Game-related benchmarks

The synthetics

3DMark 11 and Vantage are useful tests to track changes within the same system and they are often used to give a rough comparison between platforms.

Vantage

First up we look at Vantage with a GTX 680 and i7-3770K at 4.8GHz first on the ECS motherboard scored 35511.  Here are the detailed settings for the FTW motherboard which scores a little less.

Now with a 690 on the EVGA  motherboard.  Scaling is good and the FTW edges the ECS with 47176.

 Scores are similar with the FTW board scoring a little higher on this synthetic test.

3DMark 11

Now we look at Futuremark’s latest DX11 graphics-heavy test. First up is Core i7-920 at 4.8GHz on the ECS motherboard with a stock GTX 680 scores 9164. However, when we first tested the FTW,  with the same conditions and the same GTX 680, the EVGA motherboard had a score significantly less with 8798.

Please note that the above score was achieved with the EVGA FTW’s shipping BIOS from May.  Does the BIOS the motherboard uses make a performance difference in gaming?  We were surprised with the results just by flashing our BIOS to the latest July 26, 2012 107 Beta.

There is a noticeable performance difference simply by using the latest beta 107 BIOS as the FTW board comes within 20 points of the ECS motherboard.  The EVGA performance tweak in the BIOS setting may have an effect on individual games.  We left it on as we could not find much difference either way overall.

Now we look at Core i7-3770K at 4.8GHz paired with a same reference GTX 690 on the EVGA FTW motherboard.  There is good scaling in this synthetic test.

Now let’s check actual game performance.

The Game Benchmarks with the GTX 680 and the GTX 690

Here are the benches for the Core i7-3770 at 4.8GHz on the ECS motherboard versus the EVGA FTW motherboard running at the same speed. All 20 games have their setting completely maxed out and levels of AA are identified on the chart. The GTX 680 and the GTX 690 are run at their reference clock speeds and we use the same 8GB of Kingston HyperX DDR3 at 1866MHz.

Main Summary Charts

The chart is self-explanatory.  EVGA is compared to ECS using the GTX 680 and the GTX 690 at the same maxed-out settings with the CPU at 4.8GHz.

Overall there is very little difference.  Except for probably three games, the results are generally within the benching margin of error.  For example, looking at Max Payne 3, we notice that there is a single frame rate’s difference at 25600×1600 – 45 versus 46.  However, the final calculation was actually 45.4 fps versus 45.6 fps.

There are rounding errors naturally-built in also as well as benching “noise” –  the margin of error is generally accepted as up to 3%.  Couple this with using a Beta BIOS for the FTW motherboard and any differences are rather negligible.  One very good thing about EVGA is that they work on new BIOSes long after others drop support for them.

Overall, the results between the two motherboards are very similar as befits high-end Z77 motherboards, with the EVGA FTW motherboard leading in SSD benching and, of course overclocking and stability.  Let’s head for our conclusion.