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THE WORLD’S BEST OVERCLOCKING ONLINE MAGAZINE. REMASTERED. Issue 31 2014 rev 2.1 Q+A WITH DANCOP, ALL THE WAY FROM GERMANY! Interview Reviewed THE DEFINITIVE WAY TO PLAY NAUGHTY DOG’S POST- APOCALYPTIC OPUS THE LAST OF US REMASTERED WE REVIEW FIVE OF THE BEST Z97 MOTHERBOARDS Reviewed YOUR GAMING ARSENAL REDEFINED IN OUR 5 MOUSE ROUNDUP Feature INTEL’S 8 CORE BEAST - 5960X! THE POWER OF Feature 8

TheOverclocker Issue 31

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Here’s Issue 31 of TheOverclocker Magazine. This time we catch up with a rising competitor in the Elite overclocking league, Dancop from Germany. We take a quick look at Intel’s mighty Core i7 5960X and cover not one or two, but five of the best Z97 motherboards around. For the gamers out there, we also gathered five of the best mice in an effort to crown a king. Finally, be sure to check out episode 5 of TheOC show. Get something to eat or drink and sit back and coverage on the GIGABYTE EOC competition and more.

Citation preview

Page 1: TheOverclocker Issue 31

THE WORLDrsquoS BEST OVERCLOCKING ONLINE MAGAZINE REMASTERED

Issue 31 2014rev 21

Q+A WITH DANCOP ALL

THE WAY FROM GERMANY

Interview

Reviewed

THE DEFINITIVE WAY TO PLAY NAUGHTY DOGrsquoS POST-

APOCALYPTIC OPUS

THE LAST OF USREMASTERED

WE REVIEW FIVE OF THE BEST Z97 MOTHERBOARDS

Reviewed

YOUR GAMING ARSENAL

REDEFINED IN OUR 5 MOUSE

ROUNDUP

Feature

INTELrsquoS 8 CORE BEAST - 5960X

THE POWER OFFeature

8

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 3

THE SAME BUT BETTER

So herersquos another issue of TheOverclocker This time there is an unusual high amount of review

content This was caused mainly by INTELrsquos release schedule and the bi-monthly nature of the magazine coming together at a very specific time to result in this issues content As you can imagine with each new CPU -mainly the 4790K- therersquos a platform or chipset rather to go with it As if that wasnrsquot enough just two weeks and a bit ago we had the new X99 platform show up So that is obviously the big hurrah for 2014 Hence in this issue we are looking at no fewer than five motherboards and squeezing in the 5960X

Granted that all of these boards are Z97 offerings itrsquos still a lot to evaluate in the time period we had between the last issue and this one The immediate question that some may have is why didnrsquot we turn that into a feature where we do a direct head to head comparison between all boards Initially that was the idea but it turns out that despite all these vendors competing for your hard earned cash they fundamentally have different price points and evidently priorities with each product How each vendor structures its SKUs has made it nearly impossible to compare them head to head For instance it remains true after all these years that no one company marries overclocking and so called gaming features together like ASUS In the unifying of these two demographics it makes it hard to objectively compare their products with the competition Still therersquos nothing preventing you from reading the individual editorials as if they were a single piece I have to admit as well that during the writing process it felt as if it was a single continuous article

More relevant or rather more immediate is the cover that we have for this issue Itrsquos the first time we have had a game on the cover and no yoursquove not made a mistake and opened another publication This was intentional and spurred on by several factors one of which is that games have far better art than hardware It really is that simple As a publication that prides itself in not only delivering accessible but honest content we genuinely love making great covers We get it right almost all the time but there have been times where we could have done better had we not been limited to just hardware Thus we have The Last of Us adorning our front cover (I should add that Dane our game reviewer is an exceedingly gifted writer)

Why a console game Well why not Face it there are titles that make it worth owning a console even if you game primarily on the PC If you donrsquot game on the PC and only use this platform for overclocking then the incentive for purchasing a console should be even greater because despite how easy it is these days to just power on a PC and play Itrsquos still a far simpler process on any one of the modern day systems This is part of the reason why Irsquove owned an XBOX and a Playstation along with a PC for as long as Irsquove been a part of this magazine The other reason is that games such as ldquoThe Last of Usrdquo are incredible pieces of art that unfortunately can only be experienced on these dedicated gaming platforms Given that we power users enthusiasts and competitive overclockers have an incredibly high hardware turn over therersquos no financial reason not to own any one of these systems Consider that each is around $400 itrsquos not much given that we regularly buy CPUs memory graphics cards that cost significantly more At the very least we buy similarly priced components repeatedly in an attempt to find that golden sample or set

Even more important is that during the production of this magazine I happened to watch TheWitcher Wild Hunt 35min video footage If yoursquore into that kind of thing do yourself a favor and download the 5GB~ or so video To see it running in its full glory on what I can only assume is a high end PC was staggering and was probably the largest contributor in allowing video game art on the cover That doesnrsquot mean the magazine is changing in any way it is still primarily focused on matters of the overclocking ecosystem enthusiasts related technologies and gaming (in that order I might add) We have just given ourselves creative license to create what can be an even more visually inspiring magazine With that said enjoy this issue of TheOverclocker If you have any thoughts yoursquod like to share with us do feel free to write in Until next time do take care and keep pushing

[ Neo Sibeko - Editor ]

4 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The Overclocker is published by OCL-Media (cc)

EditorNeo Sibeko

Art DirectorChris Savides

Marketing amp SalesJayda Wu

Contributors Dane RemendesPieter-Jan ldquoMassmanrdquo PlaisierTimotheacutee Pineau

For editorial and marketing please contact

jaydatheoverclockercomorneotheoverclockercom

REGULARS3 - Editorrsquos note

6 - Interview with DanielldquoDancoprdquo Schier

41 - OCTV Show Episode 5

FEATURES12 ndash The Power of 8 Cores - 5960X

42 ndash Gaming Arsenal - Mouse Round up

REVIEWS18 ndash ASUS Maximus VII Formula

22 ndash MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

26 ndash ASRock Z97 OC Formula

30 ndash EVGA Z97 Classified

34 ndash GIGABYTE Z97X G1 Gaming Wifi BK

42 ndash ASUS ROG Striker

46 - SAPPHIRE Radeon 290X Vapor-X

LIFESTYLE50 - The Last Of Us Re-Mastered

52 ndash MSI GT72 Dominator

26

6 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Q Awith Daniel ldquoDancoprdquo SchierCountry Name and City

I live in Germany in the city of Sinsheim Irsquom married with three children and two dogs

What language(s) do you speak German English a lil bit Spanish

and Frenchhellipbut not enough to negotiate

Where does your nickname ldquoDancoprdquo come from

Thatrsquos a funny story It was the first need for speed title with cops in it My nickname in that game was Dancop ndash symbioses between Daniel and cophellipeasy isnrsquot it (Sure is ndashEd)

When did you begin overclocking with LN2 and what is it about LN2 that has you hooked

My first Dry Ice experience was on the 7th of June 2013 and my first LN2 experience was at the freeocen session last year on the 24th of June

Initially it was Roman (der8auer) and Andy (Benchbros) who ldquoforcedrdquo me to do it Evil - people would sayhellipRoman just wanted to sell more pots ndash but seriously I think these two guys followed my progress in the enthusiast league for years In the end I was pretty good there Then Andy started persuading me ndash without much success Roman visited me for a regular meetingthen what a surprise He brought a pot and dice I just asked why He said try it and here I am

But before then I was a great fan of Vince He was the initial reason Istarted overclocking Due to him I entered the enthusiast league and at least HWBOT Right now I have the honor to write with him on Facebook and he answers D

Between 2D and 3D benchmarks

which are your favourite Which do you feel is harder and which is more reliant on hardware binning if therersquos a difference at all

When you look at my first sub-zero results they were all done with GPUs (Epic -Ed) My first LN2 session I did alone was with an e-powered Titan I love 3D although I have to learn a lot 2D was a lot harder forme to compete with other more experienced overclockers at I think both 2D and 3D have their own pros and cons Binning cpus is for sure for 2D In the past 3 month especially as preparation for MOA Irsquove done a lot pf 32m and Irsquove learned a lot During this time I was pretty good but my CPU died sadly

Yoursquove just come off a strong finish at the GIGABYTE EOC 2014 competition with IckeampEr How was that competition for you in general and what are

your thoughts on it and perhaps suggestions for future competitions

It was a really nice competition especially at the point we re-mounted everything Our pot only sat on half of the CPU ndash which Im pretty sure was responsible for us not having won any stage I like such competitions because everyone is limited by time and LUCK You need at least a strong CPU which we obviously had IckeampEr had never benched haswell before but he had a lot of experience with older hardware This combined with my experience on haswell was the key to our success

Regarding future competitions I can only say Irsquod love to see more I wouldnt change any competition Each of those have their own character For the Gigabyte EOC Irsquod like to see it at least European wide ndash why not worldwide

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 7

Online or live competitions which do you prefer and why

As I said earlier I love all types of competition except where I canrsquot compete obviously Seriously though each competition is so much work in regards to organisation prizes validation of results and so on I really donrsquot have a preference Sure online you have enough time and you can always improve your scores while live competition involves a lot of luck It all depends on the provided hardware but hey that makes it interesting doesnrsquot it

Currently yoursquore sitting at 14 in the Elite league are you making it a point to go higher or is that just not important to you

Indeed it was very important and for my ego it is still very important Climbing up this ranking gave me some attention from vendors At present I have letrsquos say good support

There are some things which could be improved upon such as CPU and DRAM support but I like my situation right now I did a lot in the past to warrant this kind of support

My real profession is industrial engineering I studied a lot of strategic marketing and that is what I would like to give back to the vendors When they send me something my first goal is ndash breaking a record with that hardware in order to support their sales (That is honest and direct a rarity in this community at least publicly ndash Ed)

What is your favourite graphics card or platform to overclock

Oh thatrsquos easy ndash everything thatrsquos fun I mean when yoursquore an overclocker

you want to get the most out of the hardware The best scenario is to get more out of it than others I have no preference be it Intel NVidia or AMD I prefer the fastest for the given benchmark

8 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Other than overclocking what do you do for a living or any other hobby that you spend as much time on as overclocking if not more

One thing is clear ndash there isnrsquot a dime I have that I donrsquot invest in overclocking except for my family I am happily married and I have two stepchildren as well as one own child Overclocking sometimes is like a backlog of time I think every overclocker knows what I mean At least each Madame at an overclockerrsquos side knows that

Regarding vendor support do you feel vendors do enough or would you like to see a more structured and transparent support system By that I mean how would you feel about a situation where everyone knows who is being supported by which vendor

First of all ndash vendors do enough I mean they donrsquot have to do anything But to be more concrete on your question I think it is hard to make it more structured If you wanna climb a ranking you should be free in the choice of your preferred hardware Structure is always something like a duty to use that motherboard or

that GPU Regarding the pro-cup itrsquos almost impossible to compete when yoursquore forced to use only this particular brand

On the other hand I donrsquot have any issues with being the face of a vendor but then wersquore not talking about sponsorship but contracts

The second part of your question is easily answered when you look at my profile on HWBOT ndash there you can see all my sponsors

As one of the most active users on the BOT how often do you have overclocking sessions

At least twice a month (thatrsquos what I say to my wife) but to be honest once a week

Itrsquos a well-known fact that Germany has a huge DIY market at least from the vendor side Does that mean yoursquore seeing progressively more overclockers in your region or has it been the same number of people participating

I donrsquot see a distinguishable increase in overclockers ndash sadly I wish that were the case but that

task falls to media Gaming is much more popular than overclocking I do see huge improvement regarding that issue OCTV does a great job We get more and more attention as overclocking is no longer a stupid money and time wasting hobby

Letrsquos take me for example I was always afraid of the water condensation which was the problem not overclocking at sub-zero temperatures We need more guides more popularity public shows and tutorials and so on

Any hardware yoursquore looking forward to this year Granted X99 is here what are your thoughts on the platform in general

For sure all kinds of new GPUs and yeah ndash X99 will be a lot of fun I think this will bring us some insane results in the multithreaded benchmarks Considering itrsquos the architecture of the well-known Haswell perhaps will see a little decrease in CPU clocks and much more difficult behaviour regarding CB and CBB compared to X79 Who knows maybe Intel did some nice improvements regarding that

10 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In your experience have you had better luck with 4770Ks or are the 4790K CPUs on average for you much better overclockers

For sure the early batches of the 4770K were much better than the 4790K

Finding an old 4770K that does 62GHz 32m is much easier than finding a 4790K that does that I had such luck after my dead 4770K to find such a chip which died as well But on average I think the 4770K are the better choice

What is your favourite Z97 motherboard right now

All of them have their pros and cons I tried the Mpower Xpower M7H M7F M7G Gigabyte SOC force and LN2 Irsquod love to test the Asrock one but havenrsquot been able to yet

To make one thing clear the improvements on each z97 compared to z87 are pretty small Asus was

great even on z87 Asrock was one of the best regarding mem and max CPU clock Right now you can reach almost all results on another vendorrsquos board ndash with more or less work

What is your single greatest or most memorable overclocking achievement

Those are the littlr things Like 2666 6-10-6 on the MSI Xpower in 32m

Things like an insane XTU score with low clocks What I will really keep in mind though was my success in the Gigabyte catzilla challenge I did 3 sessions to get that score I truly learned how the card was to be treated At that moment when I saw the result I stopped and drank a beer It was my goal to achieve at the least 43000 points and I got it No matter what others scored I wanted to get that score and I did it

Anything yoursquod like to see changed in the overclocking community

As I had mentioned earlier media Push and promote our community and stop treating us like isolated noobs I think we spend a lot of time and money including effort into achieving what we have

Any other ideas or opinions you would like to share with the community and vendors regarding overclocking hardware or anything related

Coolermaster began to sponsor a team with LN2 for the pro-cup Irsquod like to see similar initiatives from other vendors Not necessarily the same way but perhaps at contests Sure winning money is pretty nice but why not spend that on a contract for the winner

Those things can be discussed its thatrsquos just an idea for the vendors Think about it

[ The Overclocker ]

12 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos finally arrived The long awaited 8 core behemoth from INTEL has landed and it couldnrsquot have come sooner

After years of being limited (and I use that word loosely) to 12 threads on the desktop barring the EVGA solutions we as the enthusiast community finally have 16 thread threads of processing power to tap into As INTEL shows in its slides since 2003 up until this CPU computing performance for the high end desktop has increased by a factor of 40 or more Thatrsquos incredible in just over a decade Roughly the same financial investment in the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition of 11 years ago today nets you forty times the performance Looking at it iteratively may obscure this fact but itrsquos only when taking it all in that you realize the remarkable progress thatrsquos been made in the last ten years It would have been ideal if we could boot up an old Extreme Edition based system from that time period and compared it to what we have here but that is only fascinating in theory In practice the frustration of having to deal with what would be an excruciatingly slow testing session would quickly shatter all nostalgia for the system

More pressing is how this new CPU affects modern day computing tasks in comparison

to what INTEL delivered just a year ago with Ivy-Bridge E CPUs That user space is likely the most affected by this CPU and that which stands to gain the most from it all We are specifically concerned with the 5960X here not the 5930K or the 5820KThose we will look at another time Right now we are primarily concerned with the additional two cores thus four threads INTEL has enabled on their dies that function as desktop processors Itrsquos not easily looking at the CPU in isolation from the new platform socket DRAM generation and motherboards that support it all There are minute to significant changes in each area but wersquoll not tackle any of that here Once again as with the other CPUs available for the socket wersquoll deal with them another time

Since the INTEL Core i7 980X in 2010 (feels like itrsquos been far longer than that) wersquove been content with the small increments in performance due solely to IPC improvements From Gulftown to Ivy-Bridge 12 was the magic number Provided we had the thread count our chosen applications (in our context - overclocking) this mattered above all else For the longest time perhaps even up to the earlier this year a good 12 thread CPU would be enough to keep you and your team competitive without necessarily having to invest in the latest

INTEL Core i7 5960X

THE POWER OF

8

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 13

CPU For all intents and purposes a good 3960X or perhaps even a 3930K would see you through It would not perhaps take you to the top of the leagues but it would keep you competitive This brings us to another point which is that we have a situation with this CPU that makes it financially unviable to bin CPUs (that is if yoursquore not sponsored in some form) unless you have very deep pockets Unlike with Sandy-Bridge E or its successor the highest end Haswell-E SKU has a tangible and insurmountable advantage over its ldquocheaperrdquo stable mates It is not feasible anymore to use a golden sample 5930K for instance to beat the competitors who are equipped with the 5960X The two CPUs are

not in the same league performance wise and since this is the platform we employ for the multi-threaded benchmarks cores matter perhaps as much as frequency

In case there are those who are unaware for some reason The 5960X is based on the same architecture as the other two CPUs the only besides clock frequency is the L3 cache size at a hefty (by todayrsquos standards) 20MB and obviously all eight cores enabled as opposed to 6 For this difference the price premium is almost $500 steep perhaps but nothing wersquove not seen before More importantly it is easier to justify the price premium unlike before where the gains were minimal between the two most

As soon as the Embargo lifted we

had a number of records including

BenchBros new CineBench R15 World Record An impressive 5960X sample

approaching 6GHz Over 800 points higher than the

previous 8 core CPU record at 1503

14 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

expensive SKUs on the X79 platform Itrsquos no secret that INTEL has been

embracing the enthusiast and more specifically the overclocking community more than it has historically The changes made to their CPUs in the performance and HEDT platforms are a testament to this Artificial limitations are being eradicated at an alarming rate and with the 4790K for instance a conscious effort to improve overclocking was made If this paid on in practical terms is another issue entirely but the effort was made and that is a commendable attitude or position for a company that is in essence without meaningful competition in this space

Does the 5960X warrant its price tag but more especially the excitement and buzz The answer is a resounding yes Given that it has the same retail value as the outgoing 4960X but provides real tangible performance gains It makes a far more convincing argument for itself than perhaps any other INTEL CPU has in this space Even if you have no interest in competitive overclocking at all the 5960X throws itrsquos weight around effectively culling compute times significantly across the vast majority of suits that that are designed to take advantage of multiple threads let alone the new instruction sets made available From Adobe Premier Pro Blender to Virtual Dub and more there are plenty of programs that will instantly show gains by running on this CPU The loss in frequency in comparison to the 4960X or any other CPU for that matter is meaningless compared to what is gained Losing 600MHz is a lot and perhaps even more than one would think four extra

threads would compensate for but if you need the single thread performance and frequency then you have the 4790K For everything else therersquos nothing better than the 5960X

Since the platforms launch recently wersquove witnessed some remarkable results in all the relevant benchmarks on HWBOT In the mathematicalcompute benchmarks like wPrime Cinebench XTU (otherwise known as 3D benchmarks) the new ldquorecordsrdquo and milestone are not in how much faster the new CPU is over the 4960X but itrsquos that therersquos competition in the 8X CPU category where there previously wasnrsquot any in comparison This doesnrsquot mean of course that the 4 and 6X categories are no longer worth the pursuit it merely allows for a more competitive landscape with more options than before This isnrsquot the case in the graphics benchmarks where the thread count advantage of the 5960X will effectively retire the hex core CPUs Itrsquos still very early in the platformrsquos lifetime and wersquoll have to wait and see how it all plays out Suffice to say the 5960X changes the landscape dramatically

X99 BRIEFLY It doesnrsquot take keen insight to come to the conclusion that for the 5960X to be as effective as it is it needs a strong underlying platform or chipset To that end we have a few changes to the chipset There isnrsquot a game changer if you exclude the support for DDR4 but it the changes do bring INTELrsquos HEDT platform a little in line with what the Z97 offers Sorely missed on the X79 chipset was native support for USB

8-Pack unleashed a SLI Firestrike Extreme record of 15011 nearly 1000 points higher than the previous record as soon as the embargo lifted

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 15

30 which INTEL has remedied by allowing a total of 14 USB ports directly from the Chipset eight of which are the older USB20 type and the remaining six super speed 30 This will hopefully get rid of those 3rd party controllers which were always an unnecessary cost to X79 motherboards In addition to that the number of SATA ports supported by the chipset increases from the previous six to ten but all of them support SATA 6Gbps Between these two changes it could eliminate the need for two additional third party ICs on the motherboard which should in theory allow cheaper manufacturing and lower prices to the end user

INTEL states that the chipset and more specifically the 5930K and 5960X support 40 PCI Express lanes This is identical to what we had before with the X79 chipset however natively supported configurations or distribution of these lanes seems to have changed For instance on the X79 platform INTEL offered the following schemes 2x16 amp 1x8 2x 16 amp 3x8 and finally 1x16 amp 2x8 amp 2x4 which is enough to support 4-Way SLICrossfire natively However with the X99 Chipset it looks as if the configurations have been simplified to 2x16 amp 1x8 or 5x8 The first Lane routing and distribution is familiar but the second and potentially the most interesting configuration of 5x8 is dependent on additional 3rd party logic Not in the sense that a the familiar PLX switching chip is necessary but that this configuration isnrsquot natively supported by the chipset but it is a

possible one provided the necessary logic is added to the particular motherboard Thus not all motherboards will be able to use all these schemes

We are particularly interested in what vendors will do with these new possibilities especially with M2 popularity already surpassing that of mSATA which just never got off the ground As a result of the chipset also offering more PCI-Express 30 lanes than Z97 therersquos potential to see better M2 performance as well for the vendors that choose to make use of more lanes on their solution than the standard 10Gbps we see on the majority of motherboards There simply isnrsquot a need to be as conservative with PCI-Express bandwidth Howe vendors will choose to use this chipset will vary and wersquoll be looking at that in all the X99 motherboard reviews to follow in future Until then we have to say that even the most basic motherboards for this chipset are offering a compelling set of features that we have longed for but were missing on all but the very high end X79 motherboards

GAMINGIt should come as little to no surprise to anyone that the 5960X offers no advantage in gaming over the 4960X or the Z97 CPUs for that matter If anything this CPU could be a little slower as a result of the drastically reduced operating frequency Fortunately the fact that it has no apparent advantage here in gaming does not mean that it is ldquoslowerrdquo or offers a sub-optimal gaming

Gunslinger pushed out an impressive 26417 in 3DMark

Firestrike Extreme this time over 1000

points higher than the previous record

set by 8-Pack

16 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

experience to the contrary Games are almost always GPU bound and have been so for at least a decade A faster CPU for the same architecture has not netted any benefit in gaming performance several generations of platforms Wersquove grown accustomed to this and things are no different today Games are simply unable to take advantage of more than four threads Thatrsquos why even today there are many gamers using older generation CPUs such as the Core i5 2500K and are enjoying the highest fidelity in visuals on the most modern and demanding games

or that very reason the 5960X does more than well enough in gaming In

the 5960X delivered identical performance the 4790K The GPU was the limiting factor here This would probably not be the case in a 4-way SLI or rossfire s but then wersquod either be looking at ridiculously high frame rates that have diminished academic va and even less practical

with no measurable performance difference between all the CPUs outside the margin of error Gaming at UHD4K resolutions across multiple screens however maybe a different story as the bandwidth advantage for the X79 and X99 CPUs would be clear but those are very extreme situations If you do game like that therersquos no denying that yoursquoll need a CPU such as this one to full utilize all the rendering power you have at your disposal

IN CLOSINGIf the X79 chipset is anything to go by X99 will be with us for a very long time perhaps

anywhere between one to three years Therersquos certainly no reason for INTEL to usher in a new platform or CPUs anytime soon The 5960X in particular is a sizeable leap forward in computing performance It comes with the penalty of a higher TDP at 140W but that is a negligible cost compared to the dramatically increased threading performance it gives over the 4960X The only losers in power consumption are the 5930K and 5820K They do represent an improvement in IPC over their predecessors but that improvement is minute in comparison If you are currently making use of the 4930K therersquos little to perhaps no practical reason to upgrade to the 5930K purely for IPC increase As an entire platform change there are merits to this

We didnrsquotrsquo get a lot of time to spend with the Core i7 5960X before this issue was due but we were impressed with the CPU almost instantly The motherboards this time around unlike with X79 are in a better state upon arrival There will be continued refreshes no doubt and with each firmware update they will get better so will the overclocking results We already have 6GHz capable CPUs and while we may not see speeds much faster than this the number of CPUs capable of this frequency is sure to increase as INTEL refine their process along with the ever improving motherboard firmware It is early in the platforms existence but the 5960X has delivered more than we could have expected and we are thoroughly impressed with what INTEL has done here The worldrsquos first true 8-core desktop system has arrived and it is in one word Mighty

[ The OverClocker ]

GAMING GEARAWARD

18 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos not often that we find ourselves testing and writing any kind of

editorial on ASUS Formula motherboards Usually itrsquos the Extreme Impact and that kind of SKU This time we have the MAXIMUS VII Formula The highest end Z97 SKU from ASUS at present and it shows in pricing but

ASUS Maximus VII FormulaRRP $35499 | Website wwwasuscom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

more importantly in the features set

Unlike with the Maximus VI

Extreme for example there is a strong emphasis here on gaming and less so on the overclocking capabilities That is not to say it is unsuitable for extreme overclocking it is to the contrary in fact

ASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps one of the best if not the best looking Z97 boards wersquove seen It has the benefit of aiding

cooling of all the components on the board as well This isnrsquot going to make a world of difference in anything but it does help longevity which is something you may care about considering that yoursquore paying nearly $350 for this piece of engineering Aesthetically then it looks the part and itrsquod be a waste to have it in a windowless case as this one deserves to be seen

What really makes a gaming motherboard these days is an intelligent NIC and a superior audio system both of which are present here Unlike other vendors though ASUS has gone with the INTEL I218V controller which they claim not only has

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 19

lower CPU overhead but a higher throughput as well In addition to that there are some changes to the actual RJ45 port which supposedly help protect the motherboard from lightning strikes and static electricity So itrsquos more than just network traffic Oddly enough ASUS does not claim lower latency with this implementation which is what KILLER network adapters are primarily known for in addition to prioritizing the right kind of traffic when gaming (which this controller does as well via the GameFirst III software)

How beneficial all this is to the end user is debatable but itrsquos innovation nonetheless and wersquod rather have it than

not It all speaks to the quality with which ASUS constructs these gaming motherboards

Second and perhaps even more important is the on-boardaudio solution Given that ASUS can boldly claim to make the best gaming enthusiast grade audio cards and USB DACs (Essence series anyone) itrsquos fitting that wersquod expect nothing but the best here To that end the MAXIMUS VII delivers in spades with a components list unlike any other vendors Being different doesnrsquot make it better but when we looked at the kind of equipment that features what ASUS has here it becomes very apparent that these component decisions were at the very least made

ldquoASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps oneof the best if not the bestlooking boards weve seen

20 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

for qualitative reasons in addition to economical ones Any solution that features ELNA audio capacitors paired with WIMA caps a Cirrus Logic DAC and a TI op-amp is going to impress you to some degree The only part of this entire equation which we canrsquot fathom is why ASUS chose the Realtek ALC1150 codec instead of the numerous others available on the market Therersquos nothing wrong with the ALC1150 per se but given that it is supported by such superior components which no doubt have added to the cost of the motherboard it is puzzling to find this CODEC on such a motherboard

The weakest link is here but you can be guaranteed that this is the best use of this CODEC on the market currently

Competing vendors have made it a point to highlight that there are specific USB ports located at the rear which are meant to have your keyboard and mouse plugged into These ports are supposedly low latency ports with a high polling frequency and more often than not feature some kind of gold plating for better contacts We can confirm that therersquos absolutely no difference between these ports and any other USB port on the motherboard in gaming

or in how your keyboard functions With the ASUS KeyBot however therersquos some ingenuity which allows you to assign almost any keyboard Macro functionality even if said keyboard does not have these features This little chip allows you to program a variety of functionality to any keyboard including cold booting the system into specific states and booting directly to the UEFI so you essentially donrsquotrsquo need a dedicated Direct to BIOS key Once again this is a nifty little feature that is many times more useful than the supposed gaming ports that others may tout on their products

This brings us to the motherboards performance There are many aspects of the Maximus VII Formula that we havenrsquot covered but we could not possibly write about an ROG motherboard without analysis of how it performs in an overclocking context Yes this is geared towards the premium gaming crowd but even then it should not preclude one from being competitive at the highest levels of overclocking This is where the power of the ASUS UEFI comes into play The interface is laid out simply and intuitively It is very detailed but most of the functionality and options are explained thoroughly eliminating any

guess work you may need to do Itrsquos a sublime interface that is not terribly exciting but is thoroughly detailed and simple to navigate Tuning memory on this motherboard is splendid because with every setting there is some kind of assistance letting you know what it is yoursquore tuning and how it may affect overclocking or stability Should it all go pear shaped you can always revert to safe settings using the MemOK button Speaking of which this button is located in the most inconvenient place on the motherboard where itrsquos very close to the edge of the aforementioned top cover It is reachable but perhaps another location would have been better

It should not come as a surprise that the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M time of all Z97 motherboards wersquove tested to date This lead was small but it was there and we couldnrsquot match it with other boards with similar timings You can rest assured that whatever limits you hit with the MVIIF they are due to your CPU or memory but not the motherboard as it is robust as it is finely tuned Thus far wersquove yet to find any vendor or any motherboard in fact that can marry gaming and overclocking so well on a single product For those

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 21

Summary

Would you buy it

No vendor balances gaming and overclocking features the way ASUS does with the Maximus range This one is geared entirely at the gaming crowd and it delivers in spades The features are numerous and the aesthetics unmatched Itrsquos a grand motherboard only a few hairs short of perfection

Yes

who happen to have the ROG control panel yoursquoll be happy to know that the MAXIMUS VII Formula is fully compatible with it and all the functionality you had on the MAXIMUS VI for example yoursquoll find here as well With just the addition of that panel alone (which isnrsquot included with the FORMULA by the way) therersquoll be few things if any you can do with the Z87 extreme board that you cannot do with this motherboard

Once again the package which ASUS provides and its presentation is second to none Wersquove been impressed to no end by other ASUS boards like the Rampage IV

Black Edition for example This isnrsquot that kind of product No this is an evolution of the already great MAXIMUS VI Formula Itrsquos the little changes here and there that culminate into the best Formula motherboard ASUS has ever created From where we stand there arenrsquot any boards which cater to high end gamers and enthusiasts like this one does Itrsquos the best combination of features available today for its intended market If yoursquore building the ultimate Z97 gaming machine and are unwilling to compromise the MAXIMUS VII Formula just may be what you need

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

MAXIMUS VII Formula (Tuned)

124178 41139 42115 39878 16372 1222 29826Graphics 17888 Hardware 28807Physics 13314

ASUS MAXIMUS VII Formula

124677 33332 41923 36199 16307 1202 29736Graphics 17810 Hardware 28725Physics 13207

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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Neo
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Neo
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the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M13time of all Z97 motherboards weve tested to date
Neo
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Neo
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Hardware Award

22 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSIrsquos overclocking motherboards have come a long

way With hits and misses along the journey the last couple of years have resulted in solid progress and improvements all around The biggest criticism leveled at MSI motherboards was almost always weak memory overclocking

MSI Z97 XPOWER ACRRP $37999 | Website wwwmsicom

Test Machinebull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

capacity or capability Given just how important this is it became somewhat of a forgone conclusion that MSI motherboards were not capable of extracting the most out of your hardware After all other than memory there really isnrsquot anything else you can tune on a motherboard as the end user It is in this regard that this stigma followed MSIrsquos boards even when they did not deserve it (which they havenrsquot for a while)

With the Z97 XPOWER and

perhaps even the MPOWER itrsquos a whole different story At least from our perspective there isnrsquot anything about the XPOWER that makes it incapable of memory

overclocking compared to other OC focused offerings on the market In our tests it was truly the limitation of the CPU if anything that prevented any further tuning or frequency scaling that might have been possible What is worth saying though is that we did find it takes a higher voltage across the board to reach the same frequencies or at least tune it to the same efficiency as compared to the other motherboards This isnrsquot anything that should endanger your components at all (especially SAMSUNG memory) but it is worth keepingin mind that what is stable on another motherboard and not so on the XPOWER could simply be a matter of needing to use a higher voltage

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 23

What that means or says about the power delivery on MSI motherboards we will leave for you to decide but it certainly isnrsquot anything we would take away points for On the flip side to this we found that the MSI board mustered up some truly incredible numbers and efficiency wise matched all other boards

we tested and in some cases even exceeded them This is perhaps not because the other motherboards are not capable but by way of the vast array of options MSI brings to their UEFI In addition to this the effect such options have on overclocking and recommended setting help greatly As with all

motherboards we have previously found to be immaculate the entire experience of overclocking is a learning one One is better at overclocking and tuning memory across the board after having used the XPOWER and this is something that not only inspires confidence in the user but allows one to appreciate the exhaustive features presented by MSI and their efforts We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower because MSI has truly brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard ever Is this a perfect board Well - no it isnrsquot but for the most part its close enough What prevents us from having the confidence to proclaim it so is the inconsistency we experienced with it This is a major one that we arenrsquot sure how MSI would address but there certainly has to be a solution to this and it could be a simple matter of a UEFI option (it most certainly is) that is not user tunable or should be tuned by default by

24 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

the engineers During testing we only used settings that are Hyper Pi 32M stable Regular Super Pi 32M isnrsquot good enough and to make sure that we were not running a system that may keel over at any time or represent settings that we may not be able to repeat in future we made sure that both normal and tuned benchmark results were Hyper Pi 32M capable Itrsquos not Prime95 but itrsquos a pretty intense test that is very much indicative of systems stability

We would configure the system and it would appear stable running endless loops of any given benchmark then after a single reboot the system would fail to POST This was an intermittent issue When the board did recover just to make doubly sure that it was not overly aggressive memory tuning we would decrease the memory frequency to 2133MHz and even lower to just 1600MHz However we would experience the same failure to POST at

settings that were previously rock solid At this point we would have to clear the CMOS and start over again loading the profile and lo and behold it would work A subsequent reboot would be fine only for it to fail on the third attempt This was very frustrating as there was no way of knowing what it was exactly that was causing the issue Wersquove not had this issue with any other motherboard and it is certainly an isolated case with this XPOWER Perhaps it is just our perfect combination of hardware but whatever it was it marred what was otherwise an incredible experience

That aside MSI has really gone to town with the features and package MSI has all the necessary switches and buttons you expect They are not as numerous as what yoursquod find on the Z97X-SOC Force for example but they more than cover all the basics and a bit more For $380 USD one does expect to have every option available and in this

regard the XPOWER gets it right We would appreciate having a ldquoMem OKrdquo like feature as on the numerous ASUS motherboards and it would be great if there werenrsquot a limited number of ground points for V-check There are three points which is an improvement over the older boards however you can check more than three voltages at any given time so why there arenrsquot any more ground points is anybodyrsquos guess

