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 2 DX9 -
This is an excellent but short game that put you right into the action from the beginning and does not let up the pressure until the very end. The graphics are a little better; most notably the night and thermal imaging have been improved. The AI is still the typical COD “bar fight” style AI, with maybe a tad more finesse. All in all it is not a bad game to play and a decent one to use for testing. Our testing run starts at the bridge and ends after you clear the school in the first level of the game. Settings are shown below as are the performance numbers.

For our testing of the Z68A-GD80 we wanted to try out the gaming performance of the Core i7 2600K’s GPU. We have been hearing about this for some time and thought we should give is a good ourselves in the lab. We did and found that and have found that it is not as impressive as we would have thought. As you can see from the numbers below our gaming experience with just this as the driving force was a tad on the sluggish side. This was with the settings dialed back quite a bit too.

On the other side of the coin, when we drop in the HD5870 V2 then the Z68A-GD80 really comes to life.  It comes in at the top of the group for both stock and overclocked testing.

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.
Our FarCry 2 testing with just the CPU pushing the frame rate was also well under our expectations for full fluid gaming.



Once again as soon as we have the Asus HD5870 V2 in the board we get some excellent gaming scores. This is certain good news for DX10 gaming (although there is not much of that anymore really).


Battlefield Bad Company2 DX11 –
I have liked many of the Battlefield games. They usually tend to be fast paced and fun. With Battlefield Bad Company 2 you do get some of that, but there is something about the graphics and the movement that just does not sit right. The AI is a less sophisticated form of the bar fight AI, but it gets the job done. Still, the game is good for testing as it can put a strain on the components of the board. Out testing run is the entire first level, from beginning to end. Settings are shown below along with the raw numbers.
For our “on-Die” GPU testing the trend continues with this one being the most unimpressive of the three. We can say that this is most likely due to the CPU on the Core i7 and not a board level issue though

The same trend continues when we drop in our favorite HD5870. Looks like the Z68A-GD80 might be a good choice for gaming as long as you have the right GPU in the system.

Gaming wrap-up -
Well, I have to say that the MSI Z68A-GD80 is a very good board for gaming… At least it is if you have the right GPU and you drop in an add-in audio card. The onboard audio while not bad just sounded over processed.  Still I have never recommended an IGP (integrated graphics Processor) for gaming before, and I am not going to here.