Gigabyte GA-Z97N GAMING-5 Motherboard Review

Test Set Up

We have put together what we would consider a good mid range gaming specification.

• Operating System – Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1
• CPU – Intel Core i5 4790K @ 4.40GHz (Turbo enabled)
• RAM – Corsair Vengeance Pro 16GB DDR3 @ 2666MHz (13-15-15-35)
• Graphics – PNY GeForce GTX 770 2Gb XLR Edition
• Storage – 2x 256Gb Samsung 840 Pro SSD’s in RAID 0
• Audio – On-board Realtek High Definition
• PSU – Thermaltake SmartSE 730W

We had the opportunity to set up RAID with two fantastic Samsung 840 Pro’s, so you could consider the storage results a little higher end.

Synthetic Tests

• PCMark 08
• AIDA64 Extreme
• Resident Evil 6 Benchmark Tool
• CrystalDiskMark
• 3DMark Vantage

Real World Tests

• Battlefield 4
• Titanfall

Test Results

PCMark08 results up first and they seem pretty solid. No issues running the tests and results came in thick and fast. Storage was in RAID 0 using 2x 256Gb Samsung 840 Pro SSD’s.

CrystalDiskMark 64 Bit was used running sequential read/write tests. We ran the tests 9 times per benchmarks and spread them across 50Mb, 1000Mb and 4000Mb. The Gigabyte GA-Z97N GAMING-5 shows excellent performance, especially in the 50Mb test.

Write is a similar story, very strong performance with SATA III bandwidth being utilised for both read and write.

Next, some Resident Evil 6 Benchmark tool and 3DMark Vantage. We ran Resident Evil 6 Benchmark tool non stop for 30 minutes and took the highest result from both systems. The Vantage test was best of three for both systems and using the performance pre-set.

These are now older benchmarks and show no issues in running well. The GTX770 had no issues with the Gigabyte GA-Z97N GAMING-5 Motherboard, we saw no glitching or bandwidth issues as you would expect.