Much like the UEFI options

the package that MSI has put together with the XPOWER is incredible including a CPU core guard for those adventurous souls who have taken it upon themselves to remove the heat spreader on the CPU The core is very delicate and the Delid Guard will make sure your CPU pot does not crush the core or apply uneven pressure which is likely to destroy the CPU

To further assist those cooling with LN2 therersquos a fan bracket which you may use to

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 25

Summary

Would you buy it

MSIrsquos steady improvements in motherboard and BIOS design have finally paid off with the Z97 generation There are so many features on the board and BIOS that MSI can probably claim to have as many and perhaps even more tuning options than any other vendor on the market Itrsquos incredible to see just how refined a product the Z97 XPOWER AC is

At a maringally lower price

mount any standard fan for extracting or directing LN2 fumes away from the POT and surrounding areas This is a small convenience that is an added bonus to an already impressive package The focus with which MSI has designed the XPOWER is commendable to say the least All the bases have been covered and MSI has gone the extra mile to deliver what overclockers had asked of MSI for years

Does it justify the retail price Well you have to determine that yourself Given that it automatically makes you legible for MOA qualification but costs about as much as an of the other high end Z79 motherboards then itrsquos certainly worth the investment The XPOWER does many things right but has a few kinks that prevent

it from being a definitive board for the chipset Wersquod not however say that therersquos an outright superior boardon the market as that would not be true Ultimately it will come down to what you are willing to pay for and what you may sacrifice We do suspect that these motherboards will end up in many high end gaming machines as well and even in that context the XPOWER does deliver the goods As MSIrsquos most high end Z79 offering the XPOWER is probably more than we could have ever expected it to be and it does leave us with a very positive and lasting impression If you have the cash and are not moved by any one of the other motherboards at the very high end do give serious thought to the MSI Z97 XPOWER itrsquos the best one yet

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 3DMark Sky Diver Catzilla 720P

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC (Tuned)

124474 41104 42133 39878 16279 30950 29755Graphics 17858 Graphics 43190 Hardware 28749

Physics 13117 Physics 13463

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 30708 29851Graphics 17841 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190 Physics 13215

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

126295 27555 33523 29876 15963 30689 29803Graphics 17870 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28828

Physics 12047 Physics 13012

Neo
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We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower 13as MSI has brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard yet
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26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
Typewritten Text
at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
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Neo
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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Neo
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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
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Neo
Typewritten Text
GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
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Neo
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Neo
Typewritten Text

2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 2: TheOverclocker Issue 31

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 3

THE SAME BUT BETTER

So herersquos another issue of TheOverclocker This time there is an unusual high amount of review

content This was caused mainly by INTELrsquos release schedule and the bi-monthly nature of the magazine coming together at a very specific time to result in this issues content As you can imagine with each new CPU -mainly the 4790K- therersquos a platform or chipset rather to go with it As if that wasnrsquot enough just two weeks and a bit ago we had the new X99 platform show up So that is obviously the big hurrah for 2014 Hence in this issue we are looking at no fewer than five motherboards and squeezing in the 5960X

Granted that all of these boards are Z97 offerings itrsquos still a lot to evaluate in the time period we had between the last issue and this one The immediate question that some may have is why didnrsquot we turn that into a feature where we do a direct head to head comparison between all boards Initially that was the idea but it turns out that despite all these vendors competing for your hard earned cash they fundamentally have different price points and evidently priorities with each product How each vendor structures its SKUs has made it nearly impossible to compare them head to head For instance it remains true after all these years that no one company marries overclocking and so called gaming features together like ASUS In the unifying of these two demographics it makes it hard to objectively compare their products with the competition Still therersquos nothing preventing you from reading the individual editorials as if they were a single piece I have to admit as well that during the writing process it felt as if it was a single continuous article

More relevant or rather more immediate is the cover that we have for this issue Itrsquos the first time we have had a game on the cover and no yoursquove not made a mistake and opened another publication This was intentional and spurred on by several factors one of which is that games have far better art than hardware It really is that simple As a publication that prides itself in not only delivering accessible but honest content we genuinely love making great covers We get it right almost all the time but there have been times where we could have done better had we not been limited to just hardware Thus we have The Last of Us adorning our front cover (I should add that Dane our game reviewer is an exceedingly gifted writer)

Why a console game Well why not Face it there are titles that make it worth owning a console even if you game primarily on the PC If you donrsquot game on the PC and only use this platform for overclocking then the incentive for purchasing a console should be even greater because despite how easy it is these days to just power on a PC and play Itrsquos still a far simpler process on any one of the modern day systems This is part of the reason why Irsquove owned an XBOX and a Playstation along with a PC for as long as Irsquove been a part of this magazine The other reason is that games such as ldquoThe Last of Usrdquo are incredible pieces of art that unfortunately can only be experienced on these dedicated gaming platforms Given that we power users enthusiasts and competitive overclockers have an incredibly high hardware turn over therersquos no financial reason not to own any one of these systems Consider that each is around $400 itrsquos not much given that we regularly buy CPUs memory graphics cards that cost significantly more At the very least we buy similarly priced components repeatedly in an attempt to find that golden sample or set

Even more important is that during the production of this magazine I happened to watch TheWitcher Wild Hunt 35min video footage If yoursquore into that kind of thing do yourself a favor and download the 5GB~ or so video To see it running in its full glory on what I can only assume is a high end PC was staggering and was probably the largest contributor in allowing video game art on the cover That doesnrsquot mean the magazine is changing in any way it is still primarily focused on matters of the overclocking ecosystem enthusiasts related technologies and gaming (in that order I might add) We have just given ourselves creative license to create what can be an even more visually inspiring magazine With that said enjoy this issue of TheOverclocker If you have any thoughts yoursquod like to share with us do feel free to write in Until next time do take care and keep pushing

[ Neo Sibeko - Editor ]

4 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The Overclocker is published by OCL-Media (cc)

EditorNeo Sibeko

Art DirectorChris Savides

Marketing amp SalesJayda Wu

Contributors Dane RemendesPieter-Jan ldquoMassmanrdquo PlaisierTimotheacutee Pineau

For editorial and marketing please contact

jaydatheoverclockercomorneotheoverclockercom

REGULARS3 - Editorrsquos note

6 - Interview with DanielldquoDancoprdquo Schier

41 - OCTV Show Episode 5

FEATURES12 ndash The Power of 8 Cores - 5960X

42 ndash Gaming Arsenal - Mouse Round up

REVIEWS18 ndash ASUS Maximus VII Formula

22 ndash MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

26 ndash ASRock Z97 OC Formula

30 ndash EVGA Z97 Classified

34 ndash GIGABYTE Z97X G1 Gaming Wifi BK

42 ndash ASUS ROG Striker

46 - SAPPHIRE Radeon 290X Vapor-X

LIFESTYLE50 - The Last Of Us Re-Mastered

52 ndash MSI GT72 Dominator

26

6 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Q Awith Daniel ldquoDancoprdquo SchierCountry Name and City

I live in Germany in the city of Sinsheim Irsquom married with three children and two dogs

What language(s) do you speak German English a lil bit Spanish

and Frenchhellipbut not enough to negotiate

Where does your nickname ldquoDancoprdquo come from

Thatrsquos a funny story It was the first need for speed title with cops in it My nickname in that game was Dancop ndash symbioses between Daniel and cophellipeasy isnrsquot it (Sure is ndashEd)

When did you begin overclocking with LN2 and what is it about LN2 that has you hooked

My first Dry Ice experience was on the 7th of June 2013 and my first LN2 experience was at the freeocen session last year on the 24th of June

Initially it was Roman (der8auer) and Andy (Benchbros) who ldquoforcedrdquo me to do it Evil - people would sayhellipRoman just wanted to sell more pots ndash but seriously I think these two guys followed my progress in the enthusiast league for years In the end I was pretty good there Then Andy started persuading me ndash without much success Roman visited me for a regular meetingthen what a surprise He brought a pot and dice I just asked why He said try it and here I am

But before then I was a great fan of Vince He was the initial reason Istarted overclocking Due to him I entered the enthusiast league and at least HWBOT Right now I have the honor to write with him on Facebook and he answers D

Between 2D and 3D benchmarks

which are your favourite Which do you feel is harder and which is more reliant on hardware binning if therersquos a difference at all

When you look at my first sub-zero results they were all done with GPUs (Epic -Ed) My first LN2 session I did alone was with an e-powered Titan I love 3D although I have to learn a lot 2D was a lot harder forme to compete with other more experienced overclockers at I think both 2D and 3D have their own pros and cons Binning cpus is for sure for 2D In the past 3 month especially as preparation for MOA Irsquove done a lot pf 32m and Irsquove learned a lot During this time I was pretty good but my CPU died sadly

Yoursquove just come off a strong finish at the GIGABYTE EOC 2014 competition with IckeampEr How was that competition for you in general and what are

your thoughts on it and perhaps suggestions for future competitions

It was a really nice competition especially at the point we re-mounted everything Our pot only sat on half of the CPU ndash which Im pretty sure was responsible for us not having won any stage I like such competitions because everyone is limited by time and LUCK You need at least a strong CPU which we obviously had IckeampEr had never benched haswell before but he had a lot of experience with older hardware This combined with my experience on haswell was the key to our success

Regarding future competitions I can only say Irsquod love to see more I wouldnt change any competition Each of those have their own character For the Gigabyte EOC Irsquod like to see it at least European wide ndash why not worldwide

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 7

Online or live competitions which do you prefer and why

As I said earlier I love all types of competition except where I canrsquot compete obviously Seriously though each competition is so much work in regards to organisation prizes validation of results and so on I really donrsquot have a preference Sure online you have enough time and you can always improve your scores while live competition involves a lot of luck It all depends on the provided hardware but hey that makes it interesting doesnrsquot it

Currently yoursquore sitting at 14 in the Elite league are you making it a point to go higher or is that just not important to you

Indeed it was very important and for my ego it is still very important Climbing up this ranking gave me some attention from vendors At present I have letrsquos say good support

There are some things which could be improved upon such as CPU and DRAM support but I like my situation right now I did a lot in the past to warrant this kind of support

My real profession is industrial engineering I studied a lot of strategic marketing and that is what I would like to give back to the vendors When they send me something my first goal is ndash breaking a record with that hardware in order to support their sales (That is honest and direct a rarity in this community at least publicly ndash Ed)

What is your favourite graphics card or platform to overclock

Oh thatrsquos easy ndash everything thatrsquos fun I mean when yoursquore an overclocker

you want to get the most out of the hardware The best scenario is to get more out of it than others I have no preference be it Intel NVidia or AMD I prefer the fastest for the given benchmark

8 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Other than overclocking what do you do for a living or any other hobby that you spend as much time on as overclocking if not more

One thing is clear ndash there isnrsquot a dime I have that I donrsquot invest in overclocking except for my family I am happily married and I have two stepchildren as well as one own child Overclocking sometimes is like a backlog of time I think every overclocker knows what I mean At least each Madame at an overclockerrsquos side knows that

Regarding vendor support do you feel vendors do enough or would you like to see a more structured and transparent support system By that I mean how would you feel about a situation where everyone knows who is being supported by which vendor

First of all ndash vendors do enough I mean they donrsquot have to do anything But to be more concrete on your question I think it is hard to make it more structured If you wanna climb a ranking you should be free in the choice of your preferred hardware Structure is always something like a duty to use that motherboard or

that GPU Regarding the pro-cup itrsquos almost impossible to compete when yoursquore forced to use only this particular brand

On the other hand I donrsquot have any issues with being the face of a vendor but then wersquore not talking about sponsorship but contracts

The second part of your question is easily answered when you look at my profile on HWBOT ndash there you can see all my sponsors

As one of the most active users on the BOT how often do you have overclocking sessions

At least twice a month (thatrsquos what I say to my wife) but to be honest once a week

Itrsquos a well-known fact that Germany has a huge DIY market at least from the vendor side Does that mean yoursquore seeing progressively more overclockers in your region or has it been the same number of people participating

I donrsquot see a distinguishable increase in overclockers ndash sadly I wish that were the case but that

task falls to media Gaming is much more popular than overclocking I do see huge improvement regarding that issue OCTV does a great job We get more and more attention as overclocking is no longer a stupid money and time wasting hobby

Letrsquos take me for example I was always afraid of the water condensation which was the problem not overclocking at sub-zero temperatures We need more guides more popularity public shows and tutorials and so on

Any hardware yoursquore looking forward to this year Granted X99 is here what are your thoughts on the platform in general

For sure all kinds of new GPUs and yeah ndash X99 will be a lot of fun I think this will bring us some insane results in the multithreaded benchmarks Considering itrsquos the architecture of the well-known Haswell perhaps will see a little decrease in CPU clocks and much more difficult behaviour regarding CB and CBB compared to X79 Who knows maybe Intel did some nice improvements regarding that

10 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In your experience have you had better luck with 4770Ks or are the 4790K CPUs on average for you much better overclockers

For sure the early batches of the 4770K were much better than the 4790K

Finding an old 4770K that does 62GHz 32m is much easier than finding a 4790K that does that I had such luck after my dead 4770K to find such a chip which died as well But on average I think the 4770K are the better choice

What is your favourite Z97 motherboard right now

All of them have their pros and cons I tried the Mpower Xpower M7H M7F M7G Gigabyte SOC force and LN2 Irsquod love to test the Asrock one but havenrsquot been able to yet

To make one thing clear the improvements on each z97 compared to z87 are pretty small Asus was

great even on z87 Asrock was one of the best regarding mem and max CPU clock Right now you can reach almost all results on another vendorrsquos board ndash with more or less work

What is your single greatest or most memorable overclocking achievement

Those are the littlr things Like 2666 6-10-6 on the MSI Xpower in 32m

Things like an insane XTU score with low clocks What I will really keep in mind though was my success in the Gigabyte catzilla challenge I did 3 sessions to get that score I truly learned how the card was to be treated At that moment when I saw the result I stopped and drank a beer It was my goal to achieve at the least 43000 points and I got it No matter what others scored I wanted to get that score and I did it

Anything yoursquod like to see changed in the overclocking community

As I had mentioned earlier media Push and promote our community and stop treating us like isolated noobs I think we spend a lot of time and money including effort into achieving what we have

Any other ideas or opinions you would like to share with the community and vendors regarding overclocking hardware or anything related

Coolermaster began to sponsor a team with LN2 for the pro-cup Irsquod like to see similar initiatives from other vendors Not necessarily the same way but perhaps at contests Sure winning money is pretty nice but why not spend that on a contract for the winner

Those things can be discussed its thatrsquos just an idea for the vendors Think about it

[ The Overclocker ]

12 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos finally arrived The long awaited 8 core behemoth from INTEL has landed and it couldnrsquot have come sooner

After years of being limited (and I use that word loosely) to 12 threads on the desktop barring the EVGA solutions we as the enthusiast community finally have 16 thread threads of processing power to tap into As INTEL shows in its slides since 2003 up until this CPU computing performance for the high end desktop has increased by a factor of 40 or more Thatrsquos incredible in just over a decade Roughly the same financial investment in the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition of 11 years ago today nets you forty times the performance Looking at it iteratively may obscure this fact but itrsquos only when taking it all in that you realize the remarkable progress thatrsquos been made in the last ten years It would have been ideal if we could boot up an old Extreme Edition based system from that time period and compared it to what we have here but that is only fascinating in theory In practice the frustration of having to deal with what would be an excruciatingly slow testing session would quickly shatter all nostalgia for the system

More pressing is how this new CPU affects modern day computing tasks in comparison

to what INTEL delivered just a year ago with Ivy-Bridge E CPUs That user space is likely the most affected by this CPU and that which stands to gain the most from it all We are specifically concerned with the 5960X here not the 5930K or the 5820KThose we will look at another time Right now we are primarily concerned with the additional two cores thus four threads INTEL has enabled on their dies that function as desktop processors Itrsquos not easily looking at the CPU in isolation from the new platform socket DRAM generation and motherboards that support it all There are minute to significant changes in each area but wersquoll not tackle any of that here Once again as with the other CPUs available for the socket wersquoll deal with them another time

Since the INTEL Core i7 980X in 2010 (feels like itrsquos been far longer than that) wersquove been content with the small increments in performance due solely to IPC improvements From Gulftown to Ivy-Bridge 12 was the magic number Provided we had the thread count our chosen applications (in our context - overclocking) this mattered above all else For the longest time perhaps even up to the earlier this year a good 12 thread CPU would be enough to keep you and your team competitive without necessarily having to invest in the latest

INTEL Core i7 5960X

THE POWER OF

8

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 13

CPU For all intents and purposes a good 3960X or perhaps even a 3930K would see you through It would not perhaps take you to the top of the leagues but it would keep you competitive This brings us to another point which is that we have a situation with this CPU that makes it financially unviable to bin CPUs (that is if yoursquore not sponsored in some form) unless you have very deep pockets Unlike with Sandy-Bridge E or its successor the highest end Haswell-E SKU has a tangible and insurmountable advantage over its ldquocheaperrdquo stable mates It is not feasible anymore to use a golden sample 5930K for instance to beat the competitors who are equipped with the 5960X The two CPUs are

not in the same league performance wise and since this is the platform we employ for the multi-threaded benchmarks cores matter perhaps as much as frequency

In case there are those who are unaware for some reason The 5960X is based on the same architecture as the other two CPUs the only besides clock frequency is the L3 cache size at a hefty (by todayrsquos standards) 20MB and obviously all eight cores enabled as opposed to 6 For this difference the price premium is almost $500 steep perhaps but nothing wersquove not seen before More importantly it is easier to justify the price premium unlike before where the gains were minimal between the two most

As soon as the Embargo lifted we

had a number of records including

BenchBros new CineBench R15 World Record An impressive 5960X sample

approaching 6GHz Over 800 points higher than the

previous 8 core CPU record at 1503

14 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

expensive SKUs on the X79 platform Itrsquos no secret that INTEL has been

embracing the enthusiast and more specifically the overclocking community more than it has historically The changes made to their CPUs in the performance and HEDT platforms are a testament to this Artificial limitations are being eradicated at an alarming rate and with the 4790K for instance a conscious effort to improve overclocking was made If this paid on in practical terms is another issue entirely but the effort was made and that is a commendable attitude or position for a company that is in essence without meaningful competition in this space

Does the 5960X warrant its price tag but more especially the excitement and buzz The answer is a resounding yes Given that it has the same retail value as the outgoing 4960X but provides real tangible performance gains It makes a far more convincing argument for itself than perhaps any other INTEL CPU has in this space Even if you have no interest in competitive overclocking at all the 5960X throws itrsquos weight around effectively culling compute times significantly across the vast majority of suits that that are designed to take advantage of multiple threads let alone the new instruction sets made available From Adobe Premier Pro Blender to Virtual Dub and more there are plenty of programs that will instantly show gains by running on this CPU The loss in frequency in comparison to the 4960X or any other CPU for that matter is meaningless compared to what is gained Losing 600MHz is a lot and perhaps even more than one would think four extra

threads would compensate for but if you need the single thread performance and frequency then you have the 4790K For everything else therersquos nothing better than the 5960X

Since the platforms launch recently wersquove witnessed some remarkable results in all the relevant benchmarks on HWBOT In the mathematicalcompute benchmarks like wPrime Cinebench XTU (otherwise known as 3D benchmarks) the new ldquorecordsrdquo and milestone are not in how much faster the new CPU is over the 4960X but itrsquos that therersquos competition in the 8X CPU category where there previously wasnrsquot any in comparison This doesnrsquot mean of course that the 4 and 6X categories are no longer worth the pursuit it merely allows for a more competitive landscape with more options than before This isnrsquot the case in the graphics benchmarks where the thread count advantage of the 5960X will effectively retire the hex core CPUs Itrsquos still very early in the platformrsquos lifetime and wersquoll have to wait and see how it all plays out Suffice to say the 5960X changes the landscape dramatically

X99 BRIEFLY It doesnrsquot take keen insight to come to the conclusion that for the 5960X to be as effective as it is it needs a strong underlying platform or chipset To that end we have a few changes to the chipset There isnrsquot a game changer if you exclude the support for DDR4 but it the changes do bring INTELrsquos HEDT platform a little in line with what the Z97 offers Sorely missed on the X79 chipset was native support for USB

8-Pack unleashed a SLI Firestrike Extreme record of 15011 nearly 1000 points higher than the previous record as soon as the embargo lifted

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 15

30 which INTEL has remedied by allowing a total of 14 USB ports directly from the Chipset eight of which are the older USB20 type and the remaining six super speed 30 This will hopefully get rid of those 3rd party controllers which were always an unnecessary cost to X79 motherboards In addition to that the number of SATA ports supported by the chipset increases from the previous six to ten but all of them support SATA 6Gbps Between these two changes it could eliminate the need for two additional third party ICs on the motherboard which should in theory allow cheaper manufacturing and lower prices to the end user

INTEL states that the chipset and more specifically the 5930K and 5960X support 40 PCI Express lanes This is identical to what we had before with the X79 chipset however natively supported configurations or distribution of these lanes seems to have changed For instance on the X79 platform INTEL offered the following schemes 2x16 amp 1x8 2x 16 amp 3x8 and finally 1x16 amp 2x8 amp 2x4 which is enough to support 4-Way SLICrossfire natively However with the X99 Chipset it looks as if the configurations have been simplified to 2x16 amp 1x8 or 5x8 The first Lane routing and distribution is familiar but the second and potentially the most interesting configuration of 5x8 is dependent on additional 3rd party logic Not in the sense that a the familiar PLX switching chip is necessary but that this configuration isnrsquot natively supported by the chipset but it is a

possible one provided the necessary logic is added to the particular motherboard Thus not all motherboards will be able to use all these schemes

We are particularly interested in what vendors will do with these new possibilities especially with M2 popularity already surpassing that of mSATA which just never got off the ground As a result of the chipset also offering more PCI-Express 30 lanes than Z97 therersquos potential to see better M2 performance as well for the vendors that choose to make use of more lanes on their solution than the standard 10Gbps we see on the majority of motherboards There simply isnrsquot a need to be as conservative with PCI-Express bandwidth Howe vendors will choose to use this chipset will vary and wersquoll be looking at that in all the X99 motherboard reviews to follow in future Until then we have to say that even the most basic motherboards for this chipset are offering a compelling set of features that we have longed for but were missing on all but the very high end X79 motherboards

GAMINGIt should come as little to no surprise to anyone that the 5960X offers no advantage in gaming over the 4960X or the Z97 CPUs for that matter If anything this CPU could be a little slower as a result of the drastically reduced operating frequency Fortunately the fact that it has no apparent advantage here in gaming does not mean that it is ldquoslowerrdquo or offers a sub-optimal gaming

Gunslinger pushed out an impressive 26417 in 3DMark

Firestrike Extreme this time over 1000

points higher than the previous record

set by 8-Pack

16 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

experience to the contrary Games are almost always GPU bound and have been so for at least a decade A faster CPU for the same architecture has not netted any benefit in gaming performance several generations of platforms Wersquove grown accustomed to this and things are no different today Games are simply unable to take advantage of more than four threads Thatrsquos why even today there are many gamers using older generation CPUs such as the Core i5 2500K and are enjoying the highest fidelity in visuals on the most modern and demanding games

or that very reason the 5960X does more than well enough in gaming In

the 5960X delivered identical performance the 4790K The GPU was the limiting factor here This would probably not be the case in a 4-way SLI or rossfire s but then wersquod either be looking at ridiculously high frame rates that have diminished academic va and even less practical

with no measurable performance difference between all the CPUs outside the margin of error Gaming at UHD4K resolutions across multiple screens however maybe a different story as the bandwidth advantage for the X79 and X99 CPUs would be clear but those are very extreme situations If you do game like that therersquos no denying that yoursquoll need a CPU such as this one to full utilize all the rendering power you have at your disposal

IN CLOSINGIf the X79 chipset is anything to go by X99 will be with us for a very long time perhaps

anywhere between one to three years Therersquos certainly no reason for INTEL to usher in a new platform or CPUs anytime soon The 5960X in particular is a sizeable leap forward in computing performance It comes with the penalty of a higher TDP at 140W but that is a negligible cost compared to the dramatically increased threading performance it gives over the 4960X The only losers in power consumption are the 5930K and 5820K They do represent an improvement in IPC over their predecessors but that improvement is minute in comparison If you are currently making use of the 4930K therersquos little to perhaps no practical reason to upgrade to the 5930K purely for IPC increase As an entire platform change there are merits to this

We didnrsquotrsquo get a lot of time to spend with the Core i7 5960X before this issue was due but we were impressed with the CPU almost instantly The motherboards this time around unlike with X79 are in a better state upon arrival There will be continued refreshes no doubt and with each firmware update they will get better so will the overclocking results We already have 6GHz capable CPUs and while we may not see speeds much faster than this the number of CPUs capable of this frequency is sure to increase as INTEL refine their process along with the ever improving motherboard firmware It is early in the platforms existence but the 5960X has delivered more than we could have expected and we are thoroughly impressed with what INTEL has done here The worldrsquos first true 8-core desktop system has arrived and it is in one word Mighty

[ The OverClocker ]

GAMING GEARAWARD

18 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos not often that we find ourselves testing and writing any kind of

editorial on ASUS Formula motherboards Usually itrsquos the Extreme Impact and that kind of SKU This time we have the MAXIMUS VII Formula The highest end Z97 SKU from ASUS at present and it shows in pricing but

ASUS Maximus VII FormulaRRP $35499 | Website wwwasuscom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

more importantly in the features set

Unlike with the Maximus VI

Extreme for example there is a strong emphasis here on gaming and less so on the overclocking capabilities That is not to say it is unsuitable for extreme overclocking it is to the contrary in fact

ASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps one of the best if not the best looking Z97 boards wersquove seen It has the benefit of aiding

cooling of all the components on the board as well This isnrsquot going to make a world of difference in anything but it does help longevity which is something you may care about considering that yoursquore paying nearly $350 for this piece of engineering Aesthetically then it looks the part and itrsquod be a waste to have it in a windowless case as this one deserves to be seen

What really makes a gaming motherboard these days is an intelligent NIC and a superior audio system both of which are present here Unlike other vendors though ASUS has gone with the INTEL I218V controller which they claim not only has

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 19

lower CPU overhead but a higher throughput as well In addition to that there are some changes to the actual RJ45 port which supposedly help protect the motherboard from lightning strikes and static electricity So itrsquos more than just network traffic Oddly enough ASUS does not claim lower latency with this implementation which is what KILLER network adapters are primarily known for in addition to prioritizing the right kind of traffic when gaming (which this controller does as well via the GameFirst III software)

How beneficial all this is to the end user is debatable but itrsquos innovation nonetheless and wersquod rather have it than

not It all speaks to the quality with which ASUS constructs these gaming motherboards

Second and perhaps even more important is the on-boardaudio solution Given that ASUS can boldly claim to make the best gaming enthusiast grade audio cards and USB DACs (Essence series anyone) itrsquos fitting that wersquod expect nothing but the best here To that end the MAXIMUS VII delivers in spades with a components list unlike any other vendors Being different doesnrsquot make it better but when we looked at the kind of equipment that features what ASUS has here it becomes very apparent that these component decisions were at the very least made

ldquoASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps oneof the best if not the bestlooking boards weve seen

20 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

for qualitative reasons in addition to economical ones Any solution that features ELNA audio capacitors paired with WIMA caps a Cirrus Logic DAC and a TI op-amp is going to impress you to some degree The only part of this entire equation which we canrsquot fathom is why ASUS chose the Realtek ALC1150 codec instead of the numerous others available on the market Therersquos nothing wrong with the ALC1150 per se but given that it is supported by such superior components which no doubt have added to the cost of the motherboard it is puzzling to find this CODEC on such a motherboard

The weakest link is here but you can be guaranteed that this is the best use of this CODEC on the market currently

Competing vendors have made it a point to highlight that there are specific USB ports located at the rear which are meant to have your keyboard and mouse plugged into These ports are supposedly low latency ports with a high polling frequency and more often than not feature some kind of gold plating for better contacts We can confirm that therersquos absolutely no difference between these ports and any other USB port on the motherboard in gaming

or in how your keyboard functions With the ASUS KeyBot however therersquos some ingenuity which allows you to assign almost any keyboard Macro functionality even if said keyboard does not have these features This little chip allows you to program a variety of functionality to any keyboard including cold booting the system into specific states and booting directly to the UEFI so you essentially donrsquotrsquo need a dedicated Direct to BIOS key Once again this is a nifty little feature that is many times more useful than the supposed gaming ports that others may tout on their products

This brings us to the motherboards performance There are many aspects of the Maximus VII Formula that we havenrsquot covered but we could not possibly write about an ROG motherboard without analysis of how it performs in an overclocking context Yes this is geared towards the premium gaming crowd but even then it should not preclude one from being competitive at the highest levels of overclocking This is where the power of the ASUS UEFI comes into play The interface is laid out simply and intuitively It is very detailed but most of the functionality and options are explained thoroughly eliminating any

guess work you may need to do Itrsquos a sublime interface that is not terribly exciting but is thoroughly detailed and simple to navigate Tuning memory on this motherboard is splendid because with every setting there is some kind of assistance letting you know what it is yoursquore tuning and how it may affect overclocking or stability Should it all go pear shaped you can always revert to safe settings using the MemOK button Speaking of which this button is located in the most inconvenient place on the motherboard where itrsquos very close to the edge of the aforementioned top cover It is reachable but perhaps another location would have been better

It should not come as a surprise that the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M time of all Z97 motherboards wersquove tested to date This lead was small but it was there and we couldnrsquot match it with other boards with similar timings You can rest assured that whatever limits you hit with the MVIIF they are due to your CPU or memory but not the motherboard as it is robust as it is finely tuned Thus far wersquove yet to find any vendor or any motherboard in fact that can marry gaming and overclocking so well on a single product For those

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 21

Summary

Would you buy it

No vendor balances gaming and overclocking features the way ASUS does with the Maximus range This one is geared entirely at the gaming crowd and it delivers in spades The features are numerous and the aesthetics unmatched Itrsquos a grand motherboard only a few hairs short of perfection

Yes

who happen to have the ROG control panel yoursquoll be happy to know that the MAXIMUS VII Formula is fully compatible with it and all the functionality you had on the MAXIMUS VI for example yoursquoll find here as well With just the addition of that panel alone (which isnrsquot included with the FORMULA by the way) therersquoll be few things if any you can do with the Z87 extreme board that you cannot do with this motherboard

Once again the package which ASUS provides and its presentation is second to none Wersquove been impressed to no end by other ASUS boards like the Rampage IV

Black Edition for example This isnrsquot that kind of product No this is an evolution of the already great MAXIMUS VI Formula Itrsquos the little changes here and there that culminate into the best Formula motherboard ASUS has ever created From where we stand there arenrsquot any boards which cater to high end gamers and enthusiasts like this one does Itrsquos the best combination of features available today for its intended market If yoursquore building the ultimate Z97 gaming machine and are unwilling to compromise the MAXIMUS VII Formula just may be what you need

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

MAXIMUS VII Formula (Tuned)

124178 41139 42115 39878 16372 1222 29826Graphics 17888 Hardware 28807Physics 13314

ASUS MAXIMUS VII Formula

124677 33332 41923 36199 16307 1202 29736Graphics 17810 Hardware 28725Physics 13207

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M13time of all Z97 motherboards weve tested to date
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text

Hardware Award

22 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSIrsquos overclocking motherboards have come a long

way With hits and misses along the journey the last couple of years have resulted in solid progress and improvements all around The biggest criticism leveled at MSI motherboards was almost always weak memory overclocking

MSI Z97 XPOWER ACRRP $37999 | Website wwwmsicom

Test Machinebull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

capacity or capability Given just how important this is it became somewhat of a forgone conclusion that MSI motherboards were not capable of extracting the most out of your hardware After all other than memory there really isnrsquot anything else you can tune on a motherboard as the end user It is in this regard that this stigma followed MSIrsquos boards even when they did not deserve it (which they havenrsquot for a while)

With the Z97 XPOWER and

perhaps even the MPOWER itrsquos a whole different story At least from our perspective there isnrsquot anything about the XPOWER that makes it incapable of memory

overclocking compared to other OC focused offerings on the market In our tests it was truly the limitation of the CPU if anything that prevented any further tuning or frequency scaling that might have been possible What is worth saying though is that we did find it takes a higher voltage across the board to reach the same frequencies or at least tune it to the same efficiency as compared to the other motherboards This isnrsquot anything that should endanger your components at all (especially SAMSUNG memory) but it is worth keepingin mind that what is stable on another motherboard and not so on the XPOWER could simply be a matter of needing to use a higher voltage

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 23

What that means or says about the power delivery on MSI motherboards we will leave for you to decide but it certainly isnrsquot anything we would take away points for On the flip side to this we found that the MSI board mustered up some truly incredible numbers and efficiency wise matched all other boards

we tested and in some cases even exceeded them This is perhaps not because the other motherboards are not capable but by way of the vast array of options MSI brings to their UEFI In addition to this the effect such options have on overclocking and recommended setting help greatly As with all

motherboards we have previously found to be immaculate the entire experience of overclocking is a learning one One is better at overclocking and tuning memory across the board after having used the XPOWER and this is something that not only inspires confidence in the user but allows one to appreciate the exhaustive features presented by MSI and their efforts We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower because MSI has truly brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard ever Is this a perfect board Well - no it isnrsquot but for the most part its close enough What prevents us from having the confidence to proclaim it so is the inconsistency we experienced with it This is a major one that we arenrsquot sure how MSI would address but there certainly has to be a solution to this and it could be a simple matter of a UEFI option (it most certainly is) that is not user tunable or should be tuned by default by

24 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

the engineers During testing we only used settings that are Hyper Pi 32M stable Regular Super Pi 32M isnrsquot good enough and to make sure that we were not running a system that may keel over at any time or represent settings that we may not be able to repeat in future we made sure that both normal and tuned benchmark results were Hyper Pi 32M capable Itrsquos not Prime95 but itrsquos a pretty intense test that is very much indicative of systems stability

We would configure the system and it would appear stable running endless loops of any given benchmark then after a single reboot the system would fail to POST This was an intermittent issue When the board did recover just to make doubly sure that it was not overly aggressive memory tuning we would decrease the memory frequency to 2133MHz and even lower to just 1600MHz However we would experience the same failure to POST at

settings that were previously rock solid At this point we would have to clear the CMOS and start over again loading the profile and lo and behold it would work A subsequent reboot would be fine only for it to fail on the third attempt This was very frustrating as there was no way of knowing what it was exactly that was causing the issue Wersquove not had this issue with any other motherboard and it is certainly an isolated case with this XPOWER Perhaps it is just our perfect combination of hardware but whatever it was it marred what was otherwise an incredible experience

