Section IV Performance
Gaming
Gaming as a test of motherboard performance is sort of a joke these days. The big player in the gaming arena is the GPU. Everyone but a few hardcore PR teams know this. However, it is important to run at least a few (one from each current DX version) to see if there are any issues with the combination of components on a motherboard. These are items like Audio lag, memory lag and of course problems with the PCIe lanes and signal traces. If there are issues in design, drivers or BIOS then you can have odd gaming performance. So without much more preamble let’s dive into the three games we currently use; Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 for DX9 FarCry 2 for DX10 and Battlefield Bad Company 2 for DX11.

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 DX9 -
As the third installment in the Modern Warfare franchise you are picking up some old roles while adding a couple of new ones as well. The game play is almost identical to what you are used to in Modern Warfare 2 as are the graphical settings. The AI is a little different thought it is still similar to the bar fight style AI we like in the Call of Duty series. For our testing we run the first mission (Black Tuesday) from start to finish.  Settings are shown below

The IGPU gaming on the P8Z77-V was not that bad at all when it came to Modern Warfare 3. We found it at the head of the pack for both stock and overclocked speeds. When we dropped in our HD 5870 the P8Z77-V was a little behind the curve and came in third out of the four boards we tested.

FarCry2 DX10 -
Although not one of my favorite games this tedious game does have some good graphics. The large sandbox style of the game lends to mission based play. The only problem is that the AI is rather low grade. Still the more CPU power the more the bad guys try to do. Over all the game was a little bit of a disappointment to play, but still not a bad DX10 representation. Our testing run starts right after you get your first mission to clean out the safe-house and ends after the hostage rescue. Settings and performance numbers are shown below.

The IGPU gaming in Far Cry 2 was not good, but then again considering the fact that the GMA 4000 was not meant for this type of game it is ok. When we dropped in the HD5870 the board did much better and found its way to the top of the group.


Crysis 2 DX11 –
Another sequel Crysis 2 follows up on two other Crysis games (making the title a little misleading). You take the role of a Force Recon Marine who is given a battle suit by a character named Profit (you will remember him from the other two Crysis games). From there you run around an Infected and Invaded New York City trying to survive and, of course, save the planet. For our testing we ran through the first “mission”. Settings are shown below.

Crysis 2 also put a serious hurting on our P8Z77-V with the iGPU in the lead. Unfortunately unlike the performance comeback we saw with Far Cry 2 we found that even running the HD5870 did not put the P8Z77-V on top.

Gaming wrap-up -
Although we established a “winner” for each of the three games we use for testing as you can easily see they are so close that you would not really be able to tell them apart. Where the P8Z77-V stands out is in some of the options you have. Using Network iControl we were able to reduce our ping times in online gaming to make things much smoother while the audio enhancing DTS software helped to bring out the gaming experience in another way.