Next, some real world gaming tests. We played Battlefield 4 and Titanfall online, three sessions of 360 seconds each. We took the best performance overall. All in the same maps and game modes and with a ping of less than 30ms consistently on a GigaLan. We have included the video settings for each game and the Nvidia control panel was set to “Performance” using the slider.
In Battlefield 4 the MSI Z97I GAMING AC Motherboard is consistently ahead of the older MSI Z87I GAMING AC Motherboard. With the two motherboards being on par with each other in most synthetic benchmarks to this point, it looks like the LAN and SATA bandwidth improvements maybe having an impact at this point. Again, it seems a case of evolution and not revolution, small refinements making the difference.
Titanfall only ran correctly without the vsync frame lock issue on the MSI Z97I GAMING AC Motherboard. Performance is good however.
MSI Z97I GAMING AC Motherboard Review
Package - 9
Performance - 9.5
Price - 9
Consumer Experience - 9
9.1
This motherboard is aimed at gamers and it has all the right features excluding SLi. During our game tests we did not feel the need for SLi, justifying the little motherboard in its own right. You can get a GTX970 or 770, as we did, into most modern mITX Chassis, combing with this motherboard to make an excellent high end gamer rig or Steam Box.