That aside MSI has really gone to town with the features and package MSI has all the necessary switches and buttons you expect They are not as numerous as what yoursquod find on the Z97X-SOC Force for example but they more than cover all the basics and a bit more For $380 USD one does expect to have every option available and in this

regard the XPOWER gets it right We would appreciate having a ldquoMem OKrdquo like feature as on the numerous ASUS motherboards and it would be great if there werenrsquot a limited number of ground points for V-check There are three points which is an improvement over the older boards however you can check more than three voltages at any given time so why there arenrsquot any more ground points is anybodyrsquos guess

Much like the UEFI options

the package that MSI has put together with the XPOWER is incredible including a CPU core guard for those adventurous souls who have taken it upon themselves to remove the heat spreader on the CPU The core is very delicate and the Delid Guard will make sure your CPU pot does not crush the core or apply uneven pressure which is likely to destroy the CPU

To further assist those cooling with LN2 therersquos a fan bracket which you may use to

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 25

Summary

Would you buy it

MSIrsquos steady improvements in motherboard and BIOS design have finally paid off with the Z97 generation There are so many features on the board and BIOS that MSI can probably claim to have as many and perhaps even more tuning options than any other vendor on the market Itrsquos incredible to see just how refined a product the Z97 XPOWER AC is

At a maringally lower price

mount any standard fan for extracting or directing LN2 fumes away from the POT and surrounding areas This is a small convenience that is an added bonus to an already impressive package The focus with which MSI has designed the XPOWER is commendable to say the least All the bases have been covered and MSI has gone the extra mile to deliver what overclockers had asked of MSI for years

Does it justify the retail price Well you have to determine that yourself Given that it automatically makes you legible for MOA qualification but costs about as much as an of the other high end Z79 motherboards then itrsquos certainly worth the investment The XPOWER does many things right but has a few kinks that prevent

it from being a definitive board for the chipset Wersquod not however say that therersquos an outright superior boardon the market as that would not be true Ultimately it will come down to what you are willing to pay for and what you may sacrifice We do suspect that these motherboards will end up in many high end gaming machines as well and even in that context the XPOWER does deliver the goods As MSIrsquos most high end Z79 offering the XPOWER is probably more than we could have ever expected it to be and it does leave us with a very positive and lasting impression If you have the cash and are not moved by any one of the other motherboards at the very high end do give serious thought to the MSI Z97 XPOWER itrsquos the best one yet

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 3DMark Sky Diver Catzilla 720P

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC (Tuned)

124474 41104 42133 39878 16279 30950 29755Graphics 17858 Graphics 43190 Hardware 28749

Physics 13117 Physics 13463

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 30708 29851Graphics 17841 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190 Physics 13215

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

126295 27555 33523 29876 15963 30689 29803Graphics 17870 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28828

Physics 12047 Physics 13012

Neo
Typewritten Text
We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower 13as MSI has brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard yet
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26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
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at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 3: TheOverclocker Issue 31

4 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The Overclocker is published by OCL-Media (cc)

EditorNeo Sibeko

Art DirectorChris Savides

Marketing amp SalesJayda Wu

Contributors Dane RemendesPieter-Jan ldquoMassmanrdquo PlaisierTimotheacutee Pineau

For editorial and marketing please contact

jaydatheoverclockercomorneotheoverclockercom

REGULARS3 - Editorrsquos note

6 - Interview with DanielldquoDancoprdquo Schier

41 - OCTV Show Episode 5

FEATURES12 ndash The Power of 8 Cores - 5960X

42 ndash Gaming Arsenal - Mouse Round up

REVIEWS18 ndash ASUS Maximus VII Formula

22 ndash MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

26 ndash ASRock Z97 OC Formula

30 ndash EVGA Z97 Classified

34 ndash GIGABYTE Z97X G1 Gaming Wifi BK

42 ndash ASUS ROG Striker

46 - SAPPHIRE Radeon 290X Vapor-X

LIFESTYLE50 - The Last Of Us Re-Mastered

52 ndash MSI GT72 Dominator

26

6 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Q Awith Daniel ldquoDancoprdquo SchierCountry Name and City

I live in Germany in the city of Sinsheim Irsquom married with three children and two dogs

What language(s) do you speak German English a lil bit Spanish

and Frenchhellipbut not enough to negotiate

Where does your nickname ldquoDancoprdquo come from

Thatrsquos a funny story It was the first need for speed title with cops in it My nickname in that game was Dancop ndash symbioses between Daniel and cophellipeasy isnrsquot it (Sure is ndashEd)

When did you begin overclocking with LN2 and what is it about LN2 that has you hooked

My first Dry Ice experience was on the 7th of June 2013 and my first LN2 experience was at the freeocen session last year on the 24th of June

Initially it was Roman (der8auer) and Andy (Benchbros) who ldquoforcedrdquo me to do it Evil - people would sayhellipRoman just wanted to sell more pots ndash but seriously I think these two guys followed my progress in the enthusiast league for years In the end I was pretty good there Then Andy started persuading me ndash without much success Roman visited me for a regular meetingthen what a surprise He brought a pot and dice I just asked why He said try it and here I am

But before then I was a great fan of Vince He was the initial reason Istarted overclocking Due to him I entered the enthusiast league and at least HWBOT Right now I have the honor to write with him on Facebook and he answers D

Between 2D and 3D benchmarks

which are your favourite Which do you feel is harder and which is more reliant on hardware binning if therersquos a difference at all

When you look at my first sub-zero results they were all done with GPUs (Epic -Ed) My first LN2 session I did alone was with an e-powered Titan I love 3D although I have to learn a lot 2D was a lot harder forme to compete with other more experienced overclockers at I think both 2D and 3D have their own pros and cons Binning cpus is for sure for 2D In the past 3 month especially as preparation for MOA Irsquove done a lot pf 32m and Irsquove learned a lot During this time I was pretty good but my CPU died sadly

Yoursquove just come off a strong finish at the GIGABYTE EOC 2014 competition with IckeampEr How was that competition for you in general and what are

your thoughts on it and perhaps suggestions for future competitions

It was a really nice competition especially at the point we re-mounted everything Our pot only sat on half of the CPU ndash which Im pretty sure was responsible for us not having won any stage I like such competitions because everyone is limited by time and LUCK You need at least a strong CPU which we obviously had IckeampEr had never benched haswell before but he had a lot of experience with older hardware This combined with my experience on haswell was the key to our success

Regarding future competitions I can only say Irsquod love to see more I wouldnt change any competition Each of those have their own character For the Gigabyte EOC Irsquod like to see it at least European wide ndash why not worldwide

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 7

Online or live competitions which do you prefer and why

As I said earlier I love all types of competition except where I canrsquot compete obviously Seriously though each competition is so much work in regards to organisation prizes validation of results and so on I really donrsquot have a preference Sure online you have enough time and you can always improve your scores while live competition involves a lot of luck It all depends on the provided hardware but hey that makes it interesting doesnrsquot it

Currently yoursquore sitting at 14 in the Elite league are you making it a point to go higher or is that just not important to you

Indeed it was very important and for my ego it is still very important Climbing up this ranking gave me some attention from vendors At present I have letrsquos say good support

There are some things which could be improved upon such as CPU and DRAM support but I like my situation right now I did a lot in the past to warrant this kind of support

My real profession is industrial engineering I studied a lot of strategic marketing and that is what I would like to give back to the vendors When they send me something my first goal is ndash breaking a record with that hardware in order to support their sales (That is honest and direct a rarity in this community at least publicly ndash Ed)

What is your favourite graphics card or platform to overclock

Oh thatrsquos easy ndash everything thatrsquos fun I mean when yoursquore an overclocker

you want to get the most out of the hardware The best scenario is to get more out of it than others I have no preference be it Intel NVidia or AMD I prefer the fastest for the given benchmark

8 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Other than overclocking what do you do for a living or any other hobby that you spend as much time on as overclocking if not more

One thing is clear ndash there isnrsquot a dime I have that I donrsquot invest in overclocking except for my family I am happily married and I have two stepchildren as well as one own child Overclocking sometimes is like a backlog of time I think every overclocker knows what I mean At least each Madame at an overclockerrsquos side knows that

Regarding vendor support do you feel vendors do enough or would you like to see a more structured and transparent support system By that I mean how would you feel about a situation where everyone knows who is being supported by which vendor

First of all ndash vendors do enough I mean they donrsquot have to do anything But to be more concrete on your question I think it is hard to make it more structured If you wanna climb a ranking you should be free in the choice of your preferred hardware Structure is always something like a duty to use that motherboard or

that GPU Regarding the pro-cup itrsquos almost impossible to compete when yoursquore forced to use only this particular brand

On the other hand I donrsquot have any issues with being the face of a vendor but then wersquore not talking about sponsorship but contracts

The second part of your question is easily answered when you look at my profile on HWBOT ndash there you can see all my sponsors

As one of the most active users on the BOT how often do you have overclocking sessions

At least twice a month (thatrsquos what I say to my wife) but to be honest once a week

Itrsquos a well-known fact that Germany has a huge DIY market at least from the vendor side Does that mean yoursquore seeing progressively more overclockers in your region or has it been the same number of people participating

I donrsquot see a distinguishable increase in overclockers ndash sadly I wish that were the case but that

task falls to media Gaming is much more popular than overclocking I do see huge improvement regarding that issue OCTV does a great job We get more and more attention as overclocking is no longer a stupid money and time wasting hobby

Letrsquos take me for example I was always afraid of the water condensation which was the problem not overclocking at sub-zero temperatures We need more guides more popularity public shows and tutorials and so on

Any hardware yoursquore looking forward to this year Granted X99 is here what are your thoughts on the platform in general

For sure all kinds of new GPUs and yeah ndash X99 will be a lot of fun I think this will bring us some insane results in the multithreaded benchmarks Considering itrsquos the architecture of the well-known Haswell perhaps will see a little decrease in CPU clocks and much more difficult behaviour regarding CB and CBB compared to X79 Who knows maybe Intel did some nice improvements regarding that

10 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In your experience have you had better luck with 4770Ks or are the 4790K CPUs on average for you much better overclockers

For sure the early batches of the 4770K were much better than the 4790K

Finding an old 4770K that does 62GHz 32m is much easier than finding a 4790K that does that I had such luck after my dead 4770K to find such a chip which died as well But on average I think the 4770K are the better choice

What is your favourite Z97 motherboard right now

All of them have their pros and cons I tried the Mpower Xpower M7H M7F M7G Gigabyte SOC force and LN2 Irsquod love to test the Asrock one but havenrsquot been able to yet

To make one thing clear the improvements on each z97 compared to z87 are pretty small Asus was

great even on z87 Asrock was one of the best regarding mem and max CPU clock Right now you can reach almost all results on another vendorrsquos board ndash with more or less work

What is your single greatest or most memorable overclocking achievement

Those are the littlr things Like 2666 6-10-6 on the MSI Xpower in 32m

Things like an insane XTU score with low clocks What I will really keep in mind though was my success in the Gigabyte catzilla challenge I did 3 sessions to get that score I truly learned how the card was to be treated At that moment when I saw the result I stopped and drank a beer It was my goal to achieve at the least 43000 points and I got it No matter what others scored I wanted to get that score and I did it

Anything yoursquod like to see changed in the overclocking community

As I had mentioned earlier media Push and promote our community and stop treating us like isolated noobs I think we spend a lot of time and money including effort into achieving what we have

Any other ideas or opinions you would like to share with the community and vendors regarding overclocking hardware or anything related

Coolermaster began to sponsor a team with LN2 for the pro-cup Irsquod like to see similar initiatives from other vendors Not necessarily the same way but perhaps at contests Sure winning money is pretty nice but why not spend that on a contract for the winner

Those things can be discussed its thatrsquos just an idea for the vendors Think about it

[ The Overclocker ]

12 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos finally arrived The long awaited 8 core behemoth from INTEL has landed and it couldnrsquot have come sooner

After years of being limited (and I use that word loosely) to 12 threads on the desktop barring the EVGA solutions we as the enthusiast community finally have 16 thread threads of processing power to tap into As INTEL shows in its slides since 2003 up until this CPU computing performance for the high end desktop has increased by a factor of 40 or more Thatrsquos incredible in just over a decade Roughly the same financial investment in the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition of 11 years ago today nets you forty times the performance Looking at it iteratively may obscure this fact but itrsquos only when taking it all in that you realize the remarkable progress thatrsquos been made in the last ten years It would have been ideal if we could boot up an old Extreme Edition based system from that time period and compared it to what we have here but that is only fascinating in theory In practice the frustration of having to deal with what would be an excruciatingly slow testing session would quickly shatter all nostalgia for the system

More pressing is how this new CPU affects modern day computing tasks in comparison

to what INTEL delivered just a year ago with Ivy-Bridge E CPUs That user space is likely the most affected by this CPU and that which stands to gain the most from it all We are specifically concerned with the 5960X here not the 5930K or the 5820KThose we will look at another time Right now we are primarily concerned with the additional two cores thus four threads INTEL has enabled on their dies that function as desktop processors Itrsquos not easily looking at the CPU in isolation from the new platform socket DRAM generation and motherboards that support it all There are minute to significant changes in each area but wersquoll not tackle any of that here Once again as with the other CPUs available for the socket wersquoll deal with them another time

Since the INTEL Core i7 980X in 2010 (feels like itrsquos been far longer than that) wersquove been content with the small increments in performance due solely to IPC improvements From Gulftown to Ivy-Bridge 12 was the magic number Provided we had the thread count our chosen applications (in our context - overclocking) this mattered above all else For the longest time perhaps even up to the earlier this year a good 12 thread CPU would be enough to keep you and your team competitive without necessarily having to invest in the latest

INTEL Core i7 5960X

THE POWER OF

8

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 13

CPU For all intents and purposes a good 3960X or perhaps even a 3930K would see you through It would not perhaps take you to the top of the leagues but it would keep you competitive This brings us to another point which is that we have a situation with this CPU that makes it financially unviable to bin CPUs (that is if yoursquore not sponsored in some form) unless you have very deep pockets Unlike with Sandy-Bridge E or its successor the highest end Haswell-E SKU has a tangible and insurmountable advantage over its ldquocheaperrdquo stable mates It is not feasible anymore to use a golden sample 5930K for instance to beat the competitors who are equipped with the 5960X The two CPUs are

not in the same league performance wise and since this is the platform we employ for the multi-threaded benchmarks cores matter perhaps as much as frequency

In case there are those who are unaware for some reason The 5960X is based on the same architecture as the other two CPUs the only besides clock frequency is the L3 cache size at a hefty (by todayrsquos standards) 20MB and obviously all eight cores enabled as opposed to 6 For this difference the price premium is almost $500 steep perhaps but nothing wersquove not seen before More importantly it is easier to justify the price premium unlike before where the gains were minimal between the two most

As soon as the Embargo lifted we

had a number of records including

BenchBros new CineBench R15 World Record An impressive 5960X sample

approaching 6GHz Over 800 points higher than the

previous 8 core CPU record at 1503

14 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

expensive SKUs on the X79 platform Itrsquos no secret that INTEL has been

embracing the enthusiast and more specifically the overclocking community more than it has historically The changes made to their CPUs in the performance and HEDT platforms are a testament to this Artificial limitations are being eradicated at an alarming rate and with the 4790K for instance a conscious effort to improve overclocking was made If this paid on in practical terms is another issue entirely but the effort was made and that is a commendable attitude or position for a company that is in essence without meaningful competition in this space

Does the 5960X warrant its price tag but more especially the excitement and buzz The answer is a resounding yes Given that it has the same retail value as the outgoing 4960X but provides real tangible performance gains It makes a far more convincing argument for itself than perhaps any other INTEL CPU has in this space Even if you have no interest in competitive overclocking at all the 5960X throws itrsquos weight around effectively culling compute times significantly across the vast majority of suits that that are designed to take advantage of multiple threads let alone the new instruction sets made available From Adobe Premier Pro Blender to Virtual Dub and more there are plenty of programs that will instantly show gains by running on this CPU The loss in frequency in comparison to the 4960X or any other CPU for that matter is meaningless compared to what is gained Losing 600MHz is a lot and perhaps even more than one would think four extra

threads would compensate for but if you need the single thread performance and frequency then you have the 4790K For everything else therersquos nothing better than the 5960X

Since the platforms launch recently wersquove witnessed some remarkable results in all the relevant benchmarks on HWBOT In the mathematicalcompute benchmarks like wPrime Cinebench XTU (otherwise known as 3D benchmarks) the new ldquorecordsrdquo and milestone are not in how much faster the new CPU is over the 4960X but itrsquos that therersquos competition in the 8X CPU category where there previously wasnrsquot any in comparison This doesnrsquot mean of course that the 4 and 6X categories are no longer worth the pursuit it merely allows for a more competitive landscape with more options than before This isnrsquot the case in the graphics benchmarks where the thread count advantage of the 5960X will effectively retire the hex core CPUs Itrsquos still very early in the platformrsquos lifetime and wersquoll have to wait and see how it all plays out Suffice to say the 5960X changes the landscape dramatically

X99 BRIEFLY It doesnrsquot take keen insight to come to the conclusion that for the 5960X to be as effective as it is it needs a strong underlying platform or chipset To that end we have a few changes to the chipset There isnrsquot a game changer if you exclude the support for DDR4 but it the changes do bring INTELrsquos HEDT platform a little in line with what the Z97 offers Sorely missed on the X79 chipset was native support for USB

8-Pack unleashed a SLI Firestrike Extreme record of 15011 nearly 1000 points higher than the previous record as soon as the embargo lifted

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 15

30 which INTEL has remedied by allowing a total of 14 USB ports directly from the Chipset eight of which are the older USB20 type and the remaining six super speed 30 This will hopefully get rid of those 3rd party controllers which were always an unnecessary cost to X79 motherboards In addition to that the number of SATA ports supported by the chipset increases from the previous six to ten but all of them support SATA 6Gbps Between these two changes it could eliminate the need for two additional third party ICs on the motherboard which should in theory allow cheaper manufacturing and lower prices to the end user

INTEL states that the chipset and more specifically the 5930K and 5960X support 40 PCI Express lanes This is identical to what we had before with the X79 chipset however natively supported configurations or distribution of these lanes seems to have changed For instance on the X79 platform INTEL offered the following schemes 2x16 amp 1x8 2x 16 amp 3x8 and finally 1x16 amp 2x8 amp 2x4 which is enough to support 4-Way SLICrossfire natively However with the X99 Chipset it looks as if the configurations have been simplified to 2x16 amp 1x8 or 5x8 The first Lane routing and distribution is familiar but the second and potentially the most interesting configuration of 5x8 is dependent on additional 3rd party logic Not in the sense that a the familiar PLX switching chip is necessary but that this configuration isnrsquot natively supported by the chipset but it is a

possible one provided the necessary logic is added to the particular motherboard Thus not all motherboards will be able to use all these schemes

We are particularly interested in what vendors will do with these new possibilities especially with M2 popularity already surpassing that of mSATA which just never got off the ground As a result of the chipset also offering more PCI-Express 30 lanes than Z97 therersquos potential to see better M2 performance as well for the vendors that choose to make use of more lanes on their solution than the standard 10Gbps we see on the majority of motherboards There simply isnrsquot a need to be as conservative with PCI-Express bandwidth Howe vendors will choose to use this chipset will vary and wersquoll be looking at that in all the X99 motherboard reviews to follow in future Until then we have to say that even the most basic motherboards for this chipset are offering a compelling set of features that we have longed for but were missing on all but the very high end X79 motherboards

GAMINGIt should come as little to no surprise to anyone that the 5960X offers no advantage in gaming over the 4960X or the Z97 CPUs for that matter If anything this CPU could be a little slower as a result of the drastically reduced operating frequency Fortunately the fact that it has no apparent advantage here in gaming does not mean that it is ldquoslowerrdquo or offers a sub-optimal gaming

Gunslinger pushed out an impressive 26417 in 3DMark

Firestrike Extreme this time over 1000

points higher than the previous record

set by 8-Pack

16 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

experience to the contrary Games are almost always GPU bound and have been so for at least a decade A faster CPU for the same architecture has not netted any benefit in gaming performance several generations of platforms Wersquove grown accustomed to this and things are no different today Games are simply unable to take advantage of more than four threads Thatrsquos why even today there are many gamers using older generation CPUs such as the Core i5 2500K and are enjoying the highest fidelity in visuals on the most modern and demanding games

or that very reason the 5960X does more than well enough in gaming In

the 5960X delivered identical performance the 4790K The GPU was the limiting factor here This would probably not be the case in a 4-way SLI or rossfire s but then wersquod either be looking at ridiculously high frame rates that have diminished academic va and even less practical

with no measurable performance difference between all the CPUs outside the margin of error Gaming at UHD4K resolutions across multiple screens however maybe a different story as the bandwidth advantage for the X79 and X99 CPUs would be clear but those are very extreme situations If you do game like that therersquos no denying that yoursquoll need a CPU such as this one to full utilize all the rendering power you have at your disposal

IN CLOSINGIf the X79 chipset is anything to go by X99 will be with us for a very long time perhaps

anywhere between one to three years Therersquos certainly no reason for INTEL to usher in a new platform or CPUs anytime soon The 5960X in particular is a sizeable leap forward in computing performance It comes with the penalty of a higher TDP at 140W but that is a negligible cost compared to the dramatically increased threading performance it gives over the 4960X The only losers in power consumption are the 5930K and 5820K They do represent an improvement in IPC over their predecessors but that improvement is minute in comparison If you are currently making use of the 4930K therersquos little to perhaps no practical reason to upgrade to the 5930K purely for IPC increase As an entire platform change there are merits to this

We didnrsquotrsquo get a lot of time to spend with the Core i7 5960X before this issue was due but we were impressed with the CPU almost instantly The motherboards this time around unlike with X79 are in a better state upon arrival There will be continued refreshes no doubt and with each firmware update they will get better so will the overclocking results We already have 6GHz capable CPUs and while we may not see speeds much faster than this the number of CPUs capable of this frequency is sure to increase as INTEL refine their process along with the ever improving motherboard firmware It is early in the platforms existence but the 5960X has delivered more than we could have expected and we are thoroughly impressed with what INTEL has done here The worldrsquos first true 8-core desktop system has arrived and it is in one word Mighty

[ The OverClocker ]

GAMING GEARAWARD

18 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos not often that we find ourselves testing and writing any kind of

editorial on ASUS Formula motherboards Usually itrsquos the Extreme Impact and that kind of SKU This time we have the MAXIMUS VII Formula The highest end Z97 SKU from ASUS at present and it shows in pricing but

ASUS Maximus VII FormulaRRP $35499 | Website wwwasuscom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

more importantly in the features set

Unlike with the Maximus VI

Extreme for example there is a strong emphasis here on gaming and less so on the overclocking capabilities That is not to say it is unsuitable for extreme overclocking it is to the contrary in fact

ASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps one of the best if not the best looking Z97 boards wersquove seen It has the benefit of aiding

cooling of all the components on the board as well This isnrsquot going to make a world of difference in anything but it does help longevity which is something you may care about considering that yoursquore paying nearly $350 for this piece of engineering Aesthetically then it looks the part and itrsquod be a waste to have it in a windowless case as this one deserves to be seen

What really makes a gaming motherboard these days is an intelligent NIC and a superior audio system both of which are present here Unlike other vendors though ASUS has gone with the INTEL I218V controller which they claim not only has

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 19

lower CPU overhead but a higher throughput as well In addition to that there are some changes to the actual RJ45 port which supposedly help protect the motherboard from lightning strikes and static electricity So itrsquos more than just network traffic Oddly enough ASUS does not claim lower latency with this implementation which is what KILLER network adapters are primarily known for in addition to prioritizing the right kind of traffic when gaming (which this controller does as well via the GameFirst III software)

How beneficial all this is to the end user is debatable but itrsquos innovation nonetheless and wersquod rather have it than

not It all speaks to the quality with which ASUS constructs these gaming motherboards

Second and perhaps even more important is the on-boardaudio solution Given that ASUS can boldly claim to make the best gaming enthusiast grade audio cards and USB DACs (Essence series anyone) itrsquos fitting that wersquod expect nothing but the best here To that end the MAXIMUS VII delivers in spades with a components list unlike any other vendors Being different doesnrsquot make it better but when we looked at the kind of equipment that features what ASUS has here it becomes very apparent that these component decisions were at the very least made

ldquoASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps oneof the best if not the bestlooking boards weve seen

20 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

for qualitative reasons in addition to economical ones Any solution that features ELNA audio capacitors paired with WIMA caps a Cirrus Logic DAC and a TI op-amp is going to impress you to some degree The only part of this entire equation which we canrsquot fathom is why ASUS chose the Realtek ALC1150 codec instead of the numerous others available on the market Therersquos nothing wrong with the ALC1150 per se but given that it is supported by such superior components which no doubt have added to the cost of the motherboard it is puzzling to find this CODEC on such a motherboard

The weakest link is here but you can be guaranteed that this is the best use of this CODEC on the market currently

Competing vendors have made it a point to highlight that there are specific USB ports located at the rear which are meant to have your keyboard and mouse plugged into These ports are supposedly low latency ports with a high polling frequency and more often than not feature some kind of gold plating for better contacts We can confirm that therersquos absolutely no difference between these ports and any other USB port on the motherboard in gaming

or in how your keyboard functions With the ASUS KeyBot however therersquos some ingenuity which allows you to assign almost any keyboard Macro functionality even if said keyboard does not have these features This little chip allows you to program a variety of functionality to any keyboard including cold booting the system into specific states and booting directly to the UEFI so you essentially donrsquotrsquo need a dedicated Direct to BIOS key Once again this is a nifty little feature that is many times more useful than the supposed gaming ports that others may tout on their products

This brings us to the motherboards performance There are many aspects of the Maximus VII Formula that we havenrsquot covered but we could not possibly write about an ROG motherboard without analysis of how it performs in an overclocking context Yes this is geared towards the premium gaming crowd but even then it should not preclude one from being competitive at the highest levels of overclocking This is where the power of the ASUS UEFI comes into play The interface is laid out simply and intuitively It is very detailed but most of the functionality and options are explained thoroughly eliminating any

guess work you may need to do Itrsquos a sublime interface that is not terribly exciting but is thoroughly detailed and simple to navigate Tuning memory on this motherboard is splendid because with every setting there is some kind of assistance letting you know what it is yoursquore tuning and how it may affect overclocking or stability Should it all go pear shaped you can always revert to safe settings using the MemOK button Speaking of which this button is located in the most inconvenient place on the motherboard where itrsquos very close to the edge of the aforementioned top cover It is reachable but perhaps another location would have been better

It should not come as a surprise that the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M time of all Z97 motherboards wersquove tested to date This lead was small but it was there and we couldnrsquot match it with other boards with similar timings You can rest assured that whatever limits you hit with the MVIIF they are due to your CPU or memory but not the motherboard as it is robust as it is finely tuned Thus far wersquove yet to find any vendor or any motherboard in fact that can marry gaming and overclocking so well on a single product For those

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 21

Summary

Would you buy it

No vendor balances gaming and overclocking features the way ASUS does with the Maximus range This one is geared entirely at the gaming crowd and it delivers in spades The features are numerous and the aesthetics unmatched Itrsquos a grand motherboard only a few hairs short of perfection

Yes

who happen to have the ROG control panel yoursquoll be happy to know that the MAXIMUS VII Formula is fully compatible with it and all the functionality you had on the MAXIMUS VI for example yoursquoll find here as well With just the addition of that panel alone (which isnrsquot included with the FORMULA by the way) therersquoll be few things if any you can do with the Z87 extreme board that you cannot do with this motherboard

Once again the package which ASUS provides and its presentation is second to none Wersquove been impressed to no end by other ASUS boards like the Rampage IV

Black Edition for example This isnrsquot that kind of product No this is an evolution of the already great MAXIMUS VI Formula Itrsquos the little changes here and there that culminate into the best Formula motherboard ASUS has ever created From where we stand there arenrsquot any boards which cater to high end gamers and enthusiasts like this one does Itrsquos the best combination of features available today for its intended market If yoursquore building the ultimate Z97 gaming machine and are unwilling to compromise the MAXIMUS VII Formula just may be what you need

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

MAXIMUS VII Formula (Tuned)

124178 41139 42115 39878 16372 1222 29826Graphics 17888 Hardware 28807Physics 13314

ASUS MAXIMUS VII Formula

124677 33332 41923 36199 16307 1202 29736Graphics 17810 Hardware 28725Physics 13207

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M13time of all Z97 motherboards weve tested to date
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Hardware Award

22 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSIrsquos overclocking motherboards have come a long

way With hits and misses along the journey the last couple of years have resulted in solid progress and improvements all around The biggest criticism leveled at MSI motherboards was almost always weak memory overclocking

MSI Z97 XPOWER ACRRP $37999 | Website wwwmsicom

Test Machinebull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

capacity or capability Given just how important this is it became somewhat of a forgone conclusion that MSI motherboards were not capable of extracting the most out of your hardware After all other than memory there really isnrsquot anything else you can tune on a motherboard as the end user It is in this regard that this stigma followed MSIrsquos boards even when they did not deserve it (which they havenrsquot for a while)

With the Z97 XPOWER and

perhaps even the MPOWER itrsquos a whole different story At least from our perspective there isnrsquot anything about the XPOWER that makes it incapable of memory

overclocking compared to other OC focused offerings on the market In our tests it was truly the limitation of the CPU if anything that prevented any further tuning or frequency scaling that might have been possible What is worth saying though is that we did find it takes a higher voltage across the board to reach the same frequencies or at least tune it to the same efficiency as compared to the other motherboards This isnrsquot anything that should endanger your components at all (especially SAMSUNG memory) but it is worth keepingin mind that what is stable on another motherboard and not so on the XPOWER could simply be a matter of needing to use a higher voltage

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 23

What that means or says about the power delivery on MSI motherboards we will leave for you to decide but it certainly isnrsquot anything we would take away points for On the flip side to this we found that the MSI board mustered up some truly incredible numbers and efficiency wise matched all other boards

we tested and in some cases even exceeded them This is perhaps not because the other motherboards are not capable but by way of the vast array of options MSI brings to their UEFI In addition to this the effect such options have on overclocking and recommended setting help greatly As with all

motherboards we have previously found to be immaculate the entire experience of overclocking is a learning one One is better at overclocking and tuning memory across the board after having used the XPOWER and this is something that not only inspires confidence in the user but allows one to appreciate the exhaustive features presented by MSI and their efforts We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower because MSI has truly brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard ever Is this a perfect board Well - no it isnrsquot but for the most part its close enough What prevents us from having the confidence to proclaim it so is the inconsistency we experienced with it This is a major one that we arenrsquot sure how MSI would address but there certainly has to be a solution to this and it could be a simple matter of a UEFI option (it most certainly is) that is not user tunable or should be tuned by default by

24 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

the engineers During testing we only used settings that are Hyper Pi 32M stable Regular Super Pi 32M isnrsquot good enough and to make sure that we were not running a system that may keel over at any time or represent settings that we may not be able to repeat in future we made sure that both normal and tuned benchmark results were Hyper Pi 32M capable Itrsquos not Prime95 but itrsquos a pretty intense test that is very much indicative of systems stability

We would configure the system and it would appear stable running endless loops of any given benchmark then after a single reboot the system would fail to POST This was an intermittent issue When the board did recover just to make doubly sure that it was not overly aggressive memory tuning we would decrease the memory frequency to 2133MHz and even lower to just 1600MHz However we would experience the same failure to POST at

settings that were previously rock solid At this point we would have to clear the CMOS and start over again loading the profile and lo and behold it would work A subsequent reboot would be fine only for it to fail on the third attempt This was very frustrating as there was no way of knowing what it was exactly that was causing the issue Wersquove not had this issue with any other motherboard and it is certainly an isolated case with this XPOWER Perhaps it is just our perfect combination of hardware but whatever it was it marred what was otherwise an incredible experience

That aside MSI has really gone to town with the features and package MSI has all the necessary switches and buttons you expect They are not as numerous as what yoursquod find on the Z97X-SOC Force for example but they more than cover all the basics and a bit more For $380 USD one does expect to have every option available and in this

regard the XPOWER gets it right We would appreciate having a ldquoMem OKrdquo like feature as on the numerous ASUS motherboards and it would be great if there werenrsquot a limited number of ground points for V-check There are three points which is an improvement over the older boards however you can check more than three voltages at any given time so why there arenrsquot any more ground points is anybodyrsquos guess

Much like the UEFI options

the package that MSI has put together with the XPOWER is incredible including a CPU core guard for those adventurous souls who have taken it upon themselves to remove the heat spreader on the CPU The core is very delicate and the Delid Guard will make sure your CPU pot does not crush the core or apply uneven pressure which is likely to destroy the CPU

To further assist those cooling with LN2 therersquos a fan bracket which you may use to

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 25

Summary

Would you buy it

MSIrsquos steady improvements in motherboard and BIOS design have finally paid off with the Z97 generation There are so many features on the board and BIOS that MSI can probably claim to have as many and perhaps even more tuning options than any other vendor on the market Itrsquos incredible to see just how refined a product the Z97 XPOWER AC is

At a maringally lower price

mount any standard fan for extracting or directing LN2 fumes away from the POT and surrounding areas This is a small convenience that is an added bonus to an already impressive package The focus with which MSI has designed the XPOWER is commendable to say the least All the bases have been covered and MSI has gone the extra mile to deliver what overclockers had asked of MSI for years

Does it justify the retail price Well you have to determine that yourself Given that it automatically makes you legible for MOA qualification but costs about as much as an of the other high end Z79 motherboards then itrsquos certainly worth the investment The XPOWER does many things right but has a few kinks that prevent

it from being a definitive board for the chipset Wersquod not however say that therersquos an outright superior boardon the market as that would not be true Ultimately it will come down to what you are willing to pay for and what you may sacrifice We do suspect that these motherboards will end up in many high end gaming machines as well and even in that context the XPOWER does deliver the goods As MSIrsquos most high end Z79 offering the XPOWER is probably more than we could have ever expected it to be and it does leave us with a very positive and lasting impression If you have the cash and are not moved by any one of the other motherboards at the very high end do give serious thought to the MSI Z97 XPOWER itrsquos the best one yet

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 3DMark Sky Diver Catzilla 720P

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC (Tuned)

124474 41104 42133 39878 16279 30950 29755Graphics 17858 Graphics 43190 Hardware 28749

Physics 13117 Physics 13463

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 30708 29851Graphics 17841 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190 Physics 13215

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

126295 27555 33523 29876 15963 30689 29803Graphics 17870 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28828

