “out of the box” like-new SSD and do not initialize it (as we did, causing endless issues with RAID and RST). If you do initialize it, or start with a used SSD, use the DiskPart command or Secure Erase to restore it completely.

Do not rely on a format to restore your SSD to an ‘as new’ condition.

Now you will probably need to edit the Windows registry so that it will boot when you change your BIOS from ACHI to RAID mode. You should have everything backed up to another hard drive and will have created a new restore point before you attempt this.

Our motherboard needed just one setting modified from its default “3” to “0” under Services in the tree presented in the image below. Some systems may need more than one setting modified, and a Google search for “ACHI to RAID” will turn up these settings.

Here is the specific Start setting we Modified under iaStorV:

After you exit the Registry, you will need to restart Windows. Make sure to now change your SATA options in your motherboard from ACHI to RAID or you will be greeted with a BSoD. After you change your SATA drivers from ACHI to RAID n the BIOS, you will get a new BIOS screen to configure RAID. You will want to create a RAID volume using the Recovery (non-striped) On demand option (or not, skipping some of our steps as Kingston found by simply adding the SSD after the hard drive setting was changed to RAID, and allowing RST to do all of our work for us). If you proceed, you will be asked to confirm as you will lose all your data (so make sure you have a restorable backup ready). After that operation, get ready to install your backed up image back to your newly RAIDed HDD. It takes quite awhile for Acronis to do this for a one TB of data, so you might want to leave the operation to run overnight.

After you start Windows, it will discover the new RAID volume, install drivers and you may have to restart several times.

After Windows is back up and running, reinstall RST and use the repair option. Make sure you download the latest version from Intel’s site, and not the ones that came with your motherboard.And we now restart again.After the restart, (if everything worked) the Performance tab will now appear, and you can now Enable acceleration. You next have the option to dedicate a portion of your SSD as a caching drive for your HDD. We chose the maximum 64GB and we used Maximized Mode.

Reads and writes are cached with SRT enabled. Intel allows two modes of write caching: enhanced and maximized. Enhanced mode makes the SSD cache behave as a write through cache, where every write must hit both the SSD cache and hard drive. The differences in Maximized mode are that the SSD cache acts more like a write back cache – writes hit the SSD and are eventually written back to the hard disk drive.

Enhanced mode limits the overall write performance improvement to the performance of your hard drive, although it is the most secure. In enhanced mode, if you disconnect your SSD cache or if the SSD fails, your system will continue to function. You may still see an improvement in write performance compared with a regular non-cached hard drive since the SSD offloads read requests which may free up the hard drive for faster write requests.

Maximized mode offers the greatest performance benefit, however, it also comes with a small risk of losing power before the SSD cache can write to the hard disk drive. And if something happens to your SSD cache, there is the chance that you could lose data. You will also have to remember to disable the SSD maximized cache each time before you change hard drives (as we do frequently), or you risk losing the ability to boot from your HDD.

All the tests we ran were with Maximized mode. If you don’t change out your HDDs regularly, it is generally the best choice for blazing fast performance for frequently used applications. To use the rest of the 160GB of the 224GB of usable space on our mSATA SSD, we had to initialize it and then it appeared correctly in RST.

It took long enough and plenty of restarts. We even had a false start which Kingston tech support helped us work through. Yet, we took our half-filled ACHI 2TB HDD and made it part of a hybrid RAID SSD caching system without doing a clean install of Windows by using a back-up image of the drive.

Here are Kingston’s Tech Support step-by-step directions that we compared with. With less steps, they achieved the same thing that we achieved, also with a Windows 7 image built with ACHI drivers. You will note that they found a shortcut to our methods by adding the mSATA drive after the hard drive was confirmed as being in RAID by RST:

Using a Dell XPS in Kingston’s lab:

1) Started with fresh 2TB HDD, installed W7 image to it (previous image built with AHCI drivers)

2) Booted system, install RST 13.2, reboot

3) Booted system, confirm HDD shows as expected in RST

4) Shutdown, add in mSATA drive (secure erased the SSD first), boot and check RST

5) Enable SRT

6) Acceleration enabled, array volumes renamed

7) Create volume from 160G in disk management

Now we ask the question, “is it worth it?” Check the conclusion and impressions of our new hybrid caching drive.

The Results

Unfortunately, our results are very difficult to measure precisely since caching technology is not exact. However, if you use a program over and over, daily, it benefits most from SSD caching – as we did, playing Borderlands: The Pre-Seque for over 60 hours in less than a week. The game loads itself and its levels nearly instantly; or as fast as if it were installed on the SSD instead of on the hard drive. This super-quick cache loading worked with every game that we played regularly, including Middle Earth: Shadows of Mordor. As long as the program was accessed very often, it had priority and it loaded as fast as if it were installed on a SSD.

For a gamer, this is Mission Accomplished! You can keep your games installed on your large capacity hard drive, and the games that you play most regularly, will load themselves and load their levels as fast as if they were installed on a SSD. Other well-used programs, such as Chrome or Firefox, also start nearly instantly. However, these programs also start pretty fast anyway, so we are talking about saving seconds – many seconds over the course of a day.

The first time that you start a program or copy files, caching will not be involved and the performance that you get will be the same as from your hard drive-only system. However, if you use Photoshop regularly, or work with Excel, or Word, they will generally start up to 100% faster, sometimes much more quickly. We would generally say that *overall* our most used applications had a 40% speed up using the caching drive as opposed to just using the hard drive. However, the programs you wish to always start quickly, although you may access them less frequently, may be installed on the remaining 160GB of the mS200 mSATA SSD partition and you will get all the advantages of SSD speeds for Reads and Writes, and file copying will be very fast.

