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Asus Z87 Sabertooth Motherboard Review (w/ Intel i7 4770k)

V2011 is the first release of 3DStudio Max to fully support the Windows 7 operating system. This is a professional level tool that many people use for work purposes and our test will show any possible differences between board design today.

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software offers compelling new techniques to help bring designs to life by aggregating data, iterating ideas, and presenting the results.

Streamlined, more intelligent data exchange workflows and innovative new modeling and visualization tools help significantly increase designers’ creativity and productivity, enabling them to better explore, validate, and communicate the stories behind their designs.

Major new features:

  • Slate: A node based material editor.
  • Quicksilver: Hardware renderer with multithreaded rendering engine that utilizes both CPU and GPU.
  • Extended Graphite Modeling Toolset
  • 3ds Max Composite: A HDRI-capable compositor based on Autodesk Toxik.
  • Viewport Canvas toolset for 3D and 2D texture painting directly in the viewport
  • Object Painting: use 3D geometry as ‘brushes’ on other geometry
  • Character Animation Toolkit (CAT): now integrated as part of the base package
  • Autodesk Material Library: Over 1200 new photometrically accurate shaders
  • Additional file format support: includes native support for Sketchup, Inventor
  • FBX file linking
  • Save to Previous Release (2010)

We created a new 8200×3200 scene and recorded the time for the hardware to finalise the render.
3dstudio max
These results show the 4770k has a noticeable edge over the 3770k when it comes to rendering intensive 3D scenes, cutting the time by 11 seconds at default BIOS settings on the Asus Z78 Sabretooth motherboard. When overclocked to 4.5ghz, the final time drops by around 20 seconds.

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12 comments

  1. Terrible Terrance

    Is the tuf armor not restrictive though? seems to block a lot of the spots id like to get access too.

  2. THe previous generations of this board have been superb, ive owned a few. My last one failed when I spilt coke over the top of my case and a bit of it hit the pcb. my own fault.

    Not got the cash right now for an upgrade but will be later in the year. this is top of my list.

  3. Not really that exciting a board – but rock solid. I want to see the ROG versions.

  4. ITs a great board, what are you talking about Anusha. Its a more laid back colour scheme, hardly matters, most of it will be covered in a system build.

    I do want tsee the ultra high end asus boards though.

  5. 4770k is a bit of a let down unless I couldnt afford a graphics card.

    overall nice board, but im happy with my 5.0ghz 3770k

  6. 4770k is a flop. Intel are clearly focused on the mobile platform now and power reduction rather than moving forward in the high end and giving people a huge step up. anyone with a 3770k wont need to move,unless for some reason they need onboard graphics !

    disappointing CPU launch, but great motherboards from the guys. I like how they have ditched the old SATA standard now instead of 3 or 4 useless ports for SSD.

  7. 4770k isn’t that bad, but I agree, its not a huge step forward. it may help those peoplee who buy a lower end processor and cant afford a graphics card, but who the F*CK will want a 4770k for onboard graphics performance? its irrelevant really.

    Ive seen a lot of reviews today and there seems to be a huge variance on the overclocks, which would suggest the new manufacturing process isn’t quite at the level it should be. ill stay with my 3570k for a while longer as its working well with the 7950 I have.

  8. How can it support Quad-SLI with only three PCI slots?

  9. @ Billy. some nvidia cards have two GPU’s, so two of them in a pairing – quad SLI.

  10. Example…..:

    2x GTX 690 = 2×2 GPU = Quad-SLI
    4x GTX Titan = 4×1 GPU = 4Way-SLI

  11. I guess the motherboard manufacturers will be really pi55ed about the “huge” sales coming their way lol. If I were them I’d play a little with Intel for the next chipsets. Intel is going down as they follow their ambitions rather the market. They should let ARM alone and focus on the categories that made them what they are.

    It’s really scary reading about all that heat coming off and about that 100i that can hardly keep up at 4.5GHz+. What about the box cooler??!

    A board packed for OC is an useless piece of cr0p when OC is impossible. Now it’s AMD move, if they have a single ace up their sleeve they’d better be pulling it. It’s time…