Physics 12047 Physics 13012

Neo
Typewritten Text
We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower 13as MSI has brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard yet
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26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
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at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
Neo
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Neo
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
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Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 4: TheOverclocker Issue 31

6 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Q Awith Daniel ldquoDancoprdquo SchierCountry Name and City

I live in Germany in the city of Sinsheim Irsquom married with three children and two dogs

What language(s) do you speak German English a lil bit Spanish

and Frenchhellipbut not enough to negotiate

Where does your nickname ldquoDancoprdquo come from

Thatrsquos a funny story It was the first need for speed title with cops in it My nickname in that game was Dancop ndash symbioses between Daniel and cophellipeasy isnrsquot it (Sure is ndashEd)

When did you begin overclocking with LN2 and what is it about LN2 that has you hooked

My first Dry Ice experience was on the 7th of June 2013 and my first LN2 experience was at the freeocen session last year on the 24th of June

Initially it was Roman (der8auer) and Andy (Benchbros) who ldquoforcedrdquo me to do it Evil - people would sayhellipRoman just wanted to sell more pots ndash but seriously I think these two guys followed my progress in the enthusiast league for years In the end I was pretty good there Then Andy started persuading me ndash without much success Roman visited me for a regular meetingthen what a surprise He brought a pot and dice I just asked why He said try it and here I am

But before then I was a great fan of Vince He was the initial reason Istarted overclocking Due to him I entered the enthusiast league and at least HWBOT Right now I have the honor to write with him on Facebook and he answers D

Between 2D and 3D benchmarks

which are your favourite Which do you feel is harder and which is more reliant on hardware binning if therersquos a difference at all

When you look at my first sub-zero results they were all done with GPUs (Epic -Ed) My first LN2 session I did alone was with an e-powered Titan I love 3D although I have to learn a lot 2D was a lot harder forme to compete with other more experienced overclockers at I think both 2D and 3D have their own pros and cons Binning cpus is for sure for 2D In the past 3 month especially as preparation for MOA Irsquove done a lot pf 32m and Irsquove learned a lot During this time I was pretty good but my CPU died sadly

Yoursquove just come off a strong finish at the GIGABYTE EOC 2014 competition with IckeampEr How was that competition for you in general and what are

your thoughts on it and perhaps suggestions for future competitions

It was a really nice competition especially at the point we re-mounted everything Our pot only sat on half of the CPU ndash which Im pretty sure was responsible for us not having won any stage I like such competitions because everyone is limited by time and LUCK You need at least a strong CPU which we obviously had IckeampEr had never benched haswell before but he had a lot of experience with older hardware This combined with my experience on haswell was the key to our success

Regarding future competitions I can only say Irsquod love to see more I wouldnt change any competition Each of those have their own character For the Gigabyte EOC Irsquod like to see it at least European wide ndash why not worldwide

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 7

Online or live competitions which do you prefer and why

As I said earlier I love all types of competition except where I canrsquot compete obviously Seriously though each competition is so much work in regards to organisation prizes validation of results and so on I really donrsquot have a preference Sure online you have enough time and you can always improve your scores while live competition involves a lot of luck It all depends on the provided hardware but hey that makes it interesting doesnrsquot it

Currently yoursquore sitting at 14 in the Elite league are you making it a point to go higher or is that just not important to you

Indeed it was very important and for my ego it is still very important Climbing up this ranking gave me some attention from vendors At present I have letrsquos say good support

There are some things which could be improved upon such as CPU and DRAM support but I like my situation right now I did a lot in the past to warrant this kind of support

My real profession is industrial engineering I studied a lot of strategic marketing and that is what I would like to give back to the vendors When they send me something my first goal is ndash breaking a record with that hardware in order to support their sales (That is honest and direct a rarity in this community at least publicly ndash Ed)

What is your favourite graphics card or platform to overclock

Oh thatrsquos easy ndash everything thatrsquos fun I mean when yoursquore an overclocker

you want to get the most out of the hardware The best scenario is to get more out of it than others I have no preference be it Intel NVidia or AMD I prefer the fastest for the given benchmark

8 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Other than overclocking what do you do for a living or any other hobby that you spend as much time on as overclocking if not more

One thing is clear ndash there isnrsquot a dime I have that I donrsquot invest in overclocking except for my family I am happily married and I have two stepchildren as well as one own child Overclocking sometimes is like a backlog of time I think every overclocker knows what I mean At least each Madame at an overclockerrsquos side knows that

Regarding vendor support do you feel vendors do enough or would you like to see a more structured and transparent support system By that I mean how would you feel about a situation where everyone knows who is being supported by which vendor

First of all ndash vendors do enough I mean they donrsquot have to do anything But to be more concrete on your question I think it is hard to make it more structured If you wanna climb a ranking you should be free in the choice of your preferred hardware Structure is always something like a duty to use that motherboard or

that GPU Regarding the pro-cup itrsquos almost impossible to compete when yoursquore forced to use only this particular brand

On the other hand I donrsquot have any issues with being the face of a vendor but then wersquore not talking about sponsorship but contracts

The second part of your question is easily answered when you look at my profile on HWBOT ndash there you can see all my sponsors

As one of the most active users on the BOT how often do you have overclocking sessions

At least twice a month (thatrsquos what I say to my wife) but to be honest once a week

Itrsquos a well-known fact that Germany has a huge DIY market at least from the vendor side Does that mean yoursquore seeing progressively more overclockers in your region or has it been the same number of people participating

I donrsquot see a distinguishable increase in overclockers ndash sadly I wish that were the case but that

task falls to media Gaming is much more popular than overclocking I do see huge improvement regarding that issue OCTV does a great job We get more and more attention as overclocking is no longer a stupid money and time wasting hobby

Letrsquos take me for example I was always afraid of the water condensation which was the problem not overclocking at sub-zero temperatures We need more guides more popularity public shows and tutorials and so on

Any hardware yoursquore looking forward to this year Granted X99 is here what are your thoughts on the platform in general

For sure all kinds of new GPUs and yeah ndash X99 will be a lot of fun I think this will bring us some insane results in the multithreaded benchmarks Considering itrsquos the architecture of the well-known Haswell perhaps will see a little decrease in CPU clocks and much more difficult behaviour regarding CB and CBB compared to X79 Who knows maybe Intel did some nice improvements regarding that

10 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In your experience have you had better luck with 4770Ks or are the 4790K CPUs on average for you much better overclockers

For sure the early batches of the 4770K were much better than the 4790K

Finding an old 4770K that does 62GHz 32m is much easier than finding a 4790K that does that I had such luck after my dead 4770K to find such a chip which died as well But on average I think the 4770K are the better choice

What is your favourite Z97 motherboard right now

All of them have their pros and cons I tried the Mpower Xpower M7H M7F M7G Gigabyte SOC force and LN2 Irsquod love to test the Asrock one but havenrsquot been able to yet

To make one thing clear the improvements on each z97 compared to z87 are pretty small Asus was

great even on z87 Asrock was one of the best regarding mem and max CPU clock Right now you can reach almost all results on another vendorrsquos board ndash with more or less work

What is your single greatest or most memorable overclocking achievement

Those are the littlr things Like 2666 6-10-6 on the MSI Xpower in 32m

Things like an insane XTU score with low clocks What I will really keep in mind though was my success in the Gigabyte catzilla challenge I did 3 sessions to get that score I truly learned how the card was to be treated At that moment when I saw the result I stopped and drank a beer It was my goal to achieve at the least 43000 points and I got it No matter what others scored I wanted to get that score and I did it

Anything yoursquod like to see changed in the overclocking community

As I had mentioned earlier media Push and promote our community and stop treating us like isolated noobs I think we spend a lot of time and money including effort into achieving what we have

Any other ideas or opinions you would like to share with the community and vendors regarding overclocking hardware or anything related

Coolermaster began to sponsor a team with LN2 for the pro-cup Irsquod like to see similar initiatives from other vendors Not necessarily the same way but perhaps at contests Sure winning money is pretty nice but why not spend that on a contract for the winner

Those things can be discussed its thatrsquos just an idea for the vendors Think about it

[ The Overclocker ]

12 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos finally arrived The long awaited 8 core behemoth from INTEL has landed and it couldnrsquot have come sooner

After years of being limited (and I use that word loosely) to 12 threads on the desktop barring the EVGA solutions we as the enthusiast community finally have 16 thread threads of processing power to tap into As INTEL shows in its slides since 2003 up until this CPU computing performance for the high end desktop has increased by a factor of 40 or more Thatrsquos incredible in just over a decade Roughly the same financial investment in the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition of 11 years ago today nets you forty times the performance Looking at it iteratively may obscure this fact but itrsquos only when taking it all in that you realize the remarkable progress thatrsquos been made in the last ten years It would have been ideal if we could boot up an old Extreme Edition based system from that time period and compared it to what we have here but that is only fascinating in theory In practice the frustration of having to deal with what would be an excruciatingly slow testing session would quickly shatter all nostalgia for the system

More pressing is how this new CPU affects modern day computing tasks in comparison

to what INTEL delivered just a year ago with Ivy-Bridge E CPUs That user space is likely the most affected by this CPU and that which stands to gain the most from it all We are specifically concerned with the 5960X here not the 5930K or the 5820KThose we will look at another time Right now we are primarily concerned with the additional two cores thus four threads INTEL has enabled on their dies that function as desktop processors Itrsquos not easily looking at the CPU in isolation from the new platform socket DRAM generation and motherboards that support it all There are minute to significant changes in each area but wersquoll not tackle any of that here Once again as with the other CPUs available for the socket wersquoll deal with them another time

Since the INTEL Core i7 980X in 2010 (feels like itrsquos been far longer than that) wersquove been content with the small increments in performance due solely to IPC improvements From Gulftown to Ivy-Bridge 12 was the magic number Provided we had the thread count our chosen applications (in our context - overclocking) this mattered above all else For the longest time perhaps even up to the earlier this year a good 12 thread CPU would be enough to keep you and your team competitive without necessarily having to invest in the latest

INTEL Core i7 5960X

THE POWER OF

8

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 13

CPU For all intents and purposes a good 3960X or perhaps even a 3930K would see you through It would not perhaps take you to the top of the leagues but it would keep you competitive This brings us to another point which is that we have a situation with this CPU that makes it financially unviable to bin CPUs (that is if yoursquore not sponsored in some form) unless you have very deep pockets Unlike with Sandy-Bridge E or its successor the highest end Haswell-E SKU has a tangible and insurmountable advantage over its ldquocheaperrdquo stable mates It is not feasible anymore to use a golden sample 5930K for instance to beat the competitors who are equipped with the 5960X The two CPUs are

not in the same league performance wise and since this is the platform we employ for the multi-threaded benchmarks cores matter perhaps as much as frequency

In case there are those who are unaware for some reason The 5960X is based on the same architecture as the other two CPUs the only besides clock frequency is the L3 cache size at a hefty (by todayrsquos standards) 20MB and obviously all eight cores enabled as opposed to 6 For this difference the price premium is almost $500 steep perhaps but nothing wersquove not seen before More importantly it is easier to justify the price premium unlike before where the gains were minimal between the two most

As soon as the Embargo lifted we

had a number of records including

BenchBros new CineBench R15 World Record An impressive 5960X sample

approaching 6GHz Over 800 points higher than the

previous 8 core CPU record at 1503

14 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

expensive SKUs on the X79 platform Itrsquos no secret that INTEL has been

embracing the enthusiast and more specifically the overclocking community more than it has historically The changes made to their CPUs in the performance and HEDT platforms are a testament to this Artificial limitations are being eradicated at an alarming rate and with the 4790K for instance a conscious effort to improve overclocking was made If this paid on in practical terms is another issue entirely but the effort was made and that is a commendable attitude or position for a company that is in essence without meaningful competition in this space

Does the 5960X warrant its price tag but more especially the excitement and buzz The answer is a resounding yes Given that it has the same retail value as the outgoing 4960X but provides real tangible performance gains It makes a far more convincing argument for itself than perhaps any other INTEL CPU has in this space Even if you have no interest in competitive overclocking at all the 5960X throws itrsquos weight around effectively culling compute times significantly across the vast majority of suits that that are designed to take advantage of multiple threads let alone the new instruction sets made available From Adobe Premier Pro Blender to Virtual Dub and more there are plenty of programs that will instantly show gains by running on this CPU The loss in frequency in comparison to the 4960X or any other CPU for that matter is meaningless compared to what is gained Losing 600MHz is a lot and perhaps even more than one would think four extra

threads would compensate for but if you need the single thread performance and frequency then you have the 4790K For everything else therersquos nothing better than the 5960X

Since the platforms launch recently wersquove witnessed some remarkable results in all the relevant benchmarks on HWBOT In the mathematicalcompute benchmarks like wPrime Cinebench XTU (otherwise known as 3D benchmarks) the new ldquorecordsrdquo and milestone are not in how much faster the new CPU is over the 4960X but itrsquos that therersquos competition in the 8X CPU category where there previously wasnrsquot any in comparison This doesnrsquot mean of course that the 4 and 6X categories are no longer worth the pursuit it merely allows for a more competitive landscape with more options than before This isnrsquot the case in the graphics benchmarks where the thread count advantage of the 5960X will effectively retire the hex core CPUs Itrsquos still very early in the platformrsquos lifetime and wersquoll have to wait and see how it all plays out Suffice to say the 5960X changes the landscape dramatically

X99 BRIEFLY It doesnrsquot take keen insight to come to the conclusion that for the 5960X to be as effective as it is it needs a strong underlying platform or chipset To that end we have a few changes to the chipset There isnrsquot a game changer if you exclude the support for DDR4 but it the changes do bring INTELrsquos HEDT platform a little in line with what the Z97 offers Sorely missed on the X79 chipset was native support for USB

8-Pack unleashed a SLI Firestrike Extreme record of 15011 nearly 1000 points higher than the previous record as soon as the embargo lifted

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 15

30 which INTEL has remedied by allowing a total of 14 USB ports directly from the Chipset eight of which are the older USB20 type and the remaining six super speed 30 This will hopefully get rid of those 3rd party controllers which were always an unnecessary cost to X79 motherboards In addition to that the number of SATA ports supported by the chipset increases from the previous six to ten but all of them support SATA 6Gbps Between these two changes it could eliminate the need for two additional third party ICs on the motherboard which should in theory allow cheaper manufacturing and lower prices to the end user

INTEL states that the chipset and more specifically the 5930K and 5960X support 40 PCI Express lanes This is identical to what we had before with the X79 chipset however natively supported configurations or distribution of these lanes seems to have changed For instance on the X79 platform INTEL offered the following schemes 2x16 amp 1x8 2x 16 amp 3x8 and finally 1x16 amp 2x8 amp 2x4 which is enough to support 4-Way SLICrossfire natively However with the X99 Chipset it looks as if the configurations have been simplified to 2x16 amp 1x8 or 5x8 The first Lane routing and distribution is familiar but the second and potentially the most interesting configuration of 5x8 is dependent on additional 3rd party logic Not in the sense that a the familiar PLX switching chip is necessary but that this configuration isnrsquot natively supported by the chipset but it is a

possible one provided the necessary logic is added to the particular motherboard Thus not all motherboards will be able to use all these schemes

We are particularly interested in what vendors will do with these new possibilities especially with M2 popularity already surpassing that of mSATA which just never got off the ground As a result of the chipset also offering more PCI-Express 30 lanes than Z97 therersquos potential to see better M2 performance as well for the vendors that choose to make use of more lanes on their solution than the standard 10Gbps we see on the majority of motherboards There simply isnrsquot a need to be as conservative with PCI-Express bandwidth Howe vendors will choose to use this chipset will vary and wersquoll be looking at that in all the X99 motherboard reviews to follow in future Until then we have to say that even the most basic motherboards for this chipset are offering a compelling set of features that we have longed for but were missing on all but the very high end X79 motherboards

GAMINGIt should come as little to no surprise to anyone that the 5960X offers no advantage in gaming over the 4960X or the Z97 CPUs for that matter If anything this CPU could be a little slower as a result of the drastically reduced operating frequency Fortunately the fact that it has no apparent advantage here in gaming does not mean that it is ldquoslowerrdquo or offers a sub-optimal gaming

Gunslinger pushed out an impressive 26417 in 3DMark

Firestrike Extreme this time over 1000

points higher than the previous record

set by 8-Pack

16 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

experience to the contrary Games are almost always GPU bound and have been so for at least a decade A faster CPU for the same architecture has not netted any benefit in gaming performance several generations of platforms Wersquove grown accustomed to this and things are no different today Games are simply unable to take advantage of more than four threads Thatrsquos why even today there are many gamers using older generation CPUs such as the Core i5 2500K and are enjoying the highest fidelity in visuals on the most modern and demanding games

or that very reason the 5960X does more than well enough in gaming In

the 5960X delivered identical performance the 4790K The GPU was the limiting factor here This would probably not be the case in a 4-way SLI or rossfire s but then wersquod either be looking at ridiculously high frame rates that have diminished academic va and even less practical

with no measurable performance difference between all the CPUs outside the margin of error Gaming at UHD4K resolutions across multiple screens however maybe a different story as the bandwidth advantage for the X79 and X99 CPUs would be clear but those are very extreme situations If you do game like that therersquos no denying that yoursquoll need a CPU such as this one to full utilize all the rendering power you have at your disposal

IN CLOSINGIf the X79 chipset is anything to go by X99 will be with us for a very long time perhaps

anywhere between one to three years Therersquos certainly no reason for INTEL to usher in a new platform or CPUs anytime soon The 5960X in particular is a sizeable leap forward in computing performance It comes with the penalty of a higher TDP at 140W but that is a negligible cost compared to the dramatically increased threading performance it gives over the 4960X The only losers in power consumption are the 5930K and 5820K They do represent an improvement in IPC over their predecessors but that improvement is minute in comparison If you are currently making use of the 4930K therersquos little to perhaps no practical reason to upgrade to the 5930K purely for IPC increase As an entire platform change there are merits to this

We didnrsquotrsquo get a lot of time to spend with the Core i7 5960X before this issue was due but we were impressed with the CPU almost instantly The motherboards this time around unlike with X79 are in a better state upon arrival There will be continued refreshes no doubt and with each firmware update they will get better so will the overclocking results We already have 6GHz capable CPUs and while we may not see speeds much faster than this the number of CPUs capable of this frequency is sure to increase as INTEL refine their process along with the ever improving motherboard firmware It is early in the platforms existence but the 5960X has delivered more than we could have expected and we are thoroughly impressed with what INTEL has done here The worldrsquos first true 8-core desktop system has arrived and it is in one word Mighty

[ The OverClocker ]

GAMING GEARAWARD

18 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos not often that we find ourselves testing and writing any kind of

editorial on ASUS Formula motherboards Usually itrsquos the Extreme Impact and that kind of SKU This time we have the MAXIMUS VII Formula The highest end Z97 SKU from ASUS at present and it shows in pricing but

ASUS Maximus VII FormulaRRP $35499 | Website wwwasuscom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

more importantly in the features set

Unlike with the Maximus VI

Extreme for example there is a strong emphasis here on gaming and less so on the overclocking capabilities That is not to say it is unsuitable for extreme overclocking it is to the contrary in fact

ASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps one of the best if not the best looking Z97 boards wersquove seen It has the benefit of aiding

cooling of all the components on the board as well This isnrsquot going to make a world of difference in anything but it does help longevity which is something you may care about considering that yoursquore paying nearly $350 for this piece of engineering Aesthetically then it looks the part and itrsquod be a waste to have it in a windowless case as this one deserves to be seen

What really makes a gaming motherboard these days is an intelligent NIC and a superior audio system both of which are present here Unlike other vendors though ASUS has gone with the INTEL I218V controller which they claim not only has

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 19

lower CPU overhead but a higher throughput as well In addition to that there are some changes to the actual RJ45 port which supposedly help protect the motherboard from lightning strikes and static electricity So itrsquos more than just network traffic Oddly enough ASUS does not claim lower latency with this implementation which is what KILLER network adapters are primarily known for in addition to prioritizing the right kind of traffic when gaming (which this controller does as well via the GameFirst III software)

How beneficial all this is to the end user is debatable but itrsquos innovation nonetheless and wersquod rather have it than

not It all speaks to the quality with which ASUS constructs these gaming motherboards

Second and perhaps even more important is the on-boardaudio solution Given that ASUS can boldly claim to make the best gaming enthusiast grade audio cards and USB DACs (Essence series anyone) itrsquos fitting that wersquod expect nothing but the best here To that end the MAXIMUS VII delivers in spades with a components list unlike any other vendors Being different doesnrsquot make it better but when we looked at the kind of equipment that features what ASUS has here it becomes very apparent that these component decisions were at the very least made

ldquoASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps oneof the best if not the bestlooking boards weve seen

20 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

for qualitative reasons in addition to economical ones Any solution that features ELNA audio capacitors paired with WIMA caps a Cirrus Logic DAC and a TI op-amp is going to impress you to some degree The only part of this entire equation which we canrsquot fathom is why ASUS chose the Realtek ALC1150 codec instead of the numerous others available on the market Therersquos nothing wrong with the ALC1150 per se but given that it is supported by such superior components which no doubt have added to the cost of the motherboard it is puzzling to find this CODEC on such a motherboard

The weakest link is here but you can be guaranteed that this is the best use of this CODEC on the market currently

Competing vendors have made it a point to highlight that there are specific USB ports located at the rear which are meant to have your keyboard and mouse plugged into These ports are supposedly low latency ports with a high polling frequency and more often than not feature some kind of gold plating for better contacts We can confirm that therersquos absolutely no difference between these ports and any other USB port on the motherboard in gaming

or in how your keyboard functions With the ASUS KeyBot however therersquos some ingenuity which allows you to assign almost any keyboard Macro functionality even if said keyboard does not have these features This little chip allows you to program a variety of functionality to any keyboard including cold booting the system into specific states and booting directly to the UEFI so you essentially donrsquotrsquo need a dedicated Direct to BIOS key Once again this is a nifty little feature that is many times more useful than the supposed gaming ports that others may tout on their products

This brings us to the motherboards performance There are many aspects of the Maximus VII Formula that we havenrsquot covered but we could not possibly write about an ROG motherboard without analysis of how it performs in an overclocking context Yes this is geared towards the premium gaming crowd but even then it should not preclude one from being competitive at the highest levels of overclocking This is where the power of the ASUS UEFI comes into play The interface is laid out simply and intuitively It is very detailed but most of the functionality and options are explained thoroughly eliminating any

guess work you may need to do Itrsquos a sublime interface that is not terribly exciting but is thoroughly detailed and simple to navigate Tuning memory on this motherboard is splendid because with every setting there is some kind of assistance letting you know what it is yoursquore tuning and how it may affect overclocking or stability Should it all go pear shaped you can always revert to safe settings using the MemOK button Speaking of which this button is located in the most inconvenient place on the motherboard where itrsquos very close to the edge of the aforementioned top cover It is reachable but perhaps another location would have been better

It should not come as a surprise that the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M time of all Z97 motherboards wersquove tested to date This lead was small but it was there and we couldnrsquot match it with other boards with similar timings You can rest assured that whatever limits you hit with the MVIIF they are due to your CPU or memory but not the motherboard as it is robust as it is finely tuned Thus far wersquove yet to find any vendor or any motherboard in fact that can marry gaming and overclocking so well on a single product For those

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 21

Summary

Would you buy it

No vendor balances gaming and overclocking features the way ASUS does with the Maximus range This one is geared entirely at the gaming crowd and it delivers in spades The features are numerous and the aesthetics unmatched Itrsquos a grand motherboard only a few hairs short of perfection

Yes

who happen to have the ROG control panel yoursquoll be happy to know that the MAXIMUS VII Formula is fully compatible with it and all the functionality you had on the MAXIMUS VI for example yoursquoll find here as well With just the addition of that panel alone (which isnrsquot included with the FORMULA by the way) therersquoll be few things if any you can do with the Z87 extreme board that you cannot do with this motherboard

Once again the package which ASUS provides and its presentation is second to none Wersquove been impressed to no end by other ASUS boards like the Rampage IV

Black Edition for example This isnrsquot that kind of product No this is an evolution of the already great MAXIMUS VI Formula Itrsquos the little changes here and there that culminate into the best Formula motherboard ASUS has ever created From where we stand there arenrsquot any boards which cater to high end gamers and enthusiasts like this one does Itrsquos the best combination of features available today for its intended market If yoursquore building the ultimate Z97 gaming machine and are unwilling to compromise the MAXIMUS VII Formula just may be what you need

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

MAXIMUS VII Formula (Tuned)

124178 41139 42115 39878 16372 1222 29826Graphics 17888 Hardware 28807Physics 13314

ASUS MAXIMUS VII Formula

124677 33332 41923 36199 16307 1202 29736Graphics 17810 Hardware 28725Physics 13207

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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Neo
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Neo
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the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M13time of all Z97 motherboards weve tested to date
Neo
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Hardware Award

22 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSIrsquos overclocking motherboards have come a long

way With hits and misses along the journey the last couple of years have resulted in solid progress and improvements all around The biggest criticism leveled at MSI motherboards was almost always weak memory overclocking

MSI Z97 XPOWER ACRRP $37999 | Website wwwmsicom

Test Machinebull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

capacity or capability Given just how important this is it became somewhat of a forgone conclusion that MSI motherboards were not capable of extracting the most out of your hardware After all other than memory there really isnrsquot anything else you can tune on a motherboard as the end user It is in this regard that this stigma followed MSIrsquos boards even when they did not deserve it (which they havenrsquot for a while)

With the Z97 XPOWER and

perhaps even the MPOWER itrsquos a whole different story At least from our perspective there isnrsquot anything about the XPOWER that makes it incapable of memory

overclocking compared to other OC focused offerings on the market In our tests it was truly the limitation of the CPU if anything that prevented any further tuning or frequency scaling that might have been possible What is worth saying though is that we did find it takes a higher voltage across the board to reach the same frequencies or at least tune it to the same efficiency as compared to the other motherboards This isnrsquot anything that should endanger your components at all (especially SAMSUNG memory) but it is worth keepingin mind that what is stable on another motherboard and not so on the XPOWER could simply be a matter of needing to use a higher voltage

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 23

What that means or says about the power delivery on MSI motherboards we will leave for you to decide but it certainly isnrsquot anything we would take away points for On the flip side to this we found that the MSI board mustered up some truly incredible numbers and efficiency wise matched all other boards

we tested and in some cases even exceeded them This is perhaps not because the other motherboards are not capable but by way of the vast array of options MSI brings to their UEFI In addition to this the effect such options have on overclocking and recommended setting help greatly As with all

motherboards we have previously found to be immaculate the entire experience of overclocking is a learning one One is better at overclocking and tuning memory across the board after having used the XPOWER and this is something that not only inspires confidence in the user but allows one to appreciate the exhaustive features presented by MSI and their efforts We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower because MSI has truly brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard ever Is this a perfect board Well - no it isnrsquot but for the most part its close enough What prevents us from having the confidence to proclaim it so is the inconsistency we experienced with it This is a major one that we arenrsquot sure how MSI would address but there certainly has to be a solution to this and it could be a simple matter of a UEFI option (it most certainly is) that is not user tunable or should be tuned by default by

24 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

the engineers During testing we only used settings that are Hyper Pi 32M stable Regular Super Pi 32M isnrsquot good enough and to make sure that we were not running a system that may keel over at any time or represent settings that we may not be able to repeat in future we made sure that both normal and tuned benchmark results were Hyper Pi 32M capable Itrsquos not Prime95 but itrsquos a pretty intense test that is very much indicative of systems stability

We would configure the system and it would appear stable running endless loops of any given benchmark then after a single reboot the system would fail to POST This was an intermittent issue When the board did recover just to make doubly sure that it was not overly aggressive memory tuning we would decrease the memory frequency to 2133MHz and even lower to just 1600MHz However we would experience the same failure to POST at

settings that were previously rock solid At this point we would have to clear the CMOS and start over again loading the profile and lo and behold it would work A subsequent reboot would be fine only for it to fail on the third attempt This was very frustrating as there was no way of knowing what it was exactly that was causing the issue Wersquove not had this issue with any other motherboard and it is certainly an isolated case with this XPOWER Perhaps it is just our perfect combination of hardware but whatever it was it marred what was otherwise an incredible experience

That aside MSI has really gone to town with the features and package MSI has all the necessary switches and buttons you expect They are not as numerous as what yoursquod find on the Z97X-SOC Force for example but they more than cover all the basics and a bit more For $380 USD one does expect to have every option available and in this

regard the XPOWER gets it right We would appreciate having a ldquoMem OKrdquo like feature as on the numerous ASUS motherboards and it would be great if there werenrsquot a limited number of ground points for V-check There are three points which is an improvement over the older boards however you can check more than three voltages at any given time so why there arenrsquot any more ground points is anybodyrsquos guess

Much like the UEFI options

the package that MSI has put together with the XPOWER is incredible including a CPU core guard for those adventurous souls who have taken it upon themselves to remove the heat spreader on the CPU The core is very delicate and the Delid Guard will make sure your CPU pot does not crush the core or apply uneven pressure which is likely to destroy the CPU

To further assist those cooling with LN2 therersquos a fan bracket which you may use to

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 25

Summary

Would you buy it

MSIrsquos steady improvements in motherboard and BIOS design have finally paid off with the Z97 generation There are so many features on the board and BIOS that MSI can probably claim to have as many and perhaps even more tuning options than any other vendor on the market Itrsquos incredible to see just how refined a product the Z97 XPOWER AC is

At a maringally lower price

mount any standard fan for extracting or directing LN2 fumes away from the POT and surrounding areas This is a small convenience that is an added bonus to an already impressive package The focus with which MSI has designed the XPOWER is commendable to say the least All the bases have been covered and MSI has gone the extra mile to deliver what overclockers had asked of MSI for years

Does it justify the retail price Well you have to determine that yourself Given that it automatically makes you legible for MOA qualification but costs about as much as an of the other high end Z79 motherboards then itrsquos certainly worth the investment The XPOWER does many things right but has a few kinks that prevent

it from being a definitive board for the chipset Wersquod not however say that therersquos an outright superior boardon the market as that would not be true Ultimately it will come down to what you are willing to pay for and what you may sacrifice We do suspect that these motherboards will end up in many high end gaming machines as well and even in that context the XPOWER does deliver the goods As MSIrsquos most high end Z79 offering the XPOWER is probably more than we could have ever expected it to be and it does leave us with a very positive and lasting impression If you have the cash and are not moved by any one of the other motherboards at the very high end do give serious thought to the MSI Z97 XPOWER itrsquos the best one yet

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 3DMark Sky Diver Catzilla 720P

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC (Tuned)

124474 41104 42133 39878 16279 30950 29755Graphics 17858 Graphics 43190 Hardware 28749

Physics 13117 Physics 13463

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 30708 29851Graphics 17841 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190 Physics 13215

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

126295 27555 33523 29876 15963 30689 29803Graphics 17870 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28828

Physics 12047 Physics 13012

Neo
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We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower 13as MSI has brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard yet
Neo
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26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
Typewritten Text
at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
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Neo
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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Neo
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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
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Neo
Typewritten Text
GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
Neo
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Neo
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Neo
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Neo
Typewritten Text

2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 5: TheOverclocker Issue 31

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 7

Online or live competitions which do you prefer and why

As I said earlier I love all types of competition except where I canrsquot compete obviously Seriously though each competition is so much work in regards to organisation prizes validation of results and so on I really donrsquot have a preference Sure online you have enough time and you can always improve your scores while live competition involves a lot of luck It all depends on the provided hardware but hey that makes it interesting doesnrsquot it

Currently yoursquore sitting at 14 in the Elite league are you making it a point to go higher or is that just not important to you

Indeed it was very important and for my ego it is still very important Climbing up this ranking gave me some attention from vendors At present I have letrsquos say good support

There are some things which could be improved upon such as CPU and DRAM support but I like my situation right now I did a lot in the past to warrant this kind of support

My real profession is industrial engineering I studied a lot of strategic marketing and that is what I would like to give back to the vendors When they send me something my first goal is ndash breaking a record with that hardware in order to support their sales (That is honest and direct a rarity in this community at least publicly ndash Ed)

What is your favourite graphics card or platform to overclock

Oh thatrsquos easy ndash everything thatrsquos fun I mean when yoursquore an overclocker

you want to get the most out of the hardware The best scenario is to get more out of it than others I have no preference be it Intel NVidia or AMD I prefer the fastest for the given benchmark

8 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Other than overclocking what do you do for a living or any other hobby that you spend as much time on as overclocking if not more

One thing is clear ndash there isnrsquot a dime I have that I donrsquot invest in overclocking except for my family I am happily married and I have two stepchildren as well as one own child Overclocking sometimes is like a backlog of time I think every overclocker knows what I mean At least each Madame at an overclockerrsquos side knows that

Regarding vendor support do you feel vendors do enough or would you like to see a more structured and transparent support system By that I mean how would you feel about a situation where everyone knows who is being supported by which vendor

First of all ndash vendors do enough I mean they donrsquot have to do anything But to be more concrete on your question I think it is hard to make it more structured If you wanna climb a ranking you should be free in the choice of your preferred hardware Structure is always something like a duty to use that motherboard or

that GPU Regarding the pro-cup itrsquos almost impossible to compete when yoursquore forced to use only this particular brand

On the other hand I donrsquot have any issues with being the face of a vendor but then wersquore not talking about sponsorship but contracts

The second part of your question is easily answered when you look at my profile on HWBOT ndash there you can see all my sponsors

As one of the most active users on the BOT how often do you have overclocking sessions

At least twice a month (thatrsquos what I say to my wife) but to be honest once a week

Itrsquos a well-known fact that Germany has a huge DIY market at least from the vendor side Does that mean yoursquore seeing progressively more overclockers in your region or has it been the same number of people participating

I donrsquot see a distinguishable increase in overclockers ndash sadly I wish that were the case but that

task falls to media Gaming is much more popular than overclocking I do see huge improvement regarding that issue OCTV does a great job We get more and more attention as overclocking is no longer a stupid money and time wasting hobby

Letrsquos take me for example I was always afraid of the water condensation which was the problem not overclocking at sub-zero temperatures We need more guides more popularity public shows and tutorials and so on

Any hardware yoursquore looking forward to this year Granted X99 is here what are your thoughts on the platform in general

For sure all kinds of new GPUs and yeah ndash X99 will be a lot of fun I think this will bring us some insane results in the multithreaded benchmarks Considering itrsquos the architecture of the well-known Haswell perhaps will see a little decrease in CPU clocks and much more difficult behaviour regarding CB and CBB compared to X79 Who knows maybe Intel did some nice improvements regarding that

10 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In your experience have you had better luck with 4770Ks or are the 4790K CPUs on average for you much better overclockers

