While a nice layout, cool colors and a good feature set listed on the box might be nice performance is what most people are looking for in a motherboard. A good feature set does not matter so much if the board is not able to perform to the level you want it to. For the most part Asus has done a good job in balancing out their features and performance. This balance has extended even down to their entry level boards as they trickle down what they learn from their Republic of Gamer’s Boards. So where does the Z97-A fit into all of this? Let’s find out.
Section IV Performance – GamingGaming 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 3 and Total War Napoleon for DX9 and Civilization V 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 good news is that the Asus Z97-A and 4770K combination will make sure you can still play Modern Warfare 3. Granted this is an older game, but you do still get a fairly solid gaming experience with no audio issues or rendering issues.
Total War Napoleon DX9 -Napoleon Total War is a turn based strategy game that puts you in charge of Napoleon’s army during the height of his power. The game has some very interesting strategic systems although it can be boring when you are moving units into place. One of the more interesting things about Napoleon Total war is that the more CPU power you have at hand the better the game performs. This is because the system AI is dynamic and improves based on the resources available. For our testing we ran through the Lodi campaign. You can see the settings below.
The Z97-A also gives you a good experience when playing games like Napoleon Total War. Even with everything going on we found that the game was fluid with good audio. This should push out into other real time strategy games.
Civilization V DX11 –Civilization V is a strategy game that pits you against other world leaders. You must advance your civilization and try to beat your opponents through military prowess, scientific achievement, or just lasting longer than they do. For our testing we ran through 30 minutes of game play using the same country and leader. We mapped out a city and production strategy attempting to move through the game the same way during all three test runs. You can check out the settings below along with a screenshot.
Civilization V can be a slow game without the right hardware, fortunately the Z97-A has enough behind it to play the game well. With the hardware we had installed we found load times and end of turn transitions to be smooth and fast. We were not able to run at max resolution or eye candy, but you can always drop in a GPU and get it all.
Gaming wrap-up -Gaming on the Asus Z97-A was pretty good even with the iGPU on the 4770k. You get good audio and a quick chipset behind it to keep things moving along. If you are looking to play some more demanding games you will need a discrete GPU or two (the Z97-A support both SLI and Crossfire) especially if you want to play something like Cyrsis. Other than that you should get a solid gaming board with the Z97-A.
