MSI Z87 XPower Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. MSI Z87 XPower: Packaging and Bundle3. MSI Z87 XPower: Board Layout and Features4. MSI Z87 XPower: BIOS & Software5. MSI Z87 XPower: Overclocking6. Testing Methodology7. System: PCMark 88. System: 3DMark 119. System: 3DMark10. System: Unigine Heaven Benchmark11. Processor: SiSoft Sandra12. Processor: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit13. Processor: Super Pi14. Processor: MKV HD Performance15. Processor: Media Encoding - MediaEspresso16. Processor: Media Encoding - HandBrake17. Motherboard: SATA Performance18. Motherboard: USB 3.0 Performance19. Gaming: Battlefield 320. Gaming: Sleeping Dogs21. Gaming: Metro 203322. Technical: Power Consumption23. Closing Thoughts24. View All Pages

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

Processor Arithmetic performance increases with the higher CPU frequency.

Become a Patron!