For sure the early batches of the 4770K were much better than the 4790K

Finding an old 4770K that does 62GHz 32m is much easier than finding a 4790K that does that I had such luck after my dead 4770K to find such a chip which died as well But on average I think the 4770K are the better choice

What is your favourite Z97 motherboard right now

All of them have their pros and cons I tried the Mpower Xpower M7H M7F M7G Gigabyte SOC force and LN2 Irsquod love to test the Asrock one but havenrsquot been able to yet

To make one thing clear the improvements on each z97 compared to z87 are pretty small Asus was

great even on z87 Asrock was one of the best regarding mem and max CPU clock Right now you can reach almost all results on another vendorrsquos board ndash with more or less work

What is your single greatest or most memorable overclocking achievement

Those are the littlr things Like 2666 6-10-6 on the MSI Xpower in 32m

Things like an insane XTU score with low clocks What I will really keep in mind though was my success in the Gigabyte catzilla challenge I did 3 sessions to get that score I truly learned how the card was to be treated At that moment when I saw the result I stopped and drank a beer It was my goal to achieve at the least 43000 points and I got it No matter what others scored I wanted to get that score and I did it

Anything yoursquod like to see changed in the overclocking community

As I had mentioned earlier media Push and promote our community and stop treating us like isolated noobs I think we spend a lot of time and money including effort into achieving what we have

Any other ideas or opinions you would like to share with the community and vendors regarding overclocking hardware or anything related

Coolermaster began to sponsor a team with LN2 for the pro-cup Irsquod like to see similar initiatives from other vendors Not necessarily the same way but perhaps at contests Sure winning money is pretty nice but why not spend that on a contract for the winner

Those things can be discussed its thatrsquos just an idea for the vendors Think about it

[ The Overclocker ]

12 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos finally arrived The long awaited 8 core behemoth from INTEL has landed and it couldnrsquot have come sooner

After years of being limited (and I use that word loosely) to 12 threads on the desktop barring the EVGA solutions we as the enthusiast community finally have 16 thread threads of processing power to tap into As INTEL shows in its slides since 2003 up until this CPU computing performance for the high end desktop has increased by a factor of 40 or more Thatrsquos incredible in just over a decade Roughly the same financial investment in the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition of 11 years ago today nets you forty times the performance Looking at it iteratively may obscure this fact but itrsquos only when taking it all in that you realize the remarkable progress thatrsquos been made in the last ten years It would have been ideal if we could boot up an old Extreme Edition based system from that time period and compared it to what we have here but that is only fascinating in theory In practice the frustration of having to deal with what would be an excruciatingly slow testing session would quickly shatter all nostalgia for the system

More pressing is how this new CPU affects modern day computing tasks in comparison

to what INTEL delivered just a year ago with Ivy-Bridge E CPUs That user space is likely the most affected by this CPU and that which stands to gain the most from it all We are specifically concerned with the 5960X here not the 5930K or the 5820KThose we will look at another time Right now we are primarily concerned with the additional two cores thus four threads INTEL has enabled on their dies that function as desktop processors Itrsquos not easily looking at the CPU in isolation from the new platform socket DRAM generation and motherboards that support it all There are minute to significant changes in each area but wersquoll not tackle any of that here Once again as with the other CPUs available for the socket wersquoll deal with them another time

Since the INTEL Core i7 980X in 2010 (feels like itrsquos been far longer than that) wersquove been content with the small increments in performance due solely to IPC improvements From Gulftown to Ivy-Bridge 12 was the magic number Provided we had the thread count our chosen applications (in our context - overclocking) this mattered above all else For the longest time perhaps even up to the earlier this year a good 12 thread CPU would be enough to keep you and your team competitive without necessarily having to invest in the latest

INTEL Core i7 5960X

THE POWER OF

8

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 13

CPU For all intents and purposes a good 3960X or perhaps even a 3930K would see you through It would not perhaps take you to the top of the leagues but it would keep you competitive This brings us to another point which is that we have a situation with this CPU that makes it financially unviable to bin CPUs (that is if yoursquore not sponsored in some form) unless you have very deep pockets Unlike with Sandy-Bridge E or its successor the highest end Haswell-E SKU has a tangible and insurmountable advantage over its ldquocheaperrdquo stable mates It is not feasible anymore to use a golden sample 5930K for instance to beat the competitors who are equipped with the 5960X The two CPUs are

not in the same league performance wise and since this is the platform we employ for the multi-threaded benchmarks cores matter perhaps as much as frequency

In case there are those who are unaware for some reason The 5960X is based on the same architecture as the other two CPUs the only besides clock frequency is the L3 cache size at a hefty (by todayrsquos standards) 20MB and obviously all eight cores enabled as opposed to 6 For this difference the price premium is almost $500 steep perhaps but nothing wersquove not seen before More importantly it is easier to justify the price premium unlike before where the gains were minimal between the two most

As soon as the Embargo lifted we

had a number of records including

BenchBros new CineBench R15 World Record An impressive 5960X sample

approaching 6GHz Over 800 points higher than the

previous 8 core CPU record at 1503

14 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

expensive SKUs on the X79 platform Itrsquos no secret that INTEL has been

embracing the enthusiast and more specifically the overclocking community more than it has historically The changes made to their CPUs in the performance and HEDT platforms are a testament to this Artificial limitations are being eradicated at an alarming rate and with the 4790K for instance a conscious effort to improve overclocking was made If this paid on in practical terms is another issue entirely but the effort was made and that is a commendable attitude or position for a company that is in essence without meaningful competition in this space

Does the 5960X warrant its price tag but more especially the excitement and buzz The answer is a resounding yes Given that it has the same retail value as the outgoing 4960X but provides real tangible performance gains It makes a far more convincing argument for itself than perhaps any other INTEL CPU has in this space Even if you have no interest in competitive overclocking at all the 5960X throws itrsquos weight around effectively culling compute times significantly across the vast majority of suits that that are designed to take advantage of multiple threads let alone the new instruction sets made available From Adobe Premier Pro Blender to Virtual Dub and more there are plenty of programs that will instantly show gains by running on this CPU The loss in frequency in comparison to the 4960X or any other CPU for that matter is meaningless compared to what is gained Losing 600MHz is a lot and perhaps even more than one would think four extra

threads would compensate for but if you need the single thread performance and frequency then you have the 4790K For everything else therersquos nothing better than the 5960X

Since the platforms launch recently wersquove witnessed some remarkable results in all the relevant benchmarks on HWBOT In the mathematicalcompute benchmarks like wPrime Cinebench XTU (otherwise known as 3D benchmarks) the new ldquorecordsrdquo and milestone are not in how much faster the new CPU is over the 4960X but itrsquos that therersquos competition in the 8X CPU category where there previously wasnrsquot any in comparison This doesnrsquot mean of course that the 4 and 6X categories are no longer worth the pursuit it merely allows for a more competitive landscape with more options than before This isnrsquot the case in the graphics benchmarks where the thread count advantage of the 5960X will effectively retire the hex core CPUs Itrsquos still very early in the platformrsquos lifetime and wersquoll have to wait and see how it all plays out Suffice to say the 5960X changes the landscape dramatically

X99 BRIEFLY It doesnrsquot take keen insight to come to the conclusion that for the 5960X to be as effective as it is it needs a strong underlying platform or chipset To that end we have a few changes to the chipset There isnrsquot a game changer if you exclude the support for DDR4 but it the changes do bring INTELrsquos HEDT platform a little in line with what the Z97 offers Sorely missed on the X79 chipset was native support for USB

8-Pack unleashed a SLI Firestrike Extreme record of 15011 nearly 1000 points higher than the previous record as soon as the embargo lifted

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 15

30 which INTEL has remedied by allowing a total of 14 USB ports directly from the Chipset eight of which are the older USB20 type and the remaining six super speed 30 This will hopefully get rid of those 3rd party controllers which were always an unnecessary cost to X79 motherboards In addition to that the number of SATA ports supported by the chipset increases from the previous six to ten but all of them support SATA 6Gbps Between these two changes it could eliminate the need for two additional third party ICs on the motherboard which should in theory allow cheaper manufacturing and lower prices to the end user

INTEL states that the chipset and more specifically the 5930K and 5960X support 40 PCI Express lanes This is identical to what we had before with the X79 chipset however natively supported configurations or distribution of these lanes seems to have changed For instance on the X79 platform INTEL offered the following schemes 2x16 amp 1x8 2x 16 amp 3x8 and finally 1x16 amp 2x8 amp 2x4 which is enough to support 4-Way SLICrossfire natively However with the X99 Chipset it looks as if the configurations have been simplified to 2x16 amp 1x8 or 5x8 The first Lane routing and distribution is familiar but the second and potentially the most interesting configuration of 5x8 is dependent on additional 3rd party logic Not in the sense that a the familiar PLX switching chip is necessary but that this configuration isnrsquot natively supported by the chipset but it is a

possible one provided the necessary logic is added to the particular motherboard Thus not all motherboards will be able to use all these schemes

We are particularly interested in what vendors will do with these new possibilities especially with M2 popularity already surpassing that of mSATA which just never got off the ground As a result of the chipset also offering more PCI-Express 30 lanes than Z97 therersquos potential to see better M2 performance as well for the vendors that choose to make use of more lanes on their solution than the standard 10Gbps we see on the majority of motherboards There simply isnrsquot a need to be as conservative with PCI-Express bandwidth Howe vendors will choose to use this chipset will vary and wersquoll be looking at that in all the X99 motherboard reviews to follow in future Until then we have to say that even the most basic motherboards for this chipset are offering a compelling set of features that we have longed for but were missing on all but the very high end X79 motherboards

GAMINGIt should come as little to no surprise to anyone that the 5960X offers no advantage in gaming over the 4960X or the Z97 CPUs for that matter If anything this CPU could be a little slower as a result of the drastically reduced operating frequency Fortunately the fact that it has no apparent advantage here in gaming does not mean that it is ldquoslowerrdquo or offers a sub-optimal gaming

Gunslinger pushed out an impressive 26417 in 3DMark

Firestrike Extreme this time over 1000

points higher than the previous record

set by 8-Pack

16 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

experience to the contrary Games are almost always GPU bound and have been so for at least a decade A faster CPU for the same architecture has not netted any benefit in gaming performance several generations of platforms Wersquove grown accustomed to this and things are no different today Games are simply unable to take advantage of more than four threads Thatrsquos why even today there are many gamers using older generation CPUs such as the Core i5 2500K and are enjoying the highest fidelity in visuals on the most modern and demanding games

or that very reason the 5960X does more than well enough in gaming In

the 5960X delivered identical performance the 4790K The GPU was the limiting factor here This would probably not be the case in a 4-way SLI or rossfire s but then wersquod either be looking at ridiculously high frame rates that have diminished academic va and even less practical

with no measurable performance difference between all the CPUs outside the margin of error Gaming at UHD4K resolutions across multiple screens however maybe a different story as the bandwidth advantage for the X79 and X99 CPUs would be clear but those are very extreme situations If you do game like that therersquos no denying that yoursquoll need a CPU such as this one to full utilize all the rendering power you have at your disposal

IN CLOSINGIf the X79 chipset is anything to go by X99 will be with us for a very long time perhaps

anywhere between one to three years Therersquos certainly no reason for INTEL to usher in a new platform or CPUs anytime soon The 5960X in particular is a sizeable leap forward in computing performance It comes with the penalty of a higher TDP at 140W but that is a negligible cost compared to the dramatically increased threading performance it gives over the 4960X The only losers in power consumption are the 5930K and 5820K They do represent an improvement in IPC over their predecessors but that improvement is minute in comparison If you are currently making use of the 4930K therersquos little to perhaps no practical reason to upgrade to the 5930K purely for IPC increase As an entire platform change there are merits to this

We didnrsquotrsquo get a lot of time to spend with the Core i7 5960X before this issue was due but we were impressed with the CPU almost instantly The motherboards this time around unlike with X79 are in a better state upon arrival There will be continued refreshes no doubt and with each firmware update they will get better so will the overclocking results We already have 6GHz capable CPUs and while we may not see speeds much faster than this the number of CPUs capable of this frequency is sure to increase as INTEL refine their process along with the ever improving motherboard firmware It is early in the platforms existence but the 5960X has delivered more than we could have expected and we are thoroughly impressed with what INTEL has done here The worldrsquos first true 8-core desktop system has arrived and it is in one word Mighty

[ The OverClocker ]

GAMING GEARAWARD

18 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos not often that we find ourselves testing and writing any kind of

editorial on ASUS Formula motherboards Usually itrsquos the Extreme Impact and that kind of SKU This time we have the MAXIMUS VII Formula The highest end Z97 SKU from ASUS at present and it shows in pricing but

ASUS Maximus VII FormulaRRP $35499 | Website wwwasuscom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

more importantly in the features set

Unlike with the Maximus VI

Extreme for example there is a strong emphasis here on gaming and less so on the overclocking capabilities That is not to say it is unsuitable for extreme overclocking it is to the contrary in fact

ASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps one of the best if not the best looking Z97 boards wersquove seen It has the benefit of aiding

cooling of all the components on the board as well This isnrsquot going to make a world of difference in anything but it does help longevity which is something you may care about considering that yoursquore paying nearly $350 for this piece of engineering Aesthetically then it looks the part and itrsquod be a waste to have it in a windowless case as this one deserves to be seen

What really makes a gaming motherboard these days is an intelligent NIC and a superior audio system both of which are present here Unlike other vendors though ASUS has gone with the INTEL I218V controller which they claim not only has

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 19

lower CPU overhead but a higher throughput as well In addition to that there are some changes to the actual RJ45 port which supposedly help protect the motherboard from lightning strikes and static electricity So itrsquos more than just network traffic Oddly enough ASUS does not claim lower latency with this implementation which is what KILLER network adapters are primarily known for in addition to prioritizing the right kind of traffic when gaming (which this controller does as well via the GameFirst III software)

How beneficial all this is to the end user is debatable but itrsquos innovation nonetheless and wersquod rather have it than

not It all speaks to the quality with which ASUS constructs these gaming motherboards

Second and perhaps even more important is the on-boardaudio solution Given that ASUS can boldly claim to make the best gaming enthusiast grade audio cards and USB DACs (Essence series anyone) itrsquos fitting that wersquod expect nothing but the best here To that end the MAXIMUS VII delivers in spades with a components list unlike any other vendors Being different doesnrsquot make it better but when we looked at the kind of equipment that features what ASUS has here it becomes very apparent that these component decisions were at the very least made

ldquoASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps oneof the best if not the bestlooking boards weve seen

20 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

for qualitative reasons in addition to economical ones Any solution that features ELNA audio capacitors paired with WIMA caps a Cirrus Logic DAC and a TI op-amp is going to impress you to some degree The only part of this entire equation which we canrsquot fathom is why ASUS chose the Realtek ALC1150 codec instead of the numerous others available on the market Therersquos nothing wrong with the ALC1150 per se but given that it is supported by such superior components which no doubt have added to the cost of the motherboard it is puzzling to find this CODEC on such a motherboard

The weakest link is here but you can be guaranteed that this is the best use of this CODEC on the market currently

Competing vendors have made it a point to highlight that there are specific USB ports located at the rear which are meant to have your keyboard and mouse plugged into These ports are supposedly low latency ports with a high polling frequency and more often than not feature some kind of gold plating for better contacts We can confirm that therersquos absolutely no difference between these ports and any other USB port on the motherboard in gaming

or in how your keyboard functions With the ASUS KeyBot however therersquos some ingenuity which allows you to assign almost any keyboard Macro functionality even if said keyboard does not have these features This little chip allows you to program a variety of functionality to any keyboard including cold booting the system into specific states and booting directly to the UEFI so you essentially donrsquotrsquo need a dedicated Direct to BIOS key Once again this is a nifty little feature that is many times more useful than the supposed gaming ports that others may tout on their products

This brings us to the motherboards performance There are many aspects of the Maximus VII Formula that we havenrsquot covered but we could not possibly write about an ROG motherboard without analysis of how it performs in an overclocking context Yes this is geared towards the premium gaming crowd but even then it should not preclude one from being competitive at the highest levels of overclocking This is where the power of the ASUS UEFI comes into play The interface is laid out simply and intuitively It is very detailed but most of the functionality and options are explained thoroughly eliminating any

guess work you may need to do Itrsquos a sublime interface that is not terribly exciting but is thoroughly detailed and simple to navigate Tuning memory on this motherboard is splendid because with every setting there is some kind of assistance letting you know what it is yoursquore tuning and how it may affect overclocking or stability Should it all go pear shaped you can always revert to safe settings using the MemOK button Speaking of which this button is located in the most inconvenient place on the motherboard where itrsquos very close to the edge of the aforementioned top cover It is reachable but perhaps another location would have been better

It should not come as a surprise that the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M time of all Z97 motherboards wersquove tested to date This lead was small but it was there and we couldnrsquot match it with other boards with similar timings You can rest assured that whatever limits you hit with the MVIIF they are due to your CPU or memory but not the motherboard as it is robust as it is finely tuned Thus far wersquove yet to find any vendor or any motherboard in fact that can marry gaming and overclocking so well on a single product For those

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 21

Summary

Would you buy it

No vendor balances gaming and overclocking features the way ASUS does with the Maximus range This one is geared entirely at the gaming crowd and it delivers in spades The features are numerous and the aesthetics unmatched Itrsquos a grand motherboard only a few hairs short of perfection

Yes

who happen to have the ROG control panel yoursquoll be happy to know that the MAXIMUS VII Formula is fully compatible with it and all the functionality you had on the MAXIMUS VI for example yoursquoll find here as well With just the addition of that panel alone (which isnrsquot included with the FORMULA by the way) therersquoll be few things if any you can do with the Z87 extreme board that you cannot do with this motherboard

Once again the package which ASUS provides and its presentation is second to none Wersquove been impressed to no end by other ASUS boards like the Rampage IV

Black Edition for example This isnrsquot that kind of product No this is an evolution of the already great MAXIMUS VI Formula Itrsquos the little changes here and there that culminate into the best Formula motherboard ASUS has ever created From where we stand there arenrsquot any boards which cater to high end gamers and enthusiasts like this one does Itrsquos the best combination of features available today for its intended market If yoursquore building the ultimate Z97 gaming machine and are unwilling to compromise the MAXIMUS VII Formula just may be what you need

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

MAXIMUS VII Formula (Tuned)

124178 41139 42115 39878 16372 1222 29826Graphics 17888 Hardware 28807Physics 13314

ASUS MAXIMUS VII Formula

124677 33332 41923 36199 16307 1202 29736Graphics 17810 Hardware 28725Physics 13207

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M13time of all Z97 motherboards weve tested to date
Neo
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Hardware Award

22 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSIrsquos overclocking motherboards have come a long

way With hits and misses along the journey the last couple of years have resulted in solid progress and improvements all around The biggest criticism leveled at MSI motherboards was almost always weak memory overclocking

MSI Z97 XPOWER ACRRP $37999 | Website wwwmsicom

Test Machinebull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

capacity or capability Given just how important this is it became somewhat of a forgone conclusion that MSI motherboards were not capable of extracting the most out of your hardware After all other than memory there really isnrsquot anything else you can tune on a motherboard as the end user It is in this regard that this stigma followed MSIrsquos boards even when they did not deserve it (which they havenrsquot for a while)

With the Z97 XPOWER and

perhaps even the MPOWER itrsquos a whole different story At least from our perspective there isnrsquot anything about the XPOWER that makes it incapable of memory

overclocking compared to other OC focused offerings on the market In our tests it was truly the limitation of the CPU if anything that prevented any further tuning or frequency scaling that might have been possible What is worth saying though is that we did find it takes a higher voltage across the board to reach the same frequencies or at least tune it to the same efficiency as compared to the other motherboards This isnrsquot anything that should endanger your components at all (especially SAMSUNG memory) but it is worth keepingin mind that what is stable on another motherboard and not so on the XPOWER could simply be a matter of needing to use a higher voltage

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 23

What that means or says about the power delivery on MSI motherboards we will leave for you to decide but it certainly isnrsquot anything we would take away points for On the flip side to this we found that the MSI board mustered up some truly incredible numbers and efficiency wise matched all other boards

we tested and in some cases even exceeded them This is perhaps not because the other motherboards are not capable but by way of the vast array of options MSI brings to their UEFI In addition to this the effect such options have on overclocking and recommended setting help greatly As with all

motherboards we have previously found to be immaculate the entire experience of overclocking is a learning one One is better at overclocking and tuning memory across the board after having used the XPOWER and this is something that not only inspires confidence in the user but allows one to appreciate the exhaustive features presented by MSI and their efforts We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower because MSI has truly brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard ever Is this a perfect board Well - no it isnrsquot but for the most part its close enough What prevents us from having the confidence to proclaim it so is the inconsistency we experienced with it This is a major one that we arenrsquot sure how MSI would address but there certainly has to be a solution to this and it could be a simple matter of a UEFI option (it most certainly is) that is not user tunable or should be tuned by default by

24 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

the engineers During testing we only used settings that are Hyper Pi 32M stable Regular Super Pi 32M isnrsquot good enough and to make sure that we were not running a system that may keel over at any time or represent settings that we may not be able to repeat in future we made sure that both normal and tuned benchmark results were Hyper Pi 32M capable Itrsquos not Prime95 but itrsquos a pretty intense test that is very much indicative of systems stability

We would configure the system and it would appear stable running endless loops of any given benchmark then after a single reboot the system would fail to POST This was an intermittent issue When the board did recover just to make doubly sure that it was not overly aggressive memory tuning we would decrease the memory frequency to 2133MHz and even lower to just 1600MHz However we would experience the same failure to POST at

settings that were previously rock solid At this point we would have to clear the CMOS and start over again loading the profile and lo and behold it would work A subsequent reboot would be fine only for it to fail on the third attempt This was very frustrating as there was no way of knowing what it was exactly that was causing the issue Wersquove not had this issue with any other motherboard and it is certainly an isolated case with this XPOWER Perhaps it is just our perfect combination of hardware but whatever it was it marred what was otherwise an incredible experience

That aside MSI has really gone to town with the features and package MSI has all the necessary switches and buttons you expect They are not as numerous as what yoursquod find on the Z97X-SOC Force for example but they more than cover all the basics and a bit more For $380 USD one does expect to have every option available and in this

regard the XPOWER gets it right We would appreciate having a ldquoMem OKrdquo like feature as on the numerous ASUS motherboards and it would be great if there werenrsquot a limited number of ground points for V-check There are three points which is an improvement over the older boards however you can check more than three voltages at any given time so why there arenrsquot any more ground points is anybodyrsquos guess

Much like the UEFI options

the package that MSI has put together with the XPOWER is incredible including a CPU core guard for those adventurous souls who have taken it upon themselves to remove the heat spreader on the CPU The core is very delicate and the Delid Guard will make sure your CPU pot does not crush the core or apply uneven pressure which is likely to destroy the CPU

To further assist those cooling with LN2 therersquos a fan bracket which you may use to

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 25

Summary

Would you buy it

MSIrsquos steady improvements in motherboard and BIOS design have finally paid off with the Z97 generation There are so many features on the board and BIOS that MSI can probably claim to have as many and perhaps even more tuning options than any other vendor on the market Itrsquos incredible to see just how refined a product the Z97 XPOWER AC is

At a maringally lower price

mount any standard fan for extracting or directing LN2 fumes away from the POT and surrounding areas This is a small convenience that is an added bonus to an already impressive package The focus with which MSI has designed the XPOWER is commendable to say the least All the bases have been covered and MSI has gone the extra mile to deliver what overclockers had asked of MSI for years

Does it justify the retail price Well you have to determine that yourself Given that it automatically makes you legible for MOA qualification but costs about as much as an of the other high end Z79 motherboards then itrsquos certainly worth the investment The XPOWER does many things right but has a few kinks that prevent

it from being a definitive board for the chipset Wersquod not however say that therersquos an outright superior boardon the market as that would not be true Ultimately it will come down to what you are willing to pay for and what you may sacrifice We do suspect that these motherboards will end up in many high end gaming machines as well and even in that context the XPOWER does deliver the goods As MSIrsquos most high end Z79 offering the XPOWER is probably more than we could have ever expected it to be and it does leave us with a very positive and lasting impression If you have the cash and are not moved by any one of the other motherboards at the very high end do give serious thought to the MSI Z97 XPOWER itrsquos the best one yet

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 3DMark Sky Diver Catzilla 720P

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC (Tuned)

124474 41104 42133 39878 16279 30950 29755Graphics 17858 Graphics 43190 Hardware 28749

Physics 13117 Physics 13463

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 30708 29851Graphics 17841 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190 Physics 13215

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

126295 27555 33523 29876 15963 30689 29803Graphics 17870 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28828

Physics 12047 Physics 13012

Neo
Typewritten Text
We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower 13as MSI has brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard yet
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26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
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at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
Neo
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
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Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 6: TheOverclocker Issue 31

8 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Other than overclocking what do you do for a living or any other hobby that you spend as much time on as overclocking if not more

One thing is clear ndash there isnrsquot a dime I have that I donrsquot invest in overclocking except for my family I am happily married and I have two stepchildren as well as one own child Overclocking sometimes is like a backlog of time I think every overclocker knows what I mean At least each Madame at an overclockerrsquos side knows that

Regarding vendor support do you feel vendors do enough or would you like to see a more structured and transparent support system By that I mean how would you feel about a situation where everyone knows who is being supported by which vendor

First of all ndash vendors do enough I mean they donrsquot have to do anything But to be more concrete on your question I think it is hard to make it more structured If you wanna climb a ranking you should be free in the choice of your preferred hardware Structure is always something like a duty to use that motherboard or

that GPU Regarding the pro-cup itrsquos almost impossible to compete when yoursquore forced to use only this particular brand

On the other hand I donrsquot have any issues with being the face of a vendor but then wersquore not talking about sponsorship but contracts

The second part of your question is easily answered when you look at my profile on HWBOT ndash there you can see all my sponsors

As one of the most active users on the BOT how often do you have overclocking sessions

At least twice a month (thatrsquos what I say to my wife) but to be honest once a week

Itrsquos a well-known fact that Germany has a huge DIY market at least from the vendor side Does that mean yoursquore seeing progressively more overclockers in your region or has it been the same number of people participating

I donrsquot see a distinguishable increase in overclockers ndash sadly I wish that were the case but that

task falls to media Gaming is much more popular than overclocking I do see huge improvement regarding that issue OCTV does a great job We get more and more attention as overclocking is no longer a stupid money and time wasting hobby

Letrsquos take me for example I was always afraid of the water condensation which was the problem not overclocking at sub-zero temperatures We need more guides more popularity public shows and tutorials and so on

Any hardware yoursquore looking forward to this year Granted X99 is here what are your thoughts on the platform in general

For sure all kinds of new GPUs and yeah ndash X99 will be a lot of fun I think this will bring us some insane results in the multithreaded benchmarks Considering itrsquos the architecture of the well-known Haswell perhaps will see a little decrease in CPU clocks and much more difficult behaviour regarding CB and CBB compared to X79 Who knows maybe Intel did some nice improvements regarding that

10 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In your experience have you had better luck with 4770Ks or are the 4790K CPUs on average for you much better overclockers

For sure the early batches of the 4770K were much better than the 4790K

Finding an old 4770K that does 62GHz 32m is much easier than finding a 4790K that does that I had such luck after my dead 4770K to find such a chip which died as well But on average I think the 4770K are the better choice

What is your favourite Z97 motherboard right now

All of them have their pros and cons I tried the Mpower Xpower M7H M7F M7G Gigabyte SOC force and LN2 Irsquod love to test the Asrock one but havenrsquot been able to yet

To make one thing clear the improvements on each z97 compared to z87 are pretty small Asus was

great even on z87 Asrock was one of the best regarding mem and max CPU clock Right now you can reach almost all results on another vendorrsquos board ndash with more or less work

What is your single greatest or most memorable overclocking achievement

Those are the littlr things Like 2666 6-10-6 on the MSI Xpower in 32m

Things like an insane XTU score with low clocks What I will really keep in mind though was my success in the Gigabyte catzilla challenge I did 3 sessions to get that score I truly learned how the card was to be treated At that moment when I saw the result I stopped and drank a beer It was my goal to achieve at the least 43000 points and I got it No matter what others scored I wanted to get that score and I did it

Anything yoursquod like to see changed in the overclocking community

As I had mentioned earlier media Push and promote our community and stop treating us like isolated noobs I think we spend a lot of time and money including effort into achieving what we have

Any other ideas or opinions you would like to share with the community and vendors regarding overclocking hardware or anything related

Coolermaster began to sponsor a team with LN2 for the pro-cup Irsquod like to see similar initiatives from other vendors Not necessarily the same way but perhaps at contests Sure winning money is pretty nice but why not spend that on a contract for the winner

Those things can be discussed its thatrsquos just an idea for the vendors Think about it

[ The Overclocker ]

12 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos finally arrived The long awaited 8 core behemoth from INTEL has landed and it couldnrsquot have come sooner

After years of being limited (and I use that word loosely) to 12 threads on the desktop barring the EVGA solutions we as the enthusiast community finally have 16 thread threads of processing power to tap into As INTEL shows in its slides since 2003 up until this CPU computing performance for the high end desktop has increased by a factor of 40 or more Thatrsquos incredible in just over a decade Roughly the same financial investment in the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition of 11 years ago today nets you forty times the performance Looking at it iteratively may obscure this fact but itrsquos only when taking it all in that you realize the remarkable progress thatrsquos been made in the last ten years It would have been ideal if we could boot up an old Extreme Edition based system from that time period and compared it to what we have here but that is only fascinating in theory In practice the frustration of having to deal with what would be an excruciatingly slow testing session would quickly shatter all nostalgia for the system

More pressing is how this new CPU affects modern day computing tasks in comparison

to what INTEL delivered just a year ago with Ivy-Bridge E CPUs That user space is likely the most affected by this CPU and that which stands to gain the most from it all We are specifically concerned with the 5960X here not the 5930K or the 5820KThose we will look at another time Right now we are primarily concerned with the additional two cores thus four threads INTEL has enabled on their dies that function as desktop processors Itrsquos not easily looking at the CPU in isolation from the new platform socket DRAM generation and motherboards that support it all There are minute to significant changes in each area but wersquoll not tackle any of that here Once again as with the other CPUs available for the socket wersquoll deal with them another time

Since the INTEL Core i7 980X in 2010 (feels like itrsquos been far longer than that) wersquove been content with the small increments in performance due solely to IPC improvements From Gulftown to Ivy-Bridge 12 was the magic number Provided we had the thread count our chosen applications (in our context - overclocking) this mattered above all else For the longest time perhaps even up to the earlier this year a good 12 thread CPU would be enough to keep you and your team competitive without necessarily having to invest in the latest

INTEL Core i7 5960X

THE POWER OF

8

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 13

CPU For all intents and purposes a good 3960X or perhaps even a 3930K would see you through It would not perhaps take you to the top of the leagues but it would keep you competitive This brings us to another point which is that we have a situation with this CPU that makes it financially unviable to bin CPUs (that is if yoursquore not sponsored in some form) unless you have very deep pockets Unlike with Sandy-Bridge E or its successor the highest end Haswell-E SKU has a tangible and insurmountable advantage over its ldquocheaperrdquo stable mates It is not feasible anymore to use a golden sample 5930K for instance to beat the competitors who are equipped with the 5960X The two CPUs are

not in the same league performance wise and since this is the platform we employ for the multi-threaded benchmarks cores matter perhaps as much as frequency

In case there are those who are unaware for some reason The 5960X is based on the same architecture as the other two CPUs the only besides clock frequency is the L3 cache size at a hefty (by todayrsquos standards) 20MB and obviously all eight cores enabled as opposed to 6 For this difference the price premium is almost $500 steep perhaps but nothing wersquove not seen before More importantly it is easier to justify the price premium unlike before where the gains were minimal between the two most

As soon as the Embargo lifted we

had a number of records including

BenchBros new CineBench R15 World Record An impressive 5960X sample

approaching 6GHz Over 800 points higher than the

previous 8 core CPU record at 1503

14 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

expensive SKUs on the X79 platform Itrsquos no secret that INTEL has been

embracing the enthusiast and more specifically the overclocking community more than it has historically The changes made to their CPUs in the performance and HEDT platforms are a testament to this Artificial limitations are being eradicated at an alarming rate and with the 4790K for instance a conscious effort to improve overclocking was made If this paid on in practical terms is another issue entirely but the effort was made and that is a commendable attitude or position for a company that is in essence without meaningful competition in this space

Does the 5960X warrant its price tag but more especially the excitement and buzz The answer is a resounding yes Given that it has the same retail value as the outgoing 4960X but provides real tangible performance gains It makes a far more convincing argument for itself than perhaps any other INTEL CPU has in this space Even if you have no interest in competitive overclocking at all the 5960X throws itrsquos weight around effectively culling compute times significantly across the vast majority of suits that that are designed to take advantage of multiple threads let alone the new instruction sets made available From Adobe Premier Pro Blender to Virtual Dub and more there are plenty of programs that will instantly show gains by running on this CPU The loss in frequency in comparison to the 4960X or any other CPU for that matter is meaningless compared to what is gained Losing 600MHz is a lot and perhaps even more than one would think four extra

threads would compensate for but if you need the single thread performance and frequency then you have the 4790K For everything else therersquos nothing better than the 5960X

Since the platforms launch recently wersquove witnessed some remarkable results in all the relevant benchmarks on HWBOT In the mathematicalcompute benchmarks like wPrime Cinebench XTU (otherwise known as 3D benchmarks) the new ldquorecordsrdquo and milestone are not in how much faster the new CPU is over the 4960X but itrsquos that therersquos competition in the 8X CPU category where there previously wasnrsquot any in comparison This doesnrsquot mean of course that the 4 and 6X categories are no longer worth the pursuit it merely allows for a more competitive landscape with more options than before This isnrsquot the case in the graphics benchmarks where the thread count advantage of the 5960X will effectively retire the hex core CPUs Itrsquos still very early in the platformrsquos lifetime and wersquoll have to wait and see how it all plays out Suffice to say the 5960X changes the landscape dramatically

X99 BRIEFLY It doesnrsquot take keen insight to come to the conclusion that for the 5960X to be as effective as it is it needs a strong underlying platform or chipset To that end we have a few changes to the chipset There isnrsquot a game changer if you exclude the support for DDR4 but it the changes do bring INTELrsquos HEDT platform a little in line with what the Z97 offers Sorely missed on the X79 chipset was native support for USB

8-Pack unleashed a SLI Firestrike Extreme record of 15011 nearly 1000 points higher than the previous record as soon as the embargo lifted