Perhaps we saved the best part for last: shortened Windows 7 startup and shutdown times. Our very best times for our hard drive setting up Windows 7 fully was 1 minute and 15 seconds, usually longer. Our average startup after using the caching drive, dropped startup to just under 40 seconds! And shutdown is just as quick as if Windows were installed on the SSD, although it remains on the hard drive. We love it!

However, the issue for us is that we must change partitions very often for our benching. That means that each time we switch out a GTX video card for a Radeon, we must disable RST and caching or we will lose the ability to boot our HDD and may lose data. It also means that caching begins all over again for the new hard drive.

Conclusion

As we concluded last year, SSD technology is still one of the most rapidly improving at the same time that price is dropping. With most motherboard manufacturers offering SATA 3 6Gb/s ports, the maximum transfer speeds for disk drives has nearly doubled from the SATA 2 3Gb/s standard, and it is much faster than using a SSD over USB 3.0. We have seen the SSD implement improved new controllers that bring faster speeds – especially beginning with the enthusiast HyperX Kingston drives and now migrating to the SSDNow V300 series and to the mS200 mSATA drive.

SSD technology has become much more accessible to the regular consumer. SSDs have dipped well below the $1-per-gigabyte MSRP pricing and sales frequently go for half this this price, not long ago considered breakthrough. The Kingston SSDNow mS200 series offers a great bang-for-buck for consumers at regular pricing and for less than $200 you can have a fast mini-SATA 240GB drive that comes very close to the HyperX SSDs in performance.

It is not “mandatory” to have a SSD if you use your PC only for gaming. But why wait any longer? You can have your games and applications on a large hard drive and use a relatively small SSD to cache your data now for very cheap. Any left over space can be partitioned for use as an SSD. If a gamer wants to get right back into the game, then a SSD caching drive will definitely improve immersion and decrease frustration.

It used to be that is was a matter of valuing ones time compared to what one spends on a relatively small-capacity drive. Before caching, one had to choose their games and applications to put on the SSD wisely as you can only have a few modern games on your 240-250GB SSD at any one time. Now you can have nearly unlimited storage on your mechanical hard drive, but your frequently played games load just as quickly as if they were installed on SSD because of caching.

With a low-capacity SSD functioning as a cache, gamers will no longer have to install new games and then uninstall them after playing them to make room for even newer games. We really like the new options that RST drive caching brings for gamers. And the mS200 mSATA drive is a great addition to the Kingston line-up for those who need the mini-SATA format. It is not just for desktop!

Pros –

• The SSD is of a magnitude faster than the mechanical hard drive in almost every way. Using RST and our mS200 mSATA SSD, Windows startup is blazing fast and shutdown is noticeably quicker!
• Kingston’s SSDNow V series, including the mS200 mSATA drives, have improved over the previous V200 series with a new custom controller and memory that brings it to near HyperX performance.
• SSDNow mS200 mSATA drive is great bang for buck at $179 for a 240GB standalone drive in a mini-SATA format
• TRIM support and garbage collection keeps your drive “like new”. The SSDNow 300 SSDs and mS200 mSATA drives also offer advanced wear-leveling technology, S.M.A.R.T. tools and DuraClass Technology.
• 3-year warranty and superb Kingston support stand it out from the “SSD crowd”. Kingston’s customer service is excellent and it is obvious that they like their work.
• Caching works for gaming and gamers. You get the same fast loading as from an SSD, but games stay on the hard drive. And of course, any left over space can still be partitioned apart from the cache and used as a SSD.

Cons –

• Price per GB is still high compared to mechanical hard drives and mSATA commands a premium over regular SSDs. If you don’t need the mini-SATA form factor, get a regular SATA SSD for caching.

This has been quite an enjoyable exploration using Kingston’s mS200 mSATA 240GB drive as a SSD as well as for a caching drive using Intel’s RST. The performance of the mSATA drive is excellent as a stand-alone drive, and it worked great as a caching drive especially for games. Based on our experience, SSD caching is highly recommended for gamers!

The Verdict:

• Highly Recommended!

We are giving the Kingston SSDNow mS200 drive our ABT “Recommended” Award as it is well-designed, compact, solid and durable, while being perfectly functional and easy to install and use! Using it as a SSD and as a caching drive without having to do a new install of Windows was a big plus for us as a gamer. At $178.99, it is at a very good price at Tiger Direct if you need the mSATA form factor. If not, choose a regular Kingston SSD, SSDNow V300 or HyperX, that fits your needs.

UPDATES 01/14/2015

We love our mSATA hybrid caching storage. We were unhappy to find out that the mSATA specification that was popular in Z87 motherboards is being replaced by the faster and soon-to-be-PCIe-based M2 slot in most new enthusiast Z97 motherboards, such as our new flagship ASUS Z97-E motherboard. Fortunately there is an adapter for mSATA drive to M2 slot that can be purchased from Amazon.com for $16.75 plus $2.85 shipping that appears to work although we purchased it but haven’t yet tested it.

Stay tuned, there is a lot coming from us at BTR. We have uploaded all but one of the lost evaluations and we are already posting new ones. Stay tuned for a “mystery” evaluation coming up soon that actually pre-empted our upcoming review of the GALAX GTX 970 EXOC!!

Please don’t forget to check our newly formed and growing community. BTR Community tech discussions are among the best to be found anywhere! Join in on the ground floor and help drive our reviews and evaluations. ABT is moving to a new host and will also be back up and fully functioning again soon.

Happy Gaming!

BTR/ABT Editor-in-Chief