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Just before the reviews went live, G.Skill sent us over a 16GB kit of their 2,933mhz memory for Haswell testing. We therefore wanted to add a little section close to the end of this review to ascertain Z87 Sabertooth memory performance when pushed past 2,400mhz and even 2,666mhz – the previous standards for ultra high performance memory.
We will be reviewing this memory in a standalone review at later date.
The G.Skill kit arrives in a large brown box, with a dedicated fan cooling system included. There was a phase when every memory manufacturer was including these as standard, but they seem to have lost popularity.
The G.Skill Trident X 2,933mhz memory is very attractively design, featuring red and black heatspreaders.
The Trident X 2933mhz memory is set at 12-14-14-35 timings @ 1.65 volts. According to the sticker, it is ‘Intel XMP ready'.
We loaded the XMP profile in the Asus Z87 Sabertooth bios, and it seemed to load fine as shown above. with 12-14-14-35-2N timings. It would only post at 2,400mhz however, so we needed to get creative.
We loaded the XMP profile and backed down the 4770k overclock to a multipler of x37 on each core. We then increased the BCLK frequency to 122mhz. This pushed the memory to 2,928mhz while increasing the Core i7 4770k speed back to around 4,500mhz.
CPU Validation is available here. (multiplier shows x25 but memory speed is correct).
It seems there are still some problems getting the XMP profile to correctly load 2933mhz speeds, but with a little tweaking, getting to the same clock speeds manually is straightforward enough.
Is the tuf armor not restrictive though? seems to block a lot of the spots id like to get access too.
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.
Not really that exciting a board – but rock solid. I want to see the ROG versions.
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.
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
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.
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.
How can it support Quad-SLI with only three PCI slots?
@ Billy. some nvidia cards have two GPU’s, so two of them in a pairing – quad SLI.
Example…..:
2x GTX 690 = 2×2 GPU = Quad-SLI
4x GTX Titan = 4×1 GPU = 4Way-SLI
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…