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 15

30 which INTEL has remedied by allowing a total of 14 USB ports directly from the Chipset eight of which are the older USB20 type and the remaining six super speed 30 This will hopefully get rid of those 3rd party controllers which were always an unnecessary cost to X79 motherboards In addition to that the number of SATA ports supported by the chipset increases from the previous six to ten but all of them support SATA 6Gbps Between these two changes it could eliminate the need for two additional third party ICs on the motherboard which should in theory allow cheaper manufacturing and lower prices to the end user

INTEL states that the chipset and more specifically the 5930K and 5960X support 40 PCI Express lanes This is identical to what we had before with the X79 chipset however natively supported configurations or distribution of these lanes seems to have changed For instance on the X79 platform INTEL offered the following schemes 2x16 amp 1x8 2x 16 amp 3x8 and finally 1x16 amp 2x8 amp 2x4 which is enough to support 4-Way SLICrossfire natively However with the X99 Chipset it looks as if the configurations have been simplified to 2x16 amp 1x8 or 5x8 The first Lane routing and distribution is familiar but the second and potentially the most interesting configuration of 5x8 is dependent on additional 3rd party logic Not in the sense that a the familiar PLX switching chip is necessary but that this configuration isnrsquot natively supported by the chipset but it is a

possible one provided the necessary logic is added to the particular motherboard Thus not all motherboards will be able to use all these schemes

We are particularly interested in what vendors will do with these new possibilities especially with M2 popularity already surpassing that of mSATA which just never got off the ground As a result of the chipset also offering more PCI-Express 30 lanes than Z97 therersquos potential to see better M2 performance as well for the vendors that choose to make use of more lanes on their solution than the standard 10Gbps we see on the majority of motherboards There simply isnrsquot a need to be as conservative with PCI-Express bandwidth Howe vendors will choose to use this chipset will vary and wersquoll be looking at that in all the X99 motherboard reviews to follow in future Until then we have to say that even the most basic motherboards for this chipset are offering a compelling set of features that we have longed for but were missing on all but the very high end X79 motherboards

GAMINGIt should come as little to no surprise to anyone that the 5960X offers no advantage in gaming over the 4960X or the Z97 CPUs for that matter If anything this CPU could be a little slower as a result of the drastically reduced operating frequency Fortunately the fact that it has no apparent advantage here in gaming does not mean that it is ldquoslowerrdquo or offers a sub-optimal gaming

Gunslinger pushed out an impressive 26417 in 3DMark

Firestrike Extreme this time over 1000

points higher than the previous record

set by 8-Pack

16 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

experience to the contrary Games are almost always GPU bound and have been so for at least a decade A faster CPU for the same architecture has not netted any benefit in gaming performance several generations of platforms Wersquove grown accustomed to this and things are no different today Games are simply unable to take advantage of more than four threads Thatrsquos why even today there are many gamers using older generation CPUs such as the Core i5 2500K and are enjoying the highest fidelity in visuals on the most modern and demanding games

or that very reason the 5960X does more than well enough in gaming In

the 5960X delivered identical performance the 4790K The GPU was the limiting factor here This would probably not be the case in a 4-way SLI or rossfire s but then wersquod either be looking at ridiculously high frame rates that have diminished academic va and even less practical

with no measurable performance difference between all the CPUs outside the margin of error Gaming at UHD4K resolutions across multiple screens however maybe a different story as the bandwidth advantage for the X79 and X99 CPUs would be clear but those are very extreme situations If you do game like that therersquos no denying that yoursquoll need a CPU such as this one to full utilize all the rendering power you have at your disposal

IN CLOSINGIf the X79 chipset is anything to go by X99 will be with us for a very long time perhaps

anywhere between one to three years Therersquos certainly no reason for INTEL to usher in a new platform or CPUs anytime soon The 5960X in particular is a sizeable leap forward in computing performance It comes with the penalty of a higher TDP at 140W but that is a negligible cost compared to the dramatically increased threading performance it gives over the 4960X The only losers in power consumption are the 5930K and 5820K They do represent an improvement in IPC over their predecessors but that improvement is minute in comparison If you are currently making use of the 4930K therersquos little to perhaps no practical reason to upgrade to the 5930K purely for IPC increase As an entire platform change there are merits to this

We didnrsquotrsquo get a lot of time to spend with the Core i7 5960X before this issue was due but we were impressed with the CPU almost instantly The motherboards this time around unlike with X79 are in a better state upon arrival There will be continued refreshes no doubt and with each firmware update they will get better so will the overclocking results We already have 6GHz capable CPUs and while we may not see speeds much faster than this the number of CPUs capable of this frequency is sure to increase as INTEL refine their process along with the ever improving motherboard firmware It is early in the platforms existence but the 5960X has delivered more than we could have expected and we are thoroughly impressed with what INTEL has done here The worldrsquos first true 8-core desktop system has arrived and it is in one word Mighty

[ The OverClocker ]

GAMING GEARAWARD

18 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos not often that we find ourselves testing and writing any kind of

editorial on ASUS Formula motherboards Usually itrsquos the Extreme Impact and that kind of SKU This time we have the MAXIMUS VII Formula The highest end Z97 SKU from ASUS at present and it shows in pricing but

ASUS Maximus VII FormulaRRP $35499 | Website wwwasuscom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

more importantly in the features set

Unlike with the Maximus VI

Extreme for example there is a strong emphasis here on gaming and less so on the overclocking capabilities That is not to say it is unsuitable for extreme overclocking it is to the contrary in fact

ASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps one of the best if not the best looking Z97 boards wersquove seen It has the benefit of aiding

cooling of all the components on the board as well This isnrsquot going to make a world of difference in anything but it does help longevity which is something you may care about considering that yoursquore paying nearly $350 for this piece of engineering Aesthetically then it looks the part and itrsquod be a waste to have it in a windowless case as this one deserves to be seen

What really makes a gaming motherboard these days is an intelligent NIC and a superior audio system both of which are present here Unlike other vendors though ASUS has gone with the INTEL I218V controller which they claim not only has

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 19

lower CPU overhead but a higher throughput as well In addition to that there are some changes to the actual RJ45 port which supposedly help protect the motherboard from lightning strikes and static electricity So itrsquos more than just network traffic Oddly enough ASUS does not claim lower latency with this implementation which is what KILLER network adapters are primarily known for in addition to prioritizing the right kind of traffic when gaming (which this controller does as well via the GameFirst III software)

How beneficial all this is to the end user is debatable but itrsquos innovation nonetheless and wersquod rather have it than

not It all speaks to the quality with which ASUS constructs these gaming motherboards

Second and perhaps even more important is the on-boardaudio solution Given that ASUS can boldly claim to make the best gaming enthusiast grade audio cards and USB DACs (Essence series anyone) itrsquos fitting that wersquod expect nothing but the best here To that end the MAXIMUS VII delivers in spades with a components list unlike any other vendors Being different doesnrsquot make it better but when we looked at the kind of equipment that features what ASUS has here it becomes very apparent that these component decisions were at the very least made

ldquoASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps oneof the best if not the bestlooking boards weve seen

20 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

for qualitative reasons in addition to economical ones Any solution that features ELNA audio capacitors paired with WIMA caps a Cirrus Logic DAC and a TI op-amp is going to impress you to some degree The only part of this entire equation which we canrsquot fathom is why ASUS chose the Realtek ALC1150 codec instead of the numerous others available on the market Therersquos nothing wrong with the ALC1150 per se but given that it is supported by such superior components which no doubt have added to the cost of the motherboard it is puzzling to find this CODEC on such a motherboard

The weakest link is here but you can be guaranteed that this is the best use of this CODEC on the market currently

Competing vendors have made it a point to highlight that there are specific USB ports located at the rear which are meant to have your keyboard and mouse plugged into These ports are supposedly low latency ports with a high polling frequency and more often than not feature some kind of gold plating for better contacts We can confirm that therersquos absolutely no difference between these ports and any other USB port on the motherboard in gaming

or in how your keyboard functions With the ASUS KeyBot however therersquos some ingenuity which allows you to assign almost any keyboard Macro functionality even if said keyboard does not have these features This little chip allows you to program a variety of functionality to any keyboard including cold booting the system into specific states and booting directly to the UEFI so you essentially donrsquotrsquo need a dedicated Direct to BIOS key Once again this is a nifty little feature that is many times more useful than the supposed gaming ports that others may tout on their products

This brings us to the motherboards performance There are many aspects of the Maximus VII Formula that we havenrsquot covered but we could not possibly write about an ROG motherboard without analysis of how it performs in an overclocking context Yes this is geared towards the premium gaming crowd but even then it should not preclude one from being competitive at the highest levels of overclocking This is where the power of the ASUS UEFI comes into play The interface is laid out simply and intuitively It is very detailed but most of the functionality and options are explained thoroughly eliminating any

guess work you may need to do Itrsquos a sublime interface that is not terribly exciting but is thoroughly detailed and simple to navigate Tuning memory on this motherboard is splendid because with every setting there is some kind of assistance letting you know what it is yoursquore tuning and how it may affect overclocking or stability Should it all go pear shaped you can always revert to safe settings using the MemOK button Speaking of which this button is located in the most inconvenient place on the motherboard where itrsquos very close to the edge of the aforementioned top cover It is reachable but perhaps another location would have been better

It should not come as a surprise that the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M time of all Z97 motherboards wersquove tested to date This lead was small but it was there and we couldnrsquot match it with other boards with similar timings You can rest assured that whatever limits you hit with the MVIIF they are due to your CPU or memory but not the motherboard as it is robust as it is finely tuned Thus far wersquove yet to find any vendor or any motherboard in fact that can marry gaming and overclocking so well on a single product For those

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 21

Summary

Would you buy it

No vendor balances gaming and overclocking features the way ASUS does with the Maximus range This one is geared entirely at the gaming crowd and it delivers in spades The features are numerous and the aesthetics unmatched Itrsquos a grand motherboard only a few hairs short of perfection

Yes

who happen to have the ROG control panel yoursquoll be happy to know that the MAXIMUS VII Formula is fully compatible with it and all the functionality you had on the MAXIMUS VI for example yoursquoll find here as well With just the addition of that panel alone (which isnrsquot included with the FORMULA by the way) therersquoll be few things if any you can do with the Z87 extreme board that you cannot do with this motherboard

Once again the package which ASUS provides and its presentation is second to none Wersquove been impressed to no end by other ASUS boards like the Rampage IV

Black Edition for example This isnrsquot that kind of product No this is an evolution of the already great MAXIMUS VI Formula Itrsquos the little changes here and there that culminate into the best Formula motherboard ASUS has ever created From where we stand there arenrsquot any boards which cater to high end gamers and enthusiasts like this one does Itrsquos the best combination of features available today for its intended market If yoursquore building the ultimate Z97 gaming machine and are unwilling to compromise the MAXIMUS VII Formula just may be what you need

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

MAXIMUS VII Formula (Tuned)

124178 41139 42115 39878 16372 1222 29826Graphics 17888 Hardware 28807Physics 13314

ASUS MAXIMUS VII Formula

124677 33332 41923 36199 16307 1202 29736Graphics 17810 Hardware 28725Physics 13207

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M13time of all Z97 motherboards weve tested to date
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text

Hardware Award

22 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSIrsquos overclocking motherboards have come a long

way With hits and misses along the journey the last couple of years have resulted in solid progress and improvements all around The biggest criticism leveled at MSI motherboards was almost always weak memory overclocking

MSI Z97 XPOWER ACRRP $37999 | Website wwwmsicom

Test Machinebull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

capacity or capability Given just how important this is it became somewhat of a forgone conclusion that MSI motherboards were not capable of extracting the most out of your hardware After all other than memory there really isnrsquot anything else you can tune on a motherboard as the end user It is in this regard that this stigma followed MSIrsquos boards even when they did not deserve it (which they havenrsquot for a while)

With the Z97 XPOWER and

perhaps even the MPOWER itrsquos a whole different story At least from our perspective there isnrsquot anything about the XPOWER that makes it incapable of memory

overclocking compared to other OC focused offerings on the market In our tests it was truly the limitation of the CPU if anything that prevented any further tuning or frequency scaling that might have been possible What is worth saying though is that we did find it takes a higher voltage across the board to reach the same frequencies or at least tune it to the same efficiency as compared to the other motherboards This isnrsquot anything that should endanger your components at all (especially SAMSUNG memory) but it is worth keepingin mind that what is stable on another motherboard and not so on the XPOWER could simply be a matter of needing to use a higher voltage

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 23

What that means or says about the power delivery on MSI motherboards we will leave for you to decide but it certainly isnrsquot anything we would take away points for On the flip side to this we found that the MSI board mustered up some truly incredible numbers and efficiency wise matched all other boards

we tested and in some cases even exceeded them This is perhaps not because the other motherboards are not capable but by way of the vast array of options MSI brings to their UEFI In addition to this the effect such options have on overclocking and recommended setting help greatly As with all

motherboards we have previously found to be immaculate the entire experience of overclocking is a learning one One is better at overclocking and tuning memory across the board after having used the XPOWER and this is something that not only inspires confidence in the user but allows one to appreciate the exhaustive features presented by MSI and their efforts We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower because MSI has truly brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard ever Is this a perfect board Well - no it isnrsquot but for the most part its close enough What prevents us from having the confidence to proclaim it so is the inconsistency we experienced with it This is a major one that we arenrsquot sure how MSI would address but there certainly has to be a solution to this and it could be a simple matter of a UEFI option (it most certainly is) that is not user tunable or should be tuned by default by

24 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

the engineers During testing we only used settings that are Hyper Pi 32M stable Regular Super Pi 32M isnrsquot good enough and to make sure that we were not running a system that may keel over at any time or represent settings that we may not be able to repeat in future we made sure that both normal and tuned benchmark results were Hyper Pi 32M capable Itrsquos not Prime95 but itrsquos a pretty intense test that is very much indicative of systems stability

We would configure the system and it would appear stable running endless loops of any given benchmark then after a single reboot the system would fail to POST This was an intermittent issue When the board did recover just to make doubly sure that it was not overly aggressive memory tuning we would decrease the memory frequency to 2133MHz and even lower to just 1600MHz However we would experience the same failure to POST at

settings that were previously rock solid At this point we would have to clear the CMOS and start over again loading the profile and lo and behold it would work A subsequent reboot would be fine only for it to fail on the third attempt This was very frustrating as there was no way of knowing what it was exactly that was causing the issue Wersquove not had this issue with any other motherboard and it is certainly an isolated case with this XPOWER Perhaps it is just our perfect combination of hardware but whatever it was it marred what was otherwise an incredible experience

That aside MSI has really gone to town with the features and package MSI has all the necessary switches and buttons you expect They are not as numerous as what yoursquod find on the Z97X-SOC Force for example but they more than cover all the basics and a bit more For $380 USD one does expect to have every option available and in this

regard the XPOWER gets it right We would appreciate having a ldquoMem OKrdquo like feature as on the numerous ASUS motherboards and it would be great if there werenrsquot a limited number of ground points for V-check There are three points which is an improvement over the older boards however you can check more than three voltages at any given time so why there arenrsquot any more ground points is anybodyrsquos guess

Much like the UEFI options

the package that MSI has put together with the XPOWER is incredible including a CPU core guard for those adventurous souls who have taken it upon themselves to remove the heat spreader on the CPU The core is very delicate and the Delid Guard will make sure your CPU pot does not crush the core or apply uneven pressure which is likely to destroy the CPU

To further assist those cooling with LN2 therersquos a fan bracket which you may use to

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 25

Summary

Would you buy it

MSIrsquos steady improvements in motherboard and BIOS design have finally paid off with the Z97 generation There are so many features on the board and BIOS that MSI can probably claim to have as many and perhaps even more tuning options than any other vendor on the market Itrsquos incredible to see just how refined a product the Z97 XPOWER AC is

At a maringally lower price

mount any standard fan for extracting or directing LN2 fumes away from the POT and surrounding areas This is a small convenience that is an added bonus to an already impressive package The focus with which MSI has designed the XPOWER is commendable to say the least All the bases have been covered and MSI has gone the extra mile to deliver what overclockers had asked of MSI for years

Does it justify the retail price Well you have to determine that yourself Given that it automatically makes you legible for MOA qualification but costs about as much as an of the other high end Z79 motherboards then itrsquos certainly worth the investment The XPOWER does many things right but has a few kinks that prevent

it from being a definitive board for the chipset Wersquod not however say that therersquos an outright superior boardon the market as that would not be true Ultimately it will come down to what you are willing to pay for and what you may sacrifice We do suspect that these motherboards will end up in many high end gaming machines as well and even in that context the XPOWER does deliver the goods As MSIrsquos most high end Z79 offering the XPOWER is probably more than we could have ever expected it to be and it does leave us with a very positive and lasting impression If you have the cash and are not moved by any one of the other motherboards at the very high end do give serious thought to the MSI Z97 XPOWER itrsquos the best one yet

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 3DMark Sky Diver Catzilla 720P

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC (Tuned)

124474 41104 42133 39878 16279 30950 29755Graphics 17858 Graphics 43190 Hardware 28749

Physics 13117 Physics 13463

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 30708 29851Graphics 17841 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190 Physics 13215

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

126295 27555 33523 29876 15963 30689 29803Graphics 17870 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28828

Physics 12047 Physics 13012

Neo
Typewritten Text
We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower 13as MSI has brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard yet
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26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
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at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 7: TheOverclocker Issue 31

10 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In your experience have you had better luck with 4770Ks or are the 4790K CPUs on average for you much better overclockers

For sure the early batches of the 4770K were much better than the 4790K

Finding an old 4770K that does 62GHz 32m is much easier than finding a 4790K that does that I had such luck after my dead 4770K to find such a chip which died as well But on average I think the 4770K are the better choice

What is your favourite Z97 motherboard right now

All of them have their pros and cons I tried the Mpower Xpower M7H M7F M7G Gigabyte SOC force and LN2 Irsquod love to test the Asrock one but havenrsquot been able to yet

To make one thing clear the improvements on each z97 compared to z87 are pretty small Asus was

great even on z87 Asrock was one of the best regarding mem and max CPU clock Right now you can reach almost all results on another vendorrsquos board ndash with more or less work

What is your single greatest or most memorable overclocking achievement

Those are the littlr things Like 2666 6-10-6 on the MSI Xpower in 32m

Things like an insane XTU score with low clocks What I will really keep in mind though was my success in the Gigabyte catzilla challenge I did 3 sessions to get that score I truly learned how the card was to be treated At that moment when I saw the result I stopped and drank a beer It was my goal to achieve at the least 43000 points and I got it No matter what others scored I wanted to get that score and I did it

Anything yoursquod like to see changed in the overclocking community

As I had mentioned earlier media Push and promote our community and stop treating us like isolated noobs I think we spend a lot of time and money including effort into achieving what we have

Any other ideas or opinions you would like to share with the community and vendors regarding overclocking hardware or anything related

Coolermaster began to sponsor a team with LN2 for the pro-cup Irsquod like to see similar initiatives from other vendors Not necessarily the same way but perhaps at contests Sure winning money is pretty nice but why not spend that on a contract for the winner

Those things can be discussed its thatrsquos just an idea for the vendors Think about it

[ The Overclocker ]

12 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos finally arrived The long awaited 8 core behemoth from INTEL has landed and it couldnrsquot have come sooner

After years of being limited (and I use that word loosely) to 12 threads on the desktop barring the EVGA solutions we as the enthusiast community finally have 16 thread threads of processing power to tap into As INTEL shows in its slides since 2003 up until this CPU computing performance for the high end desktop has increased by a factor of 40 or more Thatrsquos incredible in just over a decade Roughly the same financial investment in the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition of 11 years ago today nets you forty times the performance Looking at it iteratively may obscure this fact but itrsquos only when taking it all in that you realize the remarkable progress thatrsquos been made in the last ten years It would have been ideal if we could boot up an old Extreme Edition based system from that time period and compared it to what we have here but that is only fascinating in theory In practice the frustration of having to deal with what would be an excruciatingly slow testing session would quickly shatter all nostalgia for the system

More pressing is how this new CPU affects modern day computing tasks in comparison

to what INTEL delivered just a year ago with Ivy-Bridge E CPUs That user space is likely the most affected by this CPU and that which stands to gain the most from it all We are specifically concerned with the 5960X here not the 5930K or the 5820KThose we will look at another time Right now we are primarily concerned with the additional two cores thus four threads INTEL has enabled on their dies that function as desktop processors Itrsquos not easily looking at the CPU in isolation from the new platform socket DRAM generation and motherboards that support it all There are minute to significant changes in each area but wersquoll not tackle any of that here Once again as with the other CPUs available for the socket wersquoll deal with them another time

Since the INTEL Core i7 980X in 2010 (feels like itrsquos been far longer than that) wersquove been content with the small increments in performance due solely to IPC improvements From Gulftown to Ivy-Bridge 12 was the magic number Provided we had the thread count our chosen applications (in our context - overclocking) this mattered above all else For the longest time perhaps even up to the earlier this year a good 12 thread CPU would be enough to keep you and your team competitive without necessarily having to invest in the latest

INTEL Core i7 5960X

THE POWER OF

8

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 13

CPU For all intents and purposes a good 3960X or perhaps even a 3930K would see you through It would not perhaps take you to the top of the leagues but it would keep you competitive This brings us to another point which is that we have a situation with this CPU that makes it financially unviable to bin CPUs (that is if yoursquore not sponsored in some form) unless you have very deep pockets Unlike with Sandy-Bridge E or its successor the highest end Haswell-E SKU has a tangible and insurmountable advantage over its ldquocheaperrdquo stable mates It is not feasible anymore to use a golden sample 5930K for instance to beat the competitors who are equipped with the 5960X The two CPUs are

not in the same league performance wise and since this is the platform we employ for the multi-threaded benchmarks cores matter perhaps as much as frequency

In case there are those who are unaware for some reason The 5960X is based on the same architecture as the other two CPUs the only besides clock frequency is the L3 cache size at a hefty (by todayrsquos standards) 20MB and obviously all eight cores enabled as opposed to 6 For this difference the price premium is almost $500 steep perhaps but nothing wersquove not seen before More importantly it is easier to justify the price premium unlike before where the gains were minimal between the two most

As soon as the Embargo lifted we

had a number of records including

BenchBros new CineBench R15 World Record An impressive 5960X sample

approaching 6GHz Over 800 points higher than the

previous 8 core CPU record at 1503

14 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

expensive SKUs on the X79 platform Itrsquos no secret that INTEL has been

embracing the enthusiast and more specifically the overclocking community more than it has historically The changes made to their CPUs in the performance and HEDT platforms are a testament to this Artificial limitations are being eradicated at an alarming rate and with the 4790K for instance a conscious effort to improve overclocking was made If this paid on in practical terms is another issue entirely but the effort was made and that is a commendable attitude or position for a company that is in essence without meaningful competition in this space

Does the 5960X warrant its price tag but more especially the excitement and buzz The answer is a resounding yes Given that it has the same retail value as the outgoing 4960X but provides real tangible performance gains It makes a far more convincing argument for itself than perhaps any other INTEL CPU has in this space Even if you have no interest in competitive overclocking at all the 5960X throws itrsquos weight around effectively culling compute times significantly across the vast majority of suits that that are designed to take advantage of multiple threads let alone the new instruction sets made available From Adobe Premier Pro Blender to Virtual Dub and more there are plenty of programs that will instantly show gains by running on this CPU The loss in frequency in comparison to the 4960X or any other CPU for that matter is meaningless compared to what is gained Losing 600MHz is a lot and perhaps even more than one would think four extra

threads would compensate for but if you need the single thread performance and frequency then you have the 4790K For everything else therersquos nothing better than the 5960X

Since the platforms launch recently wersquove witnessed some remarkable results in all the relevant benchmarks on HWBOT In the mathematicalcompute benchmarks like wPrime Cinebench XTU (otherwise known as 3D benchmarks) the new ldquorecordsrdquo and milestone are not in how much faster the new CPU is over the 4960X but itrsquos that therersquos competition in the 8X CPU category where there previously wasnrsquot any in comparison This doesnrsquot mean of course that the 4 and 6X categories are no longer worth the pursuit it merely allows for a more competitive landscape with more options than before This isnrsquot the case in the graphics benchmarks where the thread count advantage of the 5960X will effectively retire the hex core CPUs Itrsquos still very early in the platformrsquos lifetime and wersquoll have to wait and see how it all plays out Suffice to say the 5960X changes the landscape dramatically

X99 BRIEFLY It doesnrsquot take keen insight to come to the conclusion that for the 5960X to be as effective as it is it needs a strong underlying platform or chipset To that end we have a few changes to the chipset There isnrsquot a game changer if you exclude the support for DDR4 but it the changes do bring INTELrsquos HEDT platform a little in line with what the Z97 offers Sorely missed on the X79 chipset was native support for USB

8-Pack unleashed a SLI Firestrike Extreme record of 15011 nearly 1000 points higher than the previous record as soon as the embargo lifted

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 15

30 which INTEL has remedied by allowing a total of 14 USB ports directly from the Chipset eight of which are the older USB20 type and the remaining six super speed 30 This will hopefully get rid of those 3rd party controllers which were always an unnecessary cost to X79 motherboards In addition to that the number of SATA ports supported by the chipset increases from the previous six to ten but all of them support SATA 6Gbps Between these two changes it could eliminate the need for two additional third party ICs on the motherboard which should in theory allow cheaper manufacturing and lower prices to the end user

INTEL states that the chipset and more specifically the 5930K and 5960X support 40 PCI Express lanes This is identical to what we had before with the X79 chipset however natively supported configurations or distribution of these lanes seems to have changed For instance on the X79 platform INTEL offered the following schemes 2x16 amp 1x8 2x 16 amp 3x8 and finally 1x16 amp 2x8 amp 2x4 which is enough to support 4-Way SLICrossfire natively However with the X99 Chipset it looks as if the configurations have been simplified to 2x16 amp 1x8 or 5x8 The first Lane routing and distribution is familiar but the second and potentially the most interesting configuration of 5x8 is dependent on additional 3rd party logic Not in the sense that a the familiar PLX switching chip is necessary but that this configuration isnrsquot natively supported by the chipset but it is a

possible one provided the necessary logic is added to the particular motherboard Thus not all motherboards will be able to use all these schemes

We are particularly interested in what vendors will do with these new possibilities especially with M2 popularity already surpassing that of mSATA which just never got off the ground As a result of the chipset also offering more PCI-Express 30 lanes than Z97 therersquos potential to see better M2 performance as well for the vendors that choose to make use of more lanes on their solution than the standard 10Gbps we see on the majority of motherboards There simply isnrsquot a need to be as conservative with PCI-Express bandwidth Howe vendors will choose to use this chipset will vary and wersquoll be looking at that in all the X99 motherboard reviews to follow in future Until then we have to say that even the most basic motherboards for this chipset are offering a compelling set of features that we have longed for but were missing on all but the very high end X79 motherboards

GAMINGIt should come as little to no surprise to anyone that the 5960X offers no advantage in gaming over the 4960X or the Z97 CPUs for that matter If anything this CPU could be a little slower as a result of the drastically reduced operating frequency Fortunately the fact that it has no apparent advantage here in gaming does not mean that it is ldquoslowerrdquo or offers a sub-optimal gaming

Gunslinger pushed out an impressive 26417 in 3DMark

Firestrike Extreme this time over 1000

points higher than the previous record

set by 8-Pack

16 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

experience to the contrary Games are almost always GPU bound and have been so for at least a decade A faster CPU for the same architecture has not netted any benefit in gaming performance several generations of platforms Wersquove grown accustomed to this and things are no different today Games are simply unable to take advantage of more than four threads Thatrsquos why even today there are many gamers using older generation CPUs such as the Core i5 2500K and are enjoying the highest fidelity in visuals on the most modern and demanding games

or that very reason the 5960X does more than well enough in gaming In

the 5960X delivered identical performance the 4790K The GPU was the limiting factor here This would probably not be the case in a 4-way SLI or rossfire s but then wersquod either be looking at ridiculously high frame rates that have diminished academic va and even less practical

with no measurable performance difference between all the CPUs outside the margin of error Gaming at UHD4K resolutions across multiple screens however maybe a different story as the bandwidth advantage for the X79 and X99 CPUs would be clear but those are very extreme situations If you do game like that therersquos no denying that yoursquoll need a CPU such as this one to full utilize all the rendering power you have at your disposal

IN CLOSINGIf the X79 chipset is anything to go by X99 will be with us for a very long time perhaps

anywhere between one to three years Therersquos certainly no reason for INTEL to usher in a new platform or CPUs anytime soon The 5960X in particular is a sizeable leap forward in computing performance It comes with the penalty of a higher TDP at 140W but that is a negligible cost compared to the dramatically increased threading performance it gives over the 4960X The only losers in power consumption are the 5930K and 5820K They do represent an improvement in IPC over their predecessors but that improvement is minute in comparison If you are currently making use of the 4930K therersquos little to perhaps no practical reason to upgrade to the 5930K purely for IPC increase As an entire platform change there are merits to this

We didnrsquotrsquo get a lot of time to spend with the Core i7 5960X before this issue was due but we were impressed with the CPU almost instantly The motherboards this time around unlike with X79 are in a better state upon arrival There will be continued refreshes no doubt and with each firmware update they will get better so will the overclocking results We already have 6GHz capable CPUs and while we may not see speeds much faster than this the number of CPUs capable of this frequency is sure to increase as INTEL refine their process along with the ever improving motherboard firmware It is early in the platforms existence but the 5960X has delivered more than we could have expected and we are thoroughly impressed with what INTEL has done here The worldrsquos first true 8-core desktop system has arrived and it is in one word Mighty

[ The OverClocker ]

GAMING GEARAWARD

18 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos not often that we find ourselves testing and writing any kind of

editorial on ASUS Formula motherboards Usually itrsquos the Extreme Impact and that kind of SKU This time we have the MAXIMUS VII Formula The highest end Z97 SKU from ASUS at present and it shows in pricing but

ASUS Maximus VII FormulaRRP $35499 | Website wwwasuscom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

more importantly in the features set

Unlike with the Maximus VI

Extreme for example there is a strong emphasis here on gaming and less so on the overclocking capabilities That is not to say it is unsuitable for extreme overclocking it is to the contrary in fact

ASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps one of the best if not the best looking Z97 boards wersquove seen It has the benefit of aiding

cooling of all the components on the board as well This isnrsquot going to make a world of difference in anything but it does help longevity which is something you may care about considering that yoursquore paying nearly $350 for this piece of engineering Aesthetically then it looks the part and itrsquod be a waste to have it in a windowless case as this one deserves to be seen

What really makes a gaming motherboard these days is an intelligent NIC and a superior audio system both of which are present here Unlike other vendors though ASUS has gone with the INTEL I218V controller which they claim not only has

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 19

lower CPU overhead but a higher throughput as well In addition to that there are some changes to the actual RJ45 port which supposedly help protect the motherboard from lightning strikes and static electricity So itrsquos more than just network traffic Oddly enough ASUS does not claim lower latency with this implementation which is what KILLER network adapters are primarily known for in addition to prioritizing the right kind of traffic when gaming (which this controller does as well via the GameFirst III software)

How beneficial all this is to the end user is debatable but itrsquos innovation nonetheless and wersquod rather have it than

not It all speaks to the quality with which ASUS constructs these gaming motherboards

Second and perhaps even more important is the on-boardaudio solution Given that ASUS can boldly claim to make the best gaming enthusiast grade audio cards and USB DACs (Essence series anyone) itrsquos fitting that wersquod expect nothing but the best here To that end the MAXIMUS VII delivers in spades with a components list unlike any other vendors Being different doesnrsquot make it better but when we looked at the kind of equipment that features what ASUS has here it becomes very apparent that these component decisions were at the very least made

ldquoASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps oneof the best if not the bestlooking boards weve seen

20 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

for qualitative reasons in addition to economical ones Any solution that features ELNA audio capacitors paired with WIMA caps a Cirrus Logic DAC and a TI op-amp is going to impress you to some degree The only part of this entire equation which we canrsquot fathom is why ASUS chose the Realtek ALC1150 codec instead of the numerous others available on the market Therersquos nothing wrong with the ALC1150 per se but given that it is supported by such superior components which no doubt have added to the cost of the motherboard it is puzzling to find this CODEC on such a motherboard

The weakest link is here but you can be guaranteed that this is the best use of this CODEC on the market currently

Competing vendors have made it a point to highlight that there are specific USB ports located at the rear which are meant to have your keyboard and mouse plugged into These ports are supposedly low latency ports with a high polling frequency and more often than not feature some kind of gold plating for better contacts We can confirm that therersquos absolutely no difference between these ports and any other USB port on the motherboard in gaming

or in how your keyboard functions With the ASUS KeyBot however therersquos some ingenuity which allows you to assign almost any keyboard Macro functionality even if said keyboard does not have these features This little chip allows you to program a variety of functionality to any keyboard including cold booting the system into specific states and booting directly to the UEFI so you essentially donrsquotrsquo need a dedicated Direct to BIOS key Once again this is a nifty little feature that is many times more useful than the supposed gaming ports that others may tout on their products

This brings us to the motherboards performance There are many aspects of the Maximus VII Formula that we havenrsquot covered but we could not possibly write about an ROG motherboard without analysis of how it performs in an overclocking context Yes this is geared towards the premium gaming crowd but even then it should not preclude one from being competitive at the highest levels of overclocking This is where the power of the ASUS UEFI comes into play The interface is laid out simply and intuitively It is very detailed but most of the functionality and options are explained thoroughly eliminating any

guess work you may need to do Itrsquos a sublime interface that is not terribly exciting but is thoroughly detailed and simple to navigate Tuning memory on this motherboard is splendid because with every setting there is some kind of assistance letting you know what it is yoursquore tuning and how it may affect overclocking or stability Should it all go pear shaped you can always revert to safe settings using the MemOK button Speaking of which this button is located in the most inconvenient place on the motherboard where itrsquos very close to the edge of the aforementioned top cover It is reachable but perhaps another location would have been better

It should not come as a surprise that the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M time of all Z97 motherboards wersquove tested to date This lead was small but it was there and we couldnrsquot match it with other boards with similar timings You can rest assured that whatever limits you hit with the MVIIF they are due to your CPU or memory but not the motherboard as it is robust as it is finely tuned Thus far wersquove yet to find any vendor or any motherboard in fact that can marry gaming and overclocking so well on a single product For those

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 21

Summary

Would you buy it

No vendor balances gaming and overclocking features the way ASUS does with the Maximus range This one is geared entirely at the gaming crowd and it delivers in spades The features are numerous and the aesthetics unmatched Itrsquos a grand motherboard only a few hairs short of perfection

Yes

who happen to have the ROG control panel yoursquoll be happy to know that the MAXIMUS VII Formula is fully compatible with it and all the functionality you had on the MAXIMUS VI for example yoursquoll find here as well With just the addition of that panel alone (which isnrsquot included with the FORMULA by the way) therersquoll be few things if any you can do with the Z87 extreme board that you cannot do with this motherboard

