ASUS Sabertooth Z77 review -
Final words and conclusion
Final words and conclusion
ASUS has a very nice piece of machinery with the Sabertooth. Interestingly enough the overall baseline performance was a little lower at default settings compared to the Intel reference board. I noticed the very same thing with an MSI board actually. It's weird because to get baseline performance for each motherboard test we always upgrade firmware to the latest revision, clear CMOS and then load up default (optimal) BIOS settings. With this procedure the TUF was performing a tiny bit under the reference baseline.
Have no fear though, go into that magnificent ASUS BIOS and select performance mode. You'll instantly get an impressive performance boost at very little extra power consumption as the CPU will now be throttles to 4200 MHz. So that's a good tip right there.
With the baseline offset aside, we admittedly are impressed with this motherboard. The overall looks are really cool, and the tweaking performance is just grand.
I do have to say though that Ivy bridge processors run hotter when overclocked opposed to Sandy Bridge, reaching 5 GHz is fairly easy to accomplish with the motherboard but you'll find yourself needing juice in the 1.425~1.450 Volts range of the processor. So be prepared for processor heat, and proper liquid cooling definitely deserves a recommendation.
As shown in this article we popped in G.Skill's new Trident X 2666 MHz memory as well, and in the BIOS we simply flicked the XMP profile to on and boom, the memory was running at a rather amazing clock frequency of 2666 MHz. Astonishing really, though that alone will not bring you heaps of extra performance.
Currently the price point of the Asus Sabertooth ASUS Sabertooth Z77 is set at the 200 EUR market. For that amount of money you'll receive a complete motherboard with a wide variety in terms of connectivity, design and features. Out of all the Z77 motherboards we have had in our hands this one was the easiest to overclock with. Fiddle around with the multiplier and voltages alone is enough to reach 5 GHz on heatpipe based cooling.
As mentioned the baseline performance was slightly off, but nothing major --- just enable that performance mode in the BIOS. The overall tweaked performance will blow you away.
We can explain all features over and over again, but I'll keep this conclusion simple. I fell a little in love with the SaberTooth as it is a nice piece of technology that is not going to disappoint you. Very much recommended.
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We review, test and benchmark the ASUS Sabertooth Z87 TUF series motherboard. The Z87 enthusiast themed mainboard is intended for Intel's 22nm Haswell processors on Socket LGA1150.
ASUS Sabertooth Z77 review
We review the ASUS Sabertooth Z77. Z77 is of course the Intel chipset predominantly released for Ivy Bridge based processors. This article is a full review of what you may expect from the TUF series Sabertooth Z77, have peek after which we'll dive right into the photo shoot.
ASUS Sabertooth Z77 preview
We preview the ASUS Sabertooth Z77 TUF. Z77 is of course the Intel chipset for the upcoming Ivy bridge based processors. These motherboards will have a slightly altered feature set and thus support them new upcoming apples from Intel. Good to know however is that Z77 also supports Sandy Bridge Socket 1155 based processors, that's right your favorite Core i5 2500K and Core i7 2600K will be perfect for these motherboards as well. The changes for Z77 primarily can be found in native USB 3.0 support as well as an upgrade towards PCie gen 3 PCIe x16 slots.
ASUS Sabertooth 990FX review
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