3DMark 11
3DMark 11 is the latest offering from Futuremark, taking full advantage of DirectX 11 by utilising tessellation features and volumetric lighting. It takes your graphics and CPU hardware to the edge to simulate the most extreme conditions whilst working as a stand point to compare results with other users online.
As we normally see in 3DMark 11, the Extreme score wasn’t affected much, though the Performance preset saw a nice increase of around 200 3DMark points.
Unigine Heaven 2.5
Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine™ engine. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies and utilises the full effect of DirectX 11 and allows you to configure shaders, tessellation and quality settings to your own personal choice.
Looking at how the board fairs in Heaven, we saw no benefit from our different configurations.
Metro 2033
Metro 2033 is a first-person shooter game based in the Russian metro system. Metro 2033 is very similar to the much loved game STALKER as it is developed by the same programmers. The game utilises DirectX 11 and relies heavily on tessellation features and is considered to be one of the most graphics intense games on the market.
Metro saw a slight decrease when overclocking our i7 2700k, so if you’re gaming, maybe best to stay at stock speeds if Metro is your thing.
I've read in a few places that overclocking isn't as easy as you make it sound, due to not being able to manually set voltages, only being able to use +/- offsets. What was your experience with this? I plan on getting a 2500k with potentially this board, but if it is going to cause some issues I might spend the extra $50 for the non-LX version.
I am running this just now and there is no problem overclocking at all. I am no overclocker so the one hit button and it does it all is great, for the enthusiast you can also delve deeper in to the voltages etc. To be honest it's a great board well worth a look and for the price it's great value for money. I am running 2500K and it sits at 4.5Ghz with only air cooling and that was the one hit button affair. Can you ask for more right now, nah i doubt it. Good luck