Once again the package which ASUS provides and its presentation is second to none Wersquove been impressed to no end by other ASUS boards like the Rampage IV

Black Edition for example This isnrsquot that kind of product No this is an evolution of the already great MAXIMUS VI Formula Itrsquos the little changes here and there that culminate into the best Formula motherboard ASUS has ever created From where we stand there arenrsquot any boards which cater to high end gamers and enthusiasts like this one does Itrsquos the best combination of features available today for its intended market If yoursquore building the ultimate Z97 gaming machine and are unwilling to compromise the MAXIMUS VII Formula just may be what you need

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

MAXIMUS VII Formula (Tuned)

124178 41139 42115 39878 16372 1222 29826Graphics 17888 Hardware 28807Physics 13314

ASUS MAXIMUS VII Formula

124677 33332 41923 36199 16307 1202 29736Graphics 17810 Hardware 28725Physics 13207

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M13time of all Z97 motherboards weve tested to date
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Hardware Award

22 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSIrsquos overclocking motherboards have come a long

way With hits and misses along the journey the last couple of years have resulted in solid progress and improvements all around The biggest criticism leveled at MSI motherboards was almost always weak memory overclocking

MSI Z97 XPOWER ACRRP $37999 | Website wwwmsicom

Test Machinebull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

capacity or capability Given just how important this is it became somewhat of a forgone conclusion that MSI motherboards were not capable of extracting the most out of your hardware After all other than memory there really isnrsquot anything else you can tune on a motherboard as the end user It is in this regard that this stigma followed MSIrsquos boards even when they did not deserve it (which they havenrsquot for a while)

With the Z97 XPOWER and

perhaps even the MPOWER itrsquos a whole different story At least from our perspective there isnrsquot anything about the XPOWER that makes it incapable of memory

overclocking compared to other OC focused offerings on the market In our tests it was truly the limitation of the CPU if anything that prevented any further tuning or frequency scaling that might have been possible What is worth saying though is that we did find it takes a higher voltage across the board to reach the same frequencies or at least tune it to the same efficiency as compared to the other motherboards This isnrsquot anything that should endanger your components at all (especially SAMSUNG memory) but it is worth keepingin mind that what is stable on another motherboard and not so on the XPOWER could simply be a matter of needing to use a higher voltage

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 23

What that means or says about the power delivery on MSI motherboards we will leave for you to decide but it certainly isnrsquot anything we would take away points for On the flip side to this we found that the MSI board mustered up some truly incredible numbers and efficiency wise matched all other boards

we tested and in some cases even exceeded them This is perhaps not because the other motherboards are not capable but by way of the vast array of options MSI brings to their UEFI In addition to this the effect such options have on overclocking and recommended setting help greatly As with all

motherboards we have previously found to be immaculate the entire experience of overclocking is a learning one One is better at overclocking and tuning memory across the board after having used the XPOWER and this is something that not only inspires confidence in the user but allows one to appreciate the exhaustive features presented by MSI and their efforts We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower because MSI has truly brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard ever Is this a perfect board Well - no it isnrsquot but for the most part its close enough What prevents us from having the confidence to proclaim it so is the inconsistency we experienced with it This is a major one that we arenrsquot sure how MSI would address but there certainly has to be a solution to this and it could be a simple matter of a UEFI option (it most certainly is) that is not user tunable or should be tuned by default by

24 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

the engineers During testing we only used settings that are Hyper Pi 32M stable Regular Super Pi 32M isnrsquot good enough and to make sure that we were not running a system that may keel over at any time or represent settings that we may not be able to repeat in future we made sure that both normal and tuned benchmark results were Hyper Pi 32M capable Itrsquos not Prime95 but itrsquos a pretty intense test that is very much indicative of systems stability

We would configure the system and it would appear stable running endless loops of any given benchmark then after a single reboot the system would fail to POST This was an intermittent issue When the board did recover just to make doubly sure that it was not overly aggressive memory tuning we would decrease the memory frequency to 2133MHz and even lower to just 1600MHz However we would experience the same failure to POST at

settings that were previously rock solid At this point we would have to clear the CMOS and start over again loading the profile and lo and behold it would work A subsequent reboot would be fine only for it to fail on the third attempt This was very frustrating as there was no way of knowing what it was exactly that was causing the issue Wersquove not had this issue with any other motherboard and it is certainly an isolated case with this XPOWER Perhaps it is just our perfect combination of hardware but whatever it was it marred what was otherwise an incredible experience

That aside MSI has really gone to town with the features and package MSI has all the necessary switches and buttons you expect They are not as numerous as what yoursquod find on the Z97X-SOC Force for example but they more than cover all the basics and a bit more For $380 USD one does expect to have every option available and in this

regard the XPOWER gets it right We would appreciate having a ldquoMem OKrdquo like feature as on the numerous ASUS motherboards and it would be great if there werenrsquot a limited number of ground points for V-check There are three points which is an improvement over the older boards however you can check more than three voltages at any given time so why there arenrsquot any more ground points is anybodyrsquos guess

Much like the UEFI options

the package that MSI has put together with the XPOWER is incredible including a CPU core guard for those adventurous souls who have taken it upon themselves to remove the heat spreader on the CPU The core is very delicate and the Delid Guard will make sure your CPU pot does not crush the core or apply uneven pressure which is likely to destroy the CPU

To further assist those cooling with LN2 therersquos a fan bracket which you may use to

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 25

Summary

Would you buy it

MSIrsquos steady improvements in motherboard and BIOS design have finally paid off with the Z97 generation There are so many features on the board and BIOS that MSI can probably claim to have as many and perhaps even more tuning options than any other vendor on the market Itrsquos incredible to see just how refined a product the Z97 XPOWER AC is

At a maringally lower price

mount any standard fan for extracting or directing LN2 fumes away from the POT and surrounding areas This is a small convenience that is an added bonus to an already impressive package The focus with which MSI has designed the XPOWER is commendable to say the least All the bases have been covered and MSI has gone the extra mile to deliver what overclockers had asked of MSI for years

Does it justify the retail price Well you have to determine that yourself Given that it automatically makes you legible for MOA qualification but costs about as much as an of the other high end Z79 motherboards then itrsquos certainly worth the investment The XPOWER does many things right but has a few kinks that prevent

it from being a definitive board for the chipset Wersquod not however say that therersquos an outright superior boardon the market as that would not be true Ultimately it will come down to what you are willing to pay for and what you may sacrifice We do suspect that these motherboards will end up in many high end gaming machines as well and even in that context the XPOWER does deliver the goods As MSIrsquos most high end Z79 offering the XPOWER is probably more than we could have ever expected it to be and it does leave us with a very positive and lasting impression If you have the cash and are not moved by any one of the other motherboards at the very high end do give serious thought to the MSI Z97 XPOWER itrsquos the best one yet

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 3DMark Sky Diver Catzilla 720P

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC (Tuned)

124474 41104 42133 39878 16279 30950 29755Graphics 17858 Graphics 43190 Hardware 28749

Physics 13117 Physics 13463

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 30708 29851Graphics 17841 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190 Physics 13215

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

126295 27555 33523 29876 15963 30689 29803Graphics 17870 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28828

Physics 12047 Physics 13012

Neo
Typewritten Text
We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower 13as MSI has brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard yet
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26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
Typewritten Text
at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
Neo
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Neo
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
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Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 8: TheOverclocker Issue 31

12 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos finally arrived The long awaited 8 core behemoth from INTEL has landed and it couldnrsquot have come sooner

After years of being limited (and I use that word loosely) to 12 threads on the desktop barring the EVGA solutions we as the enthusiast community finally have 16 thread threads of processing power to tap into As INTEL shows in its slides since 2003 up until this CPU computing performance for the high end desktop has increased by a factor of 40 or more Thatrsquos incredible in just over a decade Roughly the same financial investment in the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition of 11 years ago today nets you forty times the performance Looking at it iteratively may obscure this fact but itrsquos only when taking it all in that you realize the remarkable progress thatrsquos been made in the last ten years It would have been ideal if we could boot up an old Extreme Edition based system from that time period and compared it to what we have here but that is only fascinating in theory In practice the frustration of having to deal with what would be an excruciatingly slow testing session would quickly shatter all nostalgia for the system

More pressing is how this new CPU affects modern day computing tasks in comparison

to what INTEL delivered just a year ago with Ivy-Bridge E CPUs That user space is likely the most affected by this CPU and that which stands to gain the most from it all We are specifically concerned with the 5960X here not the 5930K or the 5820KThose we will look at another time Right now we are primarily concerned with the additional two cores thus four threads INTEL has enabled on their dies that function as desktop processors Itrsquos not easily looking at the CPU in isolation from the new platform socket DRAM generation and motherboards that support it all There are minute to significant changes in each area but wersquoll not tackle any of that here Once again as with the other CPUs available for the socket wersquoll deal with them another time

Since the INTEL Core i7 980X in 2010 (feels like itrsquos been far longer than that) wersquove been content with the small increments in performance due solely to IPC improvements From Gulftown to Ivy-Bridge 12 was the magic number Provided we had the thread count our chosen applications (in our context - overclocking) this mattered above all else For the longest time perhaps even up to the earlier this year a good 12 thread CPU would be enough to keep you and your team competitive without necessarily having to invest in the latest

INTEL Core i7 5960X

THE POWER OF

8

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 13

CPU For all intents and purposes a good 3960X or perhaps even a 3930K would see you through It would not perhaps take you to the top of the leagues but it would keep you competitive This brings us to another point which is that we have a situation with this CPU that makes it financially unviable to bin CPUs (that is if yoursquore not sponsored in some form) unless you have very deep pockets Unlike with Sandy-Bridge E or its successor the highest end Haswell-E SKU has a tangible and insurmountable advantage over its ldquocheaperrdquo stable mates It is not feasible anymore to use a golden sample 5930K for instance to beat the competitors who are equipped with the 5960X The two CPUs are

not in the same league performance wise and since this is the platform we employ for the multi-threaded benchmarks cores matter perhaps as much as frequency

In case there are those who are unaware for some reason The 5960X is based on the same architecture as the other two CPUs the only besides clock frequency is the L3 cache size at a hefty (by todayrsquos standards) 20MB and obviously all eight cores enabled as opposed to 6 For this difference the price premium is almost $500 steep perhaps but nothing wersquove not seen before More importantly it is easier to justify the price premium unlike before where the gains were minimal between the two most

As soon as the Embargo lifted we

had a number of records including

BenchBros new CineBench R15 World Record An impressive 5960X sample

approaching 6GHz Over 800 points higher than the

previous 8 core CPU record at 1503

14 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

expensive SKUs on the X79 platform Itrsquos no secret that INTEL has been

embracing the enthusiast and more specifically the overclocking community more than it has historically The changes made to their CPUs in the performance and HEDT platforms are a testament to this Artificial limitations are being eradicated at an alarming rate and with the 4790K for instance a conscious effort to improve overclocking was made If this paid on in practical terms is another issue entirely but the effort was made and that is a commendable attitude or position for a company that is in essence without meaningful competition in this space

Does the 5960X warrant its price tag but more especially the excitement and buzz The answer is a resounding yes Given that it has the same retail value as the outgoing 4960X but provides real tangible performance gains It makes a far more convincing argument for itself than perhaps any other INTEL CPU has in this space Even if you have no interest in competitive overclocking at all the 5960X throws itrsquos weight around effectively culling compute times significantly across the vast majority of suits that that are designed to take advantage of multiple threads let alone the new instruction sets made available From Adobe Premier Pro Blender to Virtual Dub and more there are plenty of programs that will instantly show gains by running on this CPU The loss in frequency in comparison to the 4960X or any other CPU for that matter is meaningless compared to what is gained Losing 600MHz is a lot and perhaps even more than one would think four extra

threads would compensate for but if you need the single thread performance and frequency then you have the 4790K For everything else therersquos nothing better than the 5960X

Since the platforms launch recently wersquove witnessed some remarkable results in all the relevant benchmarks on HWBOT In the mathematicalcompute benchmarks like wPrime Cinebench XTU (otherwise known as 3D benchmarks) the new ldquorecordsrdquo and milestone are not in how much faster the new CPU is over the 4960X but itrsquos that therersquos competition in the 8X CPU category where there previously wasnrsquot any in comparison This doesnrsquot mean of course that the 4 and 6X categories are no longer worth the pursuit it merely allows for a more competitive landscape with more options than before This isnrsquot the case in the graphics benchmarks where the thread count advantage of the 5960X will effectively retire the hex core CPUs Itrsquos still very early in the platformrsquos lifetime and wersquoll have to wait and see how it all plays out Suffice to say the 5960X changes the landscape dramatically

X99 BRIEFLY It doesnrsquot take keen insight to come to the conclusion that for the 5960X to be as effective as it is it needs a strong underlying platform or chipset To that end we have a few changes to the chipset There isnrsquot a game changer if you exclude the support for DDR4 but it the changes do bring INTELrsquos HEDT platform a little in line with what the Z97 offers Sorely missed on the X79 chipset was native support for USB

8-Pack unleashed a SLI Firestrike Extreme record of 15011 nearly 1000 points higher than the previous record as soon as the embargo lifted

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 15

30 which INTEL has remedied by allowing a total of 14 USB ports directly from the Chipset eight of which are the older USB20 type and the remaining six super speed 30 This will hopefully get rid of those 3rd party controllers which were always an unnecessary cost to X79 motherboards In addition to that the number of SATA ports supported by the chipset increases from the previous six to ten but all of them support SATA 6Gbps Between these two changes it could eliminate the need for two additional third party ICs on the motherboard which should in theory allow cheaper manufacturing and lower prices to the end user

INTEL states that the chipset and more specifically the 5930K and 5960X support 40 PCI Express lanes This is identical to what we had before with the X79 chipset however natively supported configurations or distribution of these lanes seems to have changed For instance on the X79 platform INTEL offered the following schemes 2x16 amp 1x8 2x 16 amp 3x8 and finally 1x16 amp 2x8 amp 2x4 which is enough to support 4-Way SLICrossfire natively However with the X99 Chipset it looks as if the configurations have been simplified to 2x16 amp 1x8 or 5x8 The first Lane routing and distribution is familiar but the second and potentially the most interesting configuration of 5x8 is dependent on additional 3rd party logic Not in the sense that a the familiar PLX switching chip is necessary but that this configuration isnrsquot natively supported by the chipset but it is a

possible one provided the necessary logic is added to the particular motherboard Thus not all motherboards will be able to use all these schemes

We are particularly interested in what vendors will do with these new possibilities especially with M2 popularity already surpassing that of mSATA which just never got off the ground As a result of the chipset also offering more PCI-Express 30 lanes than Z97 therersquos potential to see better M2 performance as well for the vendors that choose to make use of more lanes on their solution than the standard 10Gbps we see on the majority of motherboards There simply isnrsquot a need to be as conservative with PCI-Express bandwidth Howe vendors will choose to use this chipset will vary and wersquoll be looking at that in all the X99 motherboard reviews to follow in future Until then we have to say that even the most basic motherboards for this chipset are offering a compelling set of features that we have longed for but were missing on all but the very high end X79 motherboards

GAMINGIt should come as little to no surprise to anyone that the 5960X offers no advantage in gaming over the 4960X or the Z97 CPUs for that matter If anything this CPU could be a little slower as a result of the drastically reduced operating frequency Fortunately the fact that it has no apparent advantage here in gaming does not mean that it is ldquoslowerrdquo or offers a sub-optimal gaming

Gunslinger pushed out an impressive 26417 in 3DMark

Firestrike Extreme this time over 1000

points higher than the previous record

set by 8-Pack

16 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

experience to the contrary Games are almost always GPU bound and have been so for at least a decade A faster CPU for the same architecture has not netted any benefit in gaming performance several generations of platforms Wersquove grown accustomed to this and things are no different today Games are simply unable to take advantage of more than four threads Thatrsquos why even today there are many gamers using older generation CPUs such as the Core i5 2500K and are enjoying the highest fidelity in visuals on the most modern and demanding games

or that very reason the 5960X does more than well enough in gaming In

the 5960X delivered identical performance the 4790K The GPU was the limiting factor here This would probably not be the case in a 4-way SLI or rossfire s but then wersquod either be looking at ridiculously high frame rates that have diminished academic va and even less practical

with no measurable performance difference between all the CPUs outside the margin of error Gaming at UHD4K resolutions across multiple screens however maybe a different story as the bandwidth advantage for the X79 and X99 CPUs would be clear but those are very extreme situations If you do game like that therersquos no denying that yoursquoll need a CPU such as this one to full utilize all the rendering power you have at your disposal

IN CLOSINGIf the X79 chipset is anything to go by X99 will be with us for a very long time perhaps

anywhere between one to three years Therersquos certainly no reason for INTEL to usher in a new platform or CPUs anytime soon The 5960X in particular is a sizeable leap forward in computing performance It comes with the penalty of a higher TDP at 140W but that is a negligible cost compared to the dramatically increased threading performance it gives over the 4960X The only losers in power consumption are the 5930K and 5820K They do represent an improvement in IPC over their predecessors but that improvement is minute in comparison If you are currently making use of the 4930K therersquos little to perhaps no practical reason to upgrade to the 5930K purely for IPC increase As an entire platform change there are merits to this

We didnrsquotrsquo get a lot of time to spend with the Core i7 5960X before this issue was due but we were impressed with the CPU almost instantly The motherboards this time around unlike with X79 are in a better state upon arrival There will be continued refreshes no doubt and with each firmware update they will get better so will the overclocking results We already have 6GHz capable CPUs and while we may not see speeds much faster than this the number of CPUs capable of this frequency is sure to increase as INTEL refine their process along with the ever improving motherboard firmware It is early in the platforms existence but the 5960X has delivered more than we could have expected and we are thoroughly impressed with what INTEL has done here The worldrsquos first true 8-core desktop system has arrived and it is in one word Mighty

[ The OverClocker ]

GAMING GEARAWARD

18 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos not often that we find ourselves testing and writing any kind of

editorial on ASUS Formula motherboards Usually itrsquos the Extreme Impact and that kind of SKU This time we have the MAXIMUS VII Formula The highest end Z97 SKU from ASUS at present and it shows in pricing but

ASUS Maximus VII FormulaRRP $35499 | Website wwwasuscom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

more importantly in the features set

Unlike with the Maximus VI

Extreme for example there is a strong emphasis here on gaming and less so on the overclocking capabilities That is not to say it is unsuitable for extreme overclocking it is to the contrary in fact

ASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps one of the best if not the best looking Z97 boards wersquove seen It has the benefit of aiding

cooling of all the components on the board as well This isnrsquot going to make a world of difference in anything but it does help longevity which is something you may care about considering that yoursquore paying nearly $350 for this piece of engineering Aesthetically then it looks the part and itrsquod be a waste to have it in a windowless case as this one deserves to be seen

What really makes a gaming motherboard these days is an intelligent NIC and a superior audio system both of which are present here Unlike other vendors though ASUS has gone with the INTEL I218V controller which they claim not only has

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 19

lower CPU overhead but a higher throughput as well In addition to that there are some changes to the actual RJ45 port which supposedly help protect the motherboard from lightning strikes and static electricity So itrsquos more than just network traffic Oddly enough ASUS does not claim lower latency with this implementation which is what KILLER network adapters are primarily known for in addition to prioritizing the right kind of traffic when gaming (which this controller does as well via the GameFirst III software)

How beneficial all this is to the end user is debatable but itrsquos innovation nonetheless and wersquod rather have it than

not It all speaks to the quality with which ASUS constructs these gaming motherboards

Second and perhaps even more important is the on-boardaudio solution Given that ASUS can boldly claim to make the best gaming enthusiast grade audio cards and USB DACs (Essence series anyone) itrsquos fitting that wersquod expect nothing but the best here To that end the MAXIMUS VII delivers in spades with a components list unlike any other vendors Being different doesnrsquot make it better but when we looked at the kind of equipment that features what ASUS has here it becomes very apparent that these component decisions were at the very least made

ldquoASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps oneof the best if not the bestlooking boards weve seen

20 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

for qualitative reasons in addition to economical ones Any solution that features ELNA audio capacitors paired with WIMA caps a Cirrus Logic DAC and a TI op-amp is going to impress you to some degree The only part of this entire equation which we canrsquot fathom is why ASUS chose the Realtek ALC1150 codec instead of the numerous others available on the market Therersquos nothing wrong with the ALC1150 per se but given that it is supported by such superior components which no doubt have added to the cost of the motherboard it is puzzling to find this CODEC on such a motherboard

The weakest link is here but you can be guaranteed that this is the best use of this CODEC on the market currently

Competing vendors have made it a point to highlight that there are specific USB ports located at the rear which are meant to have your keyboard and mouse plugged into These ports are supposedly low latency ports with a high polling frequency and more often than not feature some kind of gold plating for better contacts We can confirm that therersquos absolutely no difference between these ports and any other USB port on the motherboard in gaming

or in how your keyboard functions With the ASUS KeyBot however therersquos some ingenuity which allows you to assign almost any keyboard Macro functionality even if said keyboard does not have these features This little chip allows you to program a variety of functionality to any keyboard including cold booting the system into specific states and booting directly to the UEFI so you essentially donrsquotrsquo need a dedicated Direct to BIOS key Once again this is a nifty little feature that is many times more useful than the supposed gaming ports that others may tout on their products

This brings us to the motherboards performance There are many aspects of the Maximus VII Formula that we havenrsquot covered but we could not possibly write about an ROG motherboard without analysis of how it performs in an overclocking context Yes this is geared towards the premium gaming crowd but even then it should not preclude one from being competitive at the highest levels of overclocking This is where the power of the ASUS UEFI comes into play The interface is laid out simply and intuitively It is very detailed but most of the functionality and options are explained thoroughly eliminating any

guess work you may need to do Itrsquos a sublime interface that is not terribly exciting but is thoroughly detailed and simple to navigate Tuning memory on this motherboard is splendid because with every setting there is some kind of assistance letting you know what it is yoursquore tuning and how it may affect overclocking or stability Should it all go pear shaped you can always revert to safe settings using the MemOK button Speaking of which this button is located in the most inconvenient place on the motherboard where itrsquos very close to the edge of the aforementioned top cover It is reachable but perhaps another location would have been better

It should not come as a surprise that the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M time of all Z97 motherboards wersquove tested to date This lead was small but it was there and we couldnrsquot match it with other boards with similar timings You can rest assured that whatever limits you hit with the MVIIF they are due to your CPU or memory but not the motherboard as it is robust as it is finely tuned Thus far wersquove yet to find any vendor or any motherboard in fact that can marry gaming and overclocking so well on a single product For those

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 21

Summary

Would you buy it

No vendor balances gaming and overclocking features the way ASUS does with the Maximus range This one is geared entirely at the gaming crowd and it delivers in spades The features are numerous and the aesthetics unmatched Itrsquos a grand motherboard only a few hairs short of perfection

Yes

who happen to have the ROG control panel yoursquoll be happy to know that the MAXIMUS VII Formula is fully compatible with it and all the functionality you had on the MAXIMUS VI for example yoursquoll find here as well With just the addition of that panel alone (which isnrsquot included with the FORMULA by the way) therersquoll be few things if any you can do with the Z87 extreme board that you cannot do with this motherboard

Once again the package which ASUS provides and its presentation is second to none Wersquove been impressed to no end by other ASUS boards like the Rampage IV

Black Edition for example This isnrsquot that kind of product No this is an evolution of the already great MAXIMUS VI Formula Itrsquos the little changes here and there that culminate into the best Formula motherboard ASUS has ever created From where we stand there arenrsquot any boards which cater to high end gamers and enthusiasts like this one does Itrsquos the best combination of features available today for its intended market If yoursquore building the ultimate Z97 gaming machine and are unwilling to compromise the MAXIMUS VII Formula just may be what you need

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

MAXIMUS VII Formula (Tuned)

124178 41139 42115 39878 16372 1222 29826Graphics 17888 Hardware 28807Physics 13314

ASUS MAXIMUS VII Formula

124677 33332 41923 36199 16307 1202 29736Graphics 17810 Hardware 28725Physics 13207

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M13time of all Z97 motherboards weve tested to date
Neo
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Hardware Award

22 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSIrsquos overclocking motherboards have come a long

way With hits and misses along the journey the last couple of years have resulted in solid progress and improvements all around The biggest criticism leveled at MSI motherboards was almost always weak memory overclocking

MSI Z97 XPOWER ACRRP $37999 | Website wwwmsicom

Test Machinebull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

capacity or capability Given just how important this is it became somewhat of a forgone conclusion that MSI motherboards were not capable of extracting the most out of your hardware After all other than memory there really isnrsquot anything else you can tune on a motherboard as the end user It is in this regard that this stigma followed MSIrsquos boards even when they did not deserve it (which they havenrsquot for a while)

With the Z97 XPOWER and

perhaps even the MPOWER itrsquos a whole different story At least from our perspective there isnrsquot anything about the XPOWER that makes it incapable of memory

overclocking compared to other OC focused offerings on the market In our tests it was truly the limitation of the CPU if anything that prevented any further tuning or frequency scaling that might have been possible What is worth saying though is that we did find it takes a higher voltage across the board to reach the same frequencies or at least tune it to the same efficiency as compared to the other motherboards This isnrsquot anything that should endanger your components at all (especially SAMSUNG memory) but it is worth keepingin mind that what is stable on another motherboard and not so on the XPOWER could simply be a matter of needing to use a higher voltage

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 23

What that means or says about the power delivery on MSI motherboards we will leave for you to decide but it certainly isnrsquot anything we would take away points for On the flip side to this we found that the MSI board mustered up some truly incredible numbers and efficiency wise matched all other boards

we tested and in some cases even exceeded them This is perhaps not because the other motherboards are not capable but by way of the vast array of options MSI brings to their UEFI In addition to this the effect such options have on overclocking and recommended setting help greatly As with all

motherboards we have previously found to be immaculate the entire experience of overclocking is a learning one One is better at overclocking and tuning memory across the board after having used the XPOWER and this is something that not only inspires confidence in the user but allows one to appreciate the exhaustive features presented by MSI and their efforts We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower because MSI has truly brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard ever Is this a perfect board Well - no it isnrsquot but for the most part its close enough What prevents us from having the confidence to proclaim it so is the inconsistency we experienced with it This is a major one that we arenrsquot sure how MSI would address but there certainly has to be a solution to this and it could be a simple matter of a UEFI option (it most certainly is) that is not user tunable or should be tuned by default by

24 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

the engineers During testing we only used settings that are Hyper Pi 32M stable Regular Super Pi 32M isnrsquot good enough and to make sure that we were not running a system that may keel over at any time or represent settings that we may not be able to repeat in future we made sure that both normal and tuned benchmark results were Hyper Pi 32M capable Itrsquos not Prime95 but itrsquos a pretty intense test that is very much indicative of systems stability

We would configure the system and it would appear stable running endless loops of any given benchmark then after a single reboot the system would fail to POST This was an intermittent issue When the board did recover just to make doubly sure that it was not overly aggressive memory tuning we would decrease the memory frequency to 2133MHz and even lower to just 1600MHz However we would experience the same failure to POST at

settings that were previously rock solid At this point we would have to clear the CMOS and start over again loading the profile and lo and behold it would work A subsequent reboot would be fine only for it to fail on the third attempt This was very frustrating as there was no way of knowing what it was exactly that was causing the issue Wersquove not had this issue with any other motherboard and it is certainly an isolated case with this XPOWER Perhaps it is just our perfect combination of hardware but whatever it was it marred what was otherwise an incredible experience

That aside MSI has really gone to town with the features and package MSI has all the necessary switches and buttons you expect They are not as numerous as what yoursquod find on the Z97X-SOC Force for example but they more than cover all the basics and a bit more For $380 USD one does expect to have every option available and in this

regard the XPOWER gets it right We would appreciate having a ldquoMem OKrdquo like feature as on the numerous ASUS motherboards and it would be great if there werenrsquot a limited number of ground points for V-check There are three points which is an improvement over the older boards however you can check more than three voltages at any given time so why there arenrsquot any more ground points is anybodyrsquos guess

Much like the UEFI options

the package that MSI has put together with the XPOWER is incredible including a CPU core guard for those adventurous souls who have taken it upon themselves to remove the heat spreader on the CPU The core is very delicate and the Delid Guard will make sure your CPU pot does not crush the core or apply uneven pressure which is likely to destroy the CPU

To further assist those cooling with LN2 therersquos a fan bracket which you may use to

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 25

Summary

Would you buy it

MSIrsquos steady improvements in motherboard and BIOS design have finally paid off with the Z97 generation There are so many features on the board and BIOS that MSI can probably claim to have as many and perhaps even more tuning options than any other vendor on the market Itrsquos incredible to see just how refined a product the Z97 XPOWER AC is

At a maringally lower price

mount any standard fan for extracting or directing LN2 fumes away from the POT and surrounding areas This is a small convenience that is an added bonus to an already impressive package The focus with which MSI has designed the XPOWER is commendable to say the least All the bases have been covered and MSI has gone the extra mile to deliver what overclockers had asked of MSI for years

Does it justify the retail price Well you have to determine that yourself Given that it automatically makes you legible for MOA qualification but costs about as much as an of the other high end Z79 motherboards then itrsquos certainly worth the investment The XPOWER does many things right but has a few kinks that prevent

it from being a definitive board for the chipset Wersquod not however say that therersquos an outright superior boardon the market as that would not be true Ultimately it will come down to what you are willing to pay for and what you may sacrifice We do suspect that these motherboards will end up in many high end gaming machines as well and even in that context the XPOWER does deliver the goods As MSIrsquos most high end Z79 offering the XPOWER is probably more than we could have ever expected it to be and it does leave us with a very positive and lasting impression If you have the cash and are not moved by any one of the other motherboards at the very high end do give serious thought to the MSI Z97 XPOWER itrsquos the best one yet

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 3DMark Sky Diver Catzilla 720P

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC (Tuned)

124474 41104 42133 39878 16279 30950 29755Graphics 17858 Graphics 43190 Hardware 28749

Physics 13117 Physics 13463

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 30708 29851Graphics 17841 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190 Physics 13215

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

126295 27555 33523 29876 15963 30689 29803Graphics 17870 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28828

Physics 12047 Physics 13012

Neo
Typewritten Text
We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower 13as MSI has brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard yet
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26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
Typewritten Text
at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
Neo
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Neo
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 9: TheOverclocker Issue 31

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 13

CPU For all intents and purposes a good 3960X or perhaps even a 3930K would see you through It would not perhaps take you to the top of the leagues but it would keep you competitive This brings us to another point which is that we have a situation with this CPU that makes it financially unviable to bin CPUs (that is if yoursquore not sponsored in some form) unless you have very deep pockets Unlike with Sandy-Bridge E or its successor the highest end Haswell-E SKU has a tangible and insurmountable advantage over its ldquocheaperrdquo stable mates It is not feasible anymore to use a golden sample 5930K for instance to beat the competitors who are equipped with the 5960X The two CPUs are

not in the same league performance wise and since this is the platform we employ for the multi-threaded benchmarks cores matter perhaps as much as frequency

In case there are those who are unaware for some reason The 5960X is based on the same architecture as the other two CPUs the only besides clock frequency is the L3 cache size at a hefty (by todayrsquos standards) 20MB and obviously all eight cores enabled as opposed to 6 For this difference the price premium is almost $500 steep perhaps but nothing wersquove not seen before More importantly it is easier to justify the price premium unlike before where the gains were minimal between the two most

As soon as the Embargo lifted we

had a number of records including

BenchBros new CineBench R15 World Record An impressive 5960X sample

approaching 6GHz Over 800 points higher than the

previous 8 core CPU record at 1503

14 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

expensive SKUs on the X79 platform Itrsquos no secret that INTEL has been

embracing the enthusiast and more specifically the overclocking community more than it has historically The changes made to their CPUs in the performance and HEDT platforms are a testament to this Artificial limitations are being eradicated at an alarming rate and with the 4790K for instance a conscious effort to improve overclocking was made If this paid on in practical terms is another issue entirely but the effort was made and that is a commendable attitude or position for a company that is in essence without meaningful competition in this space

Does the 5960X warrant its price tag but more especially the excitement and buzz The answer is a resounding yes Given that it has the same retail value as the outgoing 4960X but provides real tangible performance gains It makes a far more convincing argument for itself than perhaps any other INTEL CPU has in this space Even if you have no interest in competitive overclocking at all the 5960X throws itrsquos weight around effectively culling compute times significantly across the vast majority of suits that that are designed to take advantage of multiple threads let alone the new instruction sets made available From Adobe Premier Pro Blender to Virtual Dub and more there are plenty of programs that will instantly show gains by running on this CPU The loss in frequency in comparison to the 4960X or any other CPU for that matter is meaningless compared to what is gained Losing 600MHz is a lot and perhaps even more than one would think four extra

threads would compensate for but if you need the single thread performance and frequency then you have the 4790K For everything else therersquos nothing better than the 5960X

Since the platforms launch recently wersquove witnessed some remarkable results in all the relevant benchmarks on HWBOT In the mathematicalcompute benchmarks like wPrime Cinebench XTU (otherwise known as 3D benchmarks) the new ldquorecordsrdquo and milestone are not in how much faster the new CPU is over the 4960X but itrsquos that therersquos competition in the 8X CPU category where there previously wasnrsquot any in comparison This doesnrsquot mean of course that the 4 and 6X categories are no longer worth the pursuit it merely allows for a more competitive landscape with more options than before This isnrsquot the case in the graphics benchmarks where the thread count advantage of the 5960X will effectively retire the hex core CPUs Itrsquos still very early in the platformrsquos lifetime and wersquoll have to wait and see how it all plays out Suffice to say the 5960X changes the landscape dramatically

X99 BRIEFLY It doesnrsquot take keen insight to come to the conclusion that for the 5960X to be as effective as it is it needs a strong underlying platform or chipset To that end we have a few changes to the chipset There isnrsquot a game changer if you exclude the support for DDR4 but it the changes do bring INTELrsquos HEDT platform a little in line with what the Z97 offers Sorely missed on the X79 chipset was native support for USB

8-Pack unleashed a SLI Firestrike Extreme record of 15011 nearly 1000 points higher than the previous record as soon as the embargo lifted

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 15

30 which INTEL has remedied by allowing a total of 14 USB ports directly from the Chipset eight of which are the older USB20 type and the remaining six super speed 30 This will hopefully get rid of those 3rd party controllers which were always an unnecessary cost to X79 motherboards In addition to that the number of SATA ports supported by the chipset increases from the previous six to ten but all of them support SATA 6Gbps Between these two changes it could eliminate the need for two additional third party ICs on the motherboard which should in theory allow cheaper manufacturing and lower prices to the end user

