EVGA’s Z77 FTW motherboard is built for extreme overclocking!

The BIOS

The UEFI BIOS used on the EVGA Z77 FTW lacks mouse support and other graphical interface features that are found on the ECS Z77 motherboard, for example.  Navagating EVGA’s BIOS finding settings was not a problem, although there so many options that even for more experienced users it can take awhile to find settings.

The BIOS is divided into 7 sections (above) – Overview, Advanced, Chipset, Overclocking, Boot. Security and Save/Exit.  The basic performance tuning options are easily accessible under the Overclocking tab and a quick overclocking mode can be enabled to disable all other features and improve stability without searching for each individual setting nested inside other tabs.

Setting up and configuring the BIOS is relatively easy although it is not necessarily intuitive.  First you are presented with the Overview where you set up the date and time.

Here is the Advanced Menu again and we have highlighted the ACPI configuration.

Now under ACPI settings: 

From the Advanced tab, there are many options to configure SATA.  Of course, we picked ACHI mode.

Also in Advanced is the PC Health Status with further sub-tabs to monitor temperatures, fan speed and voltage.

Here again under Advanced is a screen where you have control over the many fan headers

Chipset is for configuring the System Agent (SA)

And there is a lot to do under SA including Graphics Configuration

And of course, under Graphics Configuration there are even options for the LCS

Opening LCD Control makes one realize just how customizable this FTW’s BIOS is – there are literally hundreds of options available to follow as tab leads to another.

Overclocking is the section where the enthusiast will probably spend most of his time tweaking settings relating to overclocking.

Right from the main Overclocking tab is where the end user will do most of the basic overclocking. We changed the CPU Multiplier Setting from Auto (35) to 48 for 4.8GHz and to 50 for 5.0GHz.  VDroop is Disabled and Internal PLL Voltage Override is set to Enabled.  All we had to do was to find the voltage appropriate to our specific CPU’s overclock.  We keyed in 1325mV for 4.8GHz and just over 1400 for 5.0GHz proved to be about right for our Core i7-3770K.

What is amazing is that under CPU configuration, we were able to keep the power-saving features built into Ivy Bridge for when the CPU was not under load.  Those particular settings are under the CPU Power Management Configuration tab.

Here is the CPU Power Management tab and whatever you do, do not disable Turbo boost or you will not be able to overclock at all!

We left CPU Voltage here at Auto although we could just highlight it and type in an acceptable value.  Note that all the power-saving features of Ivy Bridge are in place – at 4.8GHz!  If you are worried about your CPU throttling during a high oveclock, you should consider disabling C1E, C3, C6 and C7.

With the ECS motherboard we had to add .13V to stabilize our overclock at 4.8GHz with 4GB (2x2GB) of system RAM. Using 8GB and twice the DIMMs (4x2GB), we had to add even more voltage to stabilize our overclock at 4.8GHz.  We had no such issues with filling all of our DIMMs in the FTW motherboard although if you are a serious overclocker, you will use only two.

We now went back and from the Overclocking tab we highlighted Memory Configuration:

 

Automatic is the lowest memory settings, or 1200MHz, but there are many options if you choose Manual.  With manual mode, you have quite a bit of control over the memory timings.  We chose XMP Profile 1 which corresponds to Kingston HyperX DDR3 which was correctly set to 1867MHz with all the correct timings.  If we chose XMP Profile 2 it would be set at 1600MHz.

The next section is the Boot Configuration

 After that is Security:

It’s time to exit and save.

Finally we have the exit screen with save and exit. Pressing “F10” at any time is the same as ‘Save and Exit’.  Just confirm.

 

The EVGA Z77 FTW BIOS is excellent and compares with the very best.  Mouse support would be nice but it is not necessary.  We also found the voltage and temperature measurements were very accurate compared to what some motherboards reported.

We were able to not only match the 4.8GHz overclock of our Gigabyte Z77 mTX and ECS z77 motherboard, but to go much higher – reaching 4.9GHz with complete stability and also 5.0GHz although we need to tweak our cooling better.

BIOS Flashing under Windows

We have never been happy with this feature as it rarely has worked for us under Windows. One is supposed to be able to automatically update your BIOS under Windows. It promises much and works for many.  Unfortunately, it didn’t deliver for us and we used the less convenient option to make a bootable flash drive to flash to the latest beta 107 BIOS from late July.

If you have to flash your BIOS manually, there are step by step instructions found on EVGA’s forum and a lot of helpful posters and staff who will be happy to assist you if you have questions.

 

«1. EVGA Z77 FTW Introduction2. Unboxing, Layout & Installation3. Inside the EVGA Z77 FTW BIOS4. Overclocking & Watercooling5. Test Configuration6. Synthetic Benchmark Suite7. More Tests8. Gaming Benchmarks & Summary Charts9. Conclusion10. View All»