Asus Sabertooth X79 Motherboard Review

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.

3DMark 11 showed the true potential from the 3960X, especially when overclocked and using the Performance preset. Using the Extreme preset, the results were very tightly close together.

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.

Heaven saw no real difference between the different CPU/motherboard combinations that we used.

F1 2011

F1 2011 is the latest instalment from Codemasters and is based upon the 2011 Formula One season. It utilises the latest DirectX 11 features including shadows, particles and reflections to offer the very best graphics in a fast-paced moving game with depth of field being a key focus. It relies heavily on all aspects of a computer system including GPU and CPU.

The use of the X79 based system allowed for a slightly higher score compared to our Z68 test system. When overclocked the true potential of the system was shown with a large increase in frame-rate.

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 had very similar results accross the board with the i7 2700k/Maximus combination just edging ahead on the lower resolution.