INTEL states that the chipset and more specifically the 5930K and 5960X support 40 PCI Express lanes This is identical to what we had before with the X79 chipset however natively supported configurations or distribution of these lanes seems to have changed For instance on the X79 platform INTEL offered the following schemes 2x16 amp 1x8 2x 16 amp 3x8 and finally 1x16 amp 2x8 amp 2x4 which is enough to support 4-Way SLICrossfire natively However with the X99 Chipset it looks as if the configurations have been simplified to 2x16 amp 1x8 or 5x8 The first Lane routing and distribution is familiar but the second and potentially the most interesting configuration of 5x8 is dependent on additional 3rd party logic Not in the sense that a the familiar PLX switching chip is necessary but that this configuration isnrsquot natively supported by the chipset but it is a

possible one provided the necessary logic is added to the particular motherboard Thus not all motherboards will be able to use all these schemes

We are particularly interested in what vendors will do with these new possibilities especially with M2 popularity already surpassing that of mSATA which just never got off the ground As a result of the chipset also offering more PCI-Express 30 lanes than Z97 therersquos potential to see better M2 performance as well for the vendors that choose to make use of more lanes on their solution than the standard 10Gbps we see on the majority of motherboards There simply isnrsquot a need to be as conservative with PCI-Express bandwidth Howe vendors will choose to use this chipset will vary and wersquoll be looking at that in all the X99 motherboard reviews to follow in future Until then we have to say that even the most basic motherboards for this chipset are offering a compelling set of features that we have longed for but were missing on all but the very high end X79 motherboards

GAMINGIt should come as little to no surprise to anyone that the 5960X offers no advantage in gaming over the 4960X or the Z97 CPUs for that matter If anything this CPU could be a little slower as a result of the drastically reduced operating frequency Fortunately the fact that it has no apparent advantage here in gaming does not mean that it is ldquoslowerrdquo or offers a sub-optimal gaming

Gunslinger pushed out an impressive 26417 in 3DMark

Firestrike Extreme this time over 1000

points higher than the previous record

set by 8-Pack

16 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

experience to the contrary Games are almost always GPU bound and have been so for at least a decade A faster CPU for the same architecture has not netted any benefit in gaming performance several generations of platforms Wersquove grown accustomed to this and things are no different today Games are simply unable to take advantage of more than four threads Thatrsquos why even today there are many gamers using older generation CPUs such as the Core i5 2500K and are enjoying the highest fidelity in visuals on the most modern and demanding games

or that very reason the 5960X does more than well enough in gaming In

the 5960X delivered identical performance the 4790K The GPU was the limiting factor here This would probably not be the case in a 4-way SLI or rossfire s but then wersquod either be looking at ridiculously high frame rates that have diminished academic va and even less practical

with no measurable performance difference between all the CPUs outside the margin of error Gaming at UHD4K resolutions across multiple screens however maybe a different story as the bandwidth advantage for the X79 and X99 CPUs would be clear but those are very extreme situations If you do game like that therersquos no denying that yoursquoll need a CPU such as this one to full utilize all the rendering power you have at your disposal

IN CLOSINGIf the X79 chipset is anything to go by X99 will be with us for a very long time perhaps

anywhere between one to three years Therersquos certainly no reason for INTEL to usher in a new platform or CPUs anytime soon The 5960X in particular is a sizeable leap forward in computing performance It comes with the penalty of a higher TDP at 140W but that is a negligible cost compared to the dramatically increased threading performance it gives over the 4960X The only losers in power consumption are the 5930K and 5820K They do represent an improvement in IPC over their predecessors but that improvement is minute in comparison If you are currently making use of the 4930K therersquos little to perhaps no practical reason to upgrade to the 5930K purely for IPC increase As an entire platform change there are merits to this

We didnrsquotrsquo get a lot of time to spend with the Core i7 5960X before this issue was due but we were impressed with the CPU almost instantly The motherboards this time around unlike with X79 are in a better state upon arrival There will be continued refreshes no doubt and with each firmware update they will get better so will the overclocking results We already have 6GHz capable CPUs and while we may not see speeds much faster than this the number of CPUs capable of this frequency is sure to increase as INTEL refine their process along with the ever improving motherboard firmware It is early in the platforms existence but the 5960X has delivered more than we could have expected and we are thoroughly impressed with what INTEL has done here The worldrsquos first true 8-core desktop system has arrived and it is in one word Mighty

[ The OverClocker ]

GAMING GEARAWARD

18 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos not often that we find ourselves testing and writing any kind of

editorial on ASUS Formula motherboards Usually itrsquos the Extreme Impact and that kind of SKU This time we have the MAXIMUS VII Formula The highest end Z97 SKU from ASUS at present and it shows in pricing but

ASUS Maximus VII FormulaRRP $35499 | Website wwwasuscom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

more importantly in the features set

Unlike with the Maximus VI

Extreme for example there is a strong emphasis here on gaming and less so on the overclocking capabilities That is not to say it is unsuitable for extreme overclocking it is to the contrary in fact

ASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps one of the best if not the best looking Z97 boards wersquove seen It has the benefit of aiding

cooling of all the components on the board as well This isnrsquot going to make a world of difference in anything but it does help longevity which is something you may care about considering that yoursquore paying nearly $350 for this piece of engineering Aesthetically then it looks the part and itrsquod be a waste to have it in a windowless case as this one deserves to be seen

What really makes a gaming motherboard these days is an intelligent NIC and a superior audio system both of which are present here Unlike other vendors though ASUS has gone with the INTEL I218V controller which they claim not only has

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 19

lower CPU overhead but a higher throughput as well In addition to that there are some changes to the actual RJ45 port which supposedly help protect the motherboard from lightning strikes and static electricity So itrsquos more than just network traffic Oddly enough ASUS does not claim lower latency with this implementation which is what KILLER network adapters are primarily known for in addition to prioritizing the right kind of traffic when gaming (which this controller does as well via the GameFirst III software)

How beneficial all this is to the end user is debatable but itrsquos innovation nonetheless and wersquod rather have it than

not It all speaks to the quality with which ASUS constructs these gaming motherboards

Second and perhaps even more important is the on-boardaudio solution Given that ASUS can boldly claim to make the best gaming enthusiast grade audio cards and USB DACs (Essence series anyone) itrsquos fitting that wersquod expect nothing but the best here To that end the MAXIMUS VII delivers in spades with a components list unlike any other vendors Being different doesnrsquot make it better but when we looked at the kind of equipment that features what ASUS has here it becomes very apparent that these component decisions were at the very least made

ldquoASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps oneof the best if not the bestlooking boards weve seen

20 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

for qualitative reasons in addition to economical ones Any solution that features ELNA audio capacitors paired with WIMA caps a Cirrus Logic DAC and a TI op-amp is going to impress you to some degree The only part of this entire equation which we canrsquot fathom is why ASUS chose the Realtek ALC1150 codec instead of the numerous others available on the market Therersquos nothing wrong with the ALC1150 per se but given that it is supported by such superior components which no doubt have added to the cost of the motherboard it is puzzling to find this CODEC on such a motherboard

The weakest link is here but you can be guaranteed that this is the best use of this CODEC on the market currently

Competing vendors have made it a point to highlight that there are specific USB ports located at the rear which are meant to have your keyboard and mouse plugged into These ports are supposedly low latency ports with a high polling frequency and more often than not feature some kind of gold plating for better contacts We can confirm that therersquos absolutely no difference between these ports and any other USB port on the motherboard in gaming

or in how your keyboard functions With the ASUS KeyBot however therersquos some ingenuity which allows you to assign almost any keyboard Macro functionality even if said keyboard does not have these features This little chip allows you to program a variety of functionality to any keyboard including cold booting the system into specific states and booting directly to the UEFI so you essentially donrsquotrsquo need a dedicated Direct to BIOS key Once again this is a nifty little feature that is many times more useful than the supposed gaming ports that others may tout on their products

This brings us to the motherboards performance There are many aspects of the Maximus VII Formula that we havenrsquot covered but we could not possibly write about an ROG motherboard without analysis of how it performs in an overclocking context Yes this is geared towards the premium gaming crowd but even then it should not preclude one from being competitive at the highest levels of overclocking This is where the power of the ASUS UEFI comes into play The interface is laid out simply and intuitively It is very detailed but most of the functionality and options are explained thoroughly eliminating any

guess work you may need to do Itrsquos a sublime interface that is not terribly exciting but is thoroughly detailed and simple to navigate Tuning memory on this motherboard is splendid because with every setting there is some kind of assistance letting you know what it is yoursquore tuning and how it may affect overclocking or stability Should it all go pear shaped you can always revert to safe settings using the MemOK button Speaking of which this button is located in the most inconvenient place on the motherboard where itrsquos very close to the edge of the aforementioned top cover It is reachable but perhaps another location would have been better

It should not come as a surprise that the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M time of all Z97 motherboards wersquove tested to date This lead was small but it was there and we couldnrsquot match it with other boards with similar timings You can rest assured that whatever limits you hit with the MVIIF they are due to your CPU or memory but not the motherboard as it is robust as it is finely tuned Thus far wersquove yet to find any vendor or any motherboard in fact that can marry gaming and overclocking so well on a single product For those

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 21

Summary

Would you buy it

No vendor balances gaming and overclocking features the way ASUS does with the Maximus range This one is geared entirely at the gaming crowd and it delivers in spades The features are numerous and the aesthetics unmatched Itrsquos a grand motherboard only a few hairs short of perfection

Yes

who happen to have the ROG control panel yoursquoll be happy to know that the MAXIMUS VII Formula is fully compatible with it and all the functionality you had on the MAXIMUS VI for example yoursquoll find here as well With just the addition of that panel alone (which isnrsquot included with the FORMULA by the way) therersquoll be few things if any you can do with the Z87 extreme board that you cannot do with this motherboard

Once again the package which ASUS provides and its presentation is second to none Wersquove been impressed to no end by other ASUS boards like the Rampage IV

Black Edition for example This isnrsquot that kind of product No this is an evolution of the already great MAXIMUS VI Formula Itrsquos the little changes here and there that culminate into the best Formula motherboard ASUS has ever created From where we stand there arenrsquot any boards which cater to high end gamers and enthusiasts like this one does Itrsquos the best combination of features available today for its intended market If yoursquore building the ultimate Z97 gaming machine and are unwilling to compromise the MAXIMUS VII Formula just may be what you need

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

MAXIMUS VII Formula (Tuned)

124178 41139 42115 39878 16372 1222 29826Graphics 17888 Hardware 28807Physics 13314

ASUS MAXIMUS VII Formula

124677 33332 41923 36199 16307 1202 29736Graphics 17810 Hardware 28725Physics 13207

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M13time of all Z97 motherboards weve tested to date
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text

Hardware Award

22 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSIrsquos overclocking motherboards have come a long

way With hits and misses along the journey the last couple of years have resulted in solid progress and improvements all around The biggest criticism leveled at MSI motherboards was almost always weak memory overclocking

MSI Z97 XPOWER ACRRP $37999 | Website wwwmsicom

Test Machinebull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

capacity or capability Given just how important this is it became somewhat of a forgone conclusion that MSI motherboards were not capable of extracting the most out of your hardware After all other than memory there really isnrsquot anything else you can tune on a motherboard as the end user It is in this regard that this stigma followed MSIrsquos boards even when they did not deserve it (which they havenrsquot for a while)

With the Z97 XPOWER and

perhaps even the MPOWER itrsquos a whole different story At least from our perspective there isnrsquot anything about the XPOWER that makes it incapable of memory

overclocking compared to other OC focused offerings on the market In our tests it was truly the limitation of the CPU if anything that prevented any further tuning or frequency scaling that might have been possible What is worth saying though is that we did find it takes a higher voltage across the board to reach the same frequencies or at least tune it to the same efficiency as compared to the other motherboards This isnrsquot anything that should endanger your components at all (especially SAMSUNG memory) but it is worth keepingin mind that what is stable on another motherboard and not so on the XPOWER could simply be a matter of needing to use a higher voltage

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 23

What that means or says about the power delivery on MSI motherboards we will leave for you to decide but it certainly isnrsquot anything we would take away points for On the flip side to this we found that the MSI board mustered up some truly incredible numbers and efficiency wise matched all other boards

we tested and in some cases even exceeded them This is perhaps not because the other motherboards are not capable but by way of the vast array of options MSI brings to their UEFI In addition to this the effect such options have on overclocking and recommended setting help greatly As with all

motherboards we have previously found to be immaculate the entire experience of overclocking is a learning one One is better at overclocking and tuning memory across the board after having used the XPOWER and this is something that not only inspires confidence in the user but allows one to appreciate the exhaustive features presented by MSI and their efforts We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower because MSI has truly brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard ever Is this a perfect board Well - no it isnrsquot but for the most part its close enough What prevents us from having the confidence to proclaim it so is the inconsistency we experienced with it This is a major one that we arenrsquot sure how MSI would address but there certainly has to be a solution to this and it could be a simple matter of a UEFI option (it most certainly is) that is not user tunable or should be tuned by default by

24 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

the engineers During testing we only used settings that are Hyper Pi 32M stable Regular Super Pi 32M isnrsquot good enough and to make sure that we were not running a system that may keel over at any time or represent settings that we may not be able to repeat in future we made sure that both normal and tuned benchmark results were Hyper Pi 32M capable Itrsquos not Prime95 but itrsquos a pretty intense test that is very much indicative of systems stability

We would configure the system and it would appear stable running endless loops of any given benchmark then after a single reboot the system would fail to POST This was an intermittent issue When the board did recover just to make doubly sure that it was not overly aggressive memory tuning we would decrease the memory frequency to 2133MHz and even lower to just 1600MHz However we would experience the same failure to POST at

settings that were previously rock solid At this point we would have to clear the CMOS and start over again loading the profile and lo and behold it would work A subsequent reboot would be fine only for it to fail on the third attempt This was very frustrating as there was no way of knowing what it was exactly that was causing the issue Wersquove not had this issue with any other motherboard and it is certainly an isolated case with this XPOWER Perhaps it is just our perfect combination of hardware but whatever it was it marred what was otherwise an incredible experience

That aside MSI has really gone to town with the features and package MSI has all the necessary switches and buttons you expect They are not as numerous as what yoursquod find on the Z97X-SOC Force for example but they more than cover all the basics and a bit more For $380 USD one does expect to have every option available and in this

regard the XPOWER gets it right We would appreciate having a ldquoMem OKrdquo like feature as on the numerous ASUS motherboards and it would be great if there werenrsquot a limited number of ground points for V-check There are three points which is an improvement over the older boards however you can check more than three voltages at any given time so why there arenrsquot any more ground points is anybodyrsquos guess

Much like the UEFI options

the package that MSI has put together with the XPOWER is incredible including a CPU core guard for those adventurous souls who have taken it upon themselves to remove the heat spreader on the CPU The core is very delicate and the Delid Guard will make sure your CPU pot does not crush the core or apply uneven pressure which is likely to destroy the CPU

To further assist those cooling with LN2 therersquos a fan bracket which you may use to

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 25

Summary

Would you buy it

MSIrsquos steady improvements in motherboard and BIOS design have finally paid off with the Z97 generation There are so many features on the board and BIOS that MSI can probably claim to have as many and perhaps even more tuning options than any other vendor on the market Itrsquos incredible to see just how refined a product the Z97 XPOWER AC is

At a maringally lower price

mount any standard fan for extracting or directing LN2 fumes away from the POT and surrounding areas This is a small convenience that is an added bonus to an already impressive package The focus with which MSI has designed the XPOWER is commendable to say the least All the bases have been covered and MSI has gone the extra mile to deliver what overclockers had asked of MSI for years

Does it justify the retail price Well you have to determine that yourself Given that it automatically makes you legible for MOA qualification but costs about as much as an of the other high end Z79 motherboards then itrsquos certainly worth the investment The XPOWER does many things right but has a few kinks that prevent

it from being a definitive board for the chipset Wersquod not however say that therersquos an outright superior boardon the market as that would not be true Ultimately it will come down to what you are willing to pay for and what you may sacrifice We do suspect that these motherboards will end up in many high end gaming machines as well and even in that context the XPOWER does deliver the goods As MSIrsquos most high end Z79 offering the XPOWER is probably more than we could have ever expected it to be and it does leave us with a very positive and lasting impression If you have the cash and are not moved by any one of the other motherboards at the very high end do give serious thought to the MSI Z97 XPOWER itrsquos the best one yet

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 3DMark Sky Diver Catzilla 720P

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC (Tuned)

124474 41104 42133 39878 16279 30950 29755Graphics 17858 Graphics 43190 Hardware 28749

Physics 13117 Physics 13463

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 30708 29851Graphics 17841 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190 Physics 13215

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

126295 27555 33523 29876 15963 30689 29803Graphics 17870 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28828

Physics 12047 Physics 13012

Neo
Typewritten Text
We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower 13as MSI has brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard yet
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26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
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at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 10: TheOverclocker Issue 31

As soon as the Embargo lifted we

had a number of records including

BenchBros new CineBench R15 World Record An impressive 5960X sample

approaching 6GHz Over 800 points higher than the

previous 8 core CPU record at 1503

14 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

expensive SKUs on the X79 platform Itrsquos no secret that INTEL has been

embracing the enthusiast and more specifically the overclocking community more than it has historically The changes made to their CPUs in the performance and HEDT platforms are a testament to this Artificial limitations are being eradicated at an alarming rate and with the 4790K for instance a conscious effort to improve overclocking was made If this paid on in practical terms is another issue entirely but the effort was made and that is a commendable attitude or position for a company that is in essence without meaningful competition in this space

Does the 5960X warrant its price tag but more especially the excitement and buzz The answer is a resounding yes Given that it has the same retail value as the outgoing 4960X but provides real tangible performance gains It makes a far more convincing argument for itself than perhaps any other INTEL CPU has in this space Even if you have no interest in competitive overclocking at all the 5960X throws itrsquos weight around effectively culling compute times significantly across the vast majority of suits that that are designed to take advantage of multiple threads let alone the new instruction sets made available From Adobe Premier Pro Blender to Virtual Dub and more there are plenty of programs that will instantly show gains by running on this CPU The loss in frequency in comparison to the 4960X or any other CPU for that matter is meaningless compared to what is gained Losing 600MHz is a lot and perhaps even more than one would think four extra

threads would compensate for but if you need the single thread performance and frequency then you have the 4790K For everything else therersquos nothing better than the 5960X

Since the platforms launch recently wersquove witnessed some remarkable results in all the relevant benchmarks on HWBOT In the mathematicalcompute benchmarks like wPrime Cinebench XTU (otherwise known as 3D benchmarks) the new ldquorecordsrdquo and milestone are not in how much faster the new CPU is over the 4960X but itrsquos that therersquos competition in the 8X CPU category where there previously wasnrsquot any in comparison This doesnrsquot mean of course that the 4 and 6X categories are no longer worth the pursuit it merely allows for a more competitive landscape with more options than before This isnrsquot the case in the graphics benchmarks where the thread count advantage of the 5960X will effectively retire the hex core CPUs Itrsquos still very early in the platformrsquos lifetime and wersquoll have to wait and see how it all plays out Suffice to say the 5960X changes the landscape dramatically

X99 BRIEFLY It doesnrsquot take keen insight to come to the conclusion that for the 5960X to be as effective as it is it needs a strong underlying platform or chipset To that end we have a few changes to the chipset There isnrsquot a game changer if you exclude the support for DDR4 but it the changes do bring INTELrsquos HEDT platform a little in line with what the Z97 offers Sorely missed on the X79 chipset was native support for USB

8-Pack unleashed a SLI Firestrike Extreme record of 15011 nearly 1000 points higher than the previous record as soon as the embargo lifted

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 15

30 which INTEL has remedied by allowing a total of 14 USB ports directly from the Chipset eight of which are the older USB20 type and the remaining six super speed 30 This will hopefully get rid of those 3rd party controllers which were always an unnecessary cost to X79 motherboards In addition to that the number of SATA ports supported by the chipset increases from the previous six to ten but all of them support SATA 6Gbps Between these two changes it could eliminate the need for two additional third party ICs on the motherboard which should in theory allow cheaper manufacturing and lower prices to the end user

INTEL states that the chipset and more specifically the 5930K and 5960X support 40 PCI Express lanes This is identical to what we had before with the X79 chipset however natively supported configurations or distribution of these lanes seems to have changed For instance on the X79 platform INTEL offered the following schemes 2x16 amp 1x8 2x 16 amp 3x8 and finally 1x16 amp 2x8 amp 2x4 which is enough to support 4-Way SLICrossfire natively However with the X99 Chipset it looks as if the configurations have been simplified to 2x16 amp 1x8 or 5x8 The first Lane routing and distribution is familiar but the second and potentially the most interesting configuration of 5x8 is dependent on additional 3rd party logic Not in the sense that a the familiar PLX switching chip is necessary but that this configuration isnrsquot natively supported by the chipset but it is a

possible one provided the necessary logic is added to the particular motherboard Thus not all motherboards will be able to use all these schemes

We are particularly interested in what vendors will do with these new possibilities especially with M2 popularity already surpassing that of mSATA which just never got off the ground As a result of the chipset also offering more PCI-Express 30 lanes than Z97 therersquos potential to see better M2 performance as well for the vendors that choose to make use of more lanes on their solution than the standard 10Gbps we see on the majority of motherboards There simply isnrsquot a need to be as conservative with PCI-Express bandwidth Howe vendors will choose to use this chipset will vary and wersquoll be looking at that in all the X99 motherboard reviews to follow in future Until then we have to say that even the most basic motherboards for this chipset are offering a compelling set of features that we have longed for but were missing on all but the very high end X79 motherboards

GAMINGIt should come as little to no surprise to anyone that the 5960X offers no advantage in gaming over the 4960X or the Z97 CPUs for that matter If anything this CPU could be a little slower as a result of the drastically reduced operating frequency Fortunately the fact that it has no apparent advantage here in gaming does not mean that it is ldquoslowerrdquo or offers a sub-optimal gaming

Gunslinger pushed out an impressive 26417 in 3DMark

Firestrike Extreme this time over 1000

points higher than the previous record

set by 8-Pack

16 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

experience to the contrary Games are almost always GPU bound and have been so for at least a decade A faster CPU for the same architecture has not netted any benefit in gaming performance several generations of platforms Wersquove grown accustomed to this and things are no different today Games are simply unable to take advantage of more than four threads Thatrsquos why even today there are many gamers using older generation CPUs such as the Core i5 2500K and are enjoying the highest fidelity in visuals on the most modern and demanding games

or that very reason the 5960X does more than well enough in gaming In

the 5960X delivered identical performance the 4790K The GPU was the limiting factor here This would probably not be the case in a 4-way SLI or rossfire s but then wersquod either be looking at ridiculously high frame rates that have diminished academic va and even less practical

with no measurable performance difference between all the CPUs outside the margin of error Gaming at UHD4K resolutions across multiple screens however maybe a different story as the bandwidth advantage for the X79 and X99 CPUs would be clear but those are very extreme situations If you do game like that therersquos no denying that yoursquoll need a CPU such as this one to full utilize all the rendering power you have at your disposal

IN CLOSINGIf the X79 chipset is anything to go by X99 will be with us for a very long time perhaps

anywhere between one to three years Therersquos certainly no reason for INTEL to usher in a new platform or CPUs anytime soon The 5960X in particular is a sizeable leap forward in computing performance It comes with the penalty of a higher TDP at 140W but that is a negligible cost compared to the dramatically increased threading performance it gives over the 4960X The only losers in power consumption are the 5930K and 5820K They do represent an improvement in IPC over their predecessors but that improvement is minute in comparison If you are currently making use of the 4930K therersquos little to perhaps no practical reason to upgrade to the 5930K purely for IPC increase As an entire platform change there are merits to this

We didnrsquotrsquo get a lot of time to spend with the Core i7 5960X before this issue was due but we were impressed with the CPU almost instantly The motherboards this time around unlike with X79 are in a better state upon arrival There will be continued refreshes no doubt and with each firmware update they will get better so will the overclocking results We already have 6GHz capable CPUs and while we may not see speeds much faster than this the number of CPUs capable of this frequency is sure to increase as INTEL refine their process along with the ever improving motherboard firmware It is early in the platforms existence but the 5960X has delivered more than we could have expected and we are thoroughly impressed with what INTEL has done here The worldrsquos first true 8-core desktop system has arrived and it is in one word Mighty

[ The OverClocker ]

GAMING GEARAWARD

18 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos not often that we find ourselves testing and writing any kind of

editorial on ASUS Formula motherboards Usually itrsquos the Extreme Impact and that kind of SKU This time we have the MAXIMUS VII Formula The highest end Z97 SKU from ASUS at present and it shows in pricing but

ASUS Maximus VII FormulaRRP $35499 | Website wwwasuscom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

more importantly in the features set

Unlike with the Maximus VI

Extreme for example there is a strong emphasis here on gaming and less so on the overclocking capabilities That is not to say it is unsuitable for extreme overclocking it is to the contrary in fact

ASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps one of the best if not the best looking Z97 boards wersquove seen It has the benefit of aiding

cooling of all the components on the board as well This isnrsquot going to make a world of difference in anything but it does help longevity which is something you may care about considering that yoursquore paying nearly $350 for this piece of engineering Aesthetically then it looks the part and itrsquod be a waste to have it in a windowless case as this one deserves to be seen

What really makes a gaming motherboard these days is an intelligent NIC and a superior audio system both of which are present here Unlike other vendors though ASUS has gone with the INTEL I218V controller which they claim not only has

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 19

lower CPU overhead but a higher throughput as well In addition to that there are some changes to the actual RJ45 port which supposedly help protect the motherboard from lightning strikes and static electricity So itrsquos more than just network traffic Oddly enough ASUS does not claim lower latency with this implementation which is what KILLER network adapters are primarily known for in addition to prioritizing the right kind of traffic when gaming (which this controller does as well via the GameFirst III software)

How beneficial all this is to the end user is debatable but itrsquos innovation nonetheless and wersquod rather have it than

not It all speaks to the quality with which ASUS constructs these gaming motherboards

Second and perhaps even more important is the on-boardaudio solution Given that ASUS can boldly claim to make the best gaming enthusiast grade audio cards and USB DACs (Essence series anyone) itrsquos fitting that wersquod expect nothing but the best here To that end the MAXIMUS VII delivers in spades with a components list unlike any other vendors Being different doesnrsquot make it better but when we looked at the kind of equipment that features what ASUS has here it becomes very apparent that these component decisions were at the very least made

ldquoASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps oneof the best if not the bestlooking boards weve seen

20 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

for qualitative reasons in addition to economical ones Any solution that features ELNA audio capacitors paired with WIMA caps a Cirrus Logic DAC and a TI op-amp is going to impress you to some degree The only part of this entire equation which we canrsquot fathom is why ASUS chose the Realtek ALC1150 codec instead of the numerous others available on the market Therersquos nothing wrong with the ALC1150 per se but given that it is supported by such superior components which no doubt have added to the cost of the motherboard it is puzzling to find this CODEC on such a motherboard

The weakest link is here but you can be guaranteed that this is the best use of this CODEC on the market currently

Competing vendors have made it a point to highlight that there are specific USB ports located at the rear which are meant to have your keyboard and mouse plugged into These ports are supposedly low latency ports with a high polling frequency and more often than not feature some kind of gold plating for better contacts We can confirm that therersquos absolutely no difference between these ports and any other USB port on the motherboard in gaming

or in how your keyboard functions With the ASUS KeyBot however therersquos some ingenuity which allows you to assign almost any keyboard Macro functionality even if said keyboard does not have these features This little chip allows you to program a variety of functionality to any keyboard including cold booting the system into specific states and booting directly to the UEFI so you essentially donrsquotrsquo need a dedicated Direct to BIOS key Once again this is a nifty little feature that is many times more useful than the supposed gaming ports that others may tout on their products

This brings us to the motherboards performance There are many aspects of the Maximus VII Formula that we havenrsquot covered but we could not possibly write about an ROG motherboard without analysis of how it performs in an overclocking context Yes this is geared towards the premium gaming crowd but even then it should not preclude one from being competitive at the highest levels of overclocking This is where the power of the ASUS UEFI comes into play The interface is laid out simply and intuitively It is very detailed but most of the functionality and options are explained thoroughly eliminating any

guess work you may need to do Itrsquos a sublime interface that is not terribly exciting but is thoroughly detailed and simple to navigate Tuning memory on this motherboard is splendid because with every setting there is some kind of assistance letting you know what it is yoursquore tuning and how it may affect overclocking or stability Should it all go pear shaped you can always revert to safe settings using the MemOK button Speaking of which this button is located in the most inconvenient place on the motherboard where itrsquos very close to the edge of the aforementioned top cover It is reachable but perhaps another location would have been better

It should not come as a surprise that the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M time of all Z97 motherboards wersquove tested to date This lead was small but it was there and we couldnrsquot match it with other boards with similar timings You can rest assured that whatever limits you hit with the MVIIF they are due to your CPU or memory but not the motherboard as it is robust as it is finely tuned Thus far wersquove yet to find any vendor or any motherboard in fact that can marry gaming and overclocking so well on a single product For those

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 21

Summary

Would you buy it

No vendor balances gaming and overclocking features the way ASUS does with the Maximus range This one is geared entirely at the gaming crowd and it delivers in spades The features are numerous and the aesthetics unmatched Itrsquos a grand motherboard only a few hairs short of perfection

Yes

who happen to have the ROG control panel yoursquoll be happy to know that the MAXIMUS VII Formula is fully compatible with it and all the functionality you had on the MAXIMUS VI for example yoursquoll find here as well With just the addition of that panel alone (which isnrsquot included with the FORMULA by the way) therersquoll be few things if any you can do with the Z87 extreme board that you cannot do with this motherboard

Once again the package which ASUS provides and its presentation is second to none Wersquove been impressed to no end by other ASUS boards like the Rampage IV

Black Edition for example This isnrsquot that kind of product No this is an evolution of the already great MAXIMUS VI Formula Itrsquos the little changes here and there that culminate into the best Formula motherboard ASUS has ever created From where we stand there arenrsquot any boards which cater to high end gamers and enthusiasts like this one does Itrsquos the best combination of features available today for its intended market If yoursquore building the ultimate Z97 gaming machine and are unwilling to compromise the MAXIMUS VII Formula just may be what you need

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

MAXIMUS VII Formula (Tuned)

124178 41139 42115 39878 16372 1222 29826Graphics 17888 Hardware 28807Physics 13314

ASUS MAXIMUS VII Formula

124677 33332 41923 36199 16307 1202 29736Graphics 17810 Hardware 28725Physics 13207

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M13time of all Z97 motherboards weve tested to date
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text

Hardware Award

22 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSIrsquos overclocking motherboards have come a long

way With hits and misses along the journey the last couple of years have resulted in solid progress and improvements all around The biggest criticism leveled at MSI motherboards was almost always weak memory overclocking

MSI Z97 XPOWER ACRRP $37999 | Website wwwmsicom

Test Machinebull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

capacity or capability Given just how important this is it became somewhat of a forgone conclusion that MSI motherboards were not capable of extracting the most out of your hardware After all other than memory there really isnrsquot anything else you can tune on a motherboard as the end user It is in this regard that this stigma followed MSIrsquos boards even when they did not deserve it (which they havenrsquot for a while)

With the Z97 XPOWER and

perhaps even the MPOWER itrsquos a whole different story At least from our perspective there isnrsquot anything about the XPOWER that makes it incapable of memory

overclocking compared to other OC focused offerings on the market In our tests it was truly the limitation of the CPU if anything that prevented any further tuning or frequency scaling that might have been possible What is worth saying though is that we did find it takes a higher voltage across the board to reach the same frequencies or at least tune it to the same efficiency as compared to the other motherboards This isnrsquot anything that should endanger your components at all (especially SAMSUNG memory) but it is worth keepingin mind that what is stable on another motherboard and not so on the XPOWER could simply be a matter of needing to use a higher voltage

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 23

What that means or says about the power delivery on MSI motherboards we will leave for you to decide but it certainly isnrsquot anything we would take away points for On the flip side to this we found that the MSI board mustered up some truly incredible numbers and efficiency wise matched all other boards

we tested and in some cases even exceeded them This is perhaps not because the other motherboards are not capable but by way of the vast array of options MSI brings to their UEFI In addition to this the effect such options have on overclocking and recommended setting help greatly As with all

motherboards we have previously found to be immaculate the entire experience of overclocking is a learning one One is better at overclocking and tuning memory across the board after having used the XPOWER and this is something that not only inspires confidence in the user but allows one to appreciate the exhaustive features presented by MSI and their efforts We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower because MSI has truly brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard ever Is this a perfect board Well - no it isnrsquot but for the most part its close enough What prevents us from having the confidence to proclaim it so is the inconsistency we experienced with it This is a major one that we arenrsquot sure how MSI would address but there certainly has to be a solution to this and it could be a simple matter of a UEFI option (it most certainly is) that is not user tunable or should be tuned by default by

24 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

the engineers During testing we only used settings that are Hyper Pi 32M stable Regular Super Pi 32M isnrsquot good enough and to make sure that we were not running a system that may keel over at any time or represent settings that we may not be able to repeat in future we made sure that both normal and tuned benchmark results were Hyper Pi 32M capable Itrsquos not Prime95 but itrsquos a pretty intense test that is very much indicative of systems stability

We would configure the system and it would appear stable running endless loops of any given benchmark then after a single reboot the system would fail to POST This was an intermittent issue When the board did recover just to make doubly sure that it was not overly aggressive memory tuning we would decrease the memory frequency to 2133MHz and even lower to just 1600MHz However we would experience the same failure to POST at

settings that were previously rock solid At this point we would have to clear the CMOS and start over again loading the profile and lo and behold it would work A subsequent reboot would be fine only for it to fail on the third attempt This was very frustrating as there was no way of knowing what it was exactly that was causing the issue Wersquove not had this issue with any other motherboard and it is certainly an isolated case with this XPOWER Perhaps it is just our perfect combination of hardware but whatever it was it marred what was otherwise an incredible experience

That aside MSI has really gone to town with the features and package MSI has all the necessary switches and buttons you expect They are not as numerous as what yoursquod find on the Z97X-SOC Force for example but they more than cover all the basics and a bit more For $380 USD one does expect to have every option available and in this

regard the XPOWER gets it right We would appreciate having a ldquoMem OKrdquo like feature as on the numerous ASUS motherboards and it would be great if there werenrsquot a limited number of ground points for V-check There are three points which is an improvement over the older boards however you can check more than three voltages at any given time so why there arenrsquot any more ground points is anybodyrsquos guess

Much like the UEFI options

the package that MSI has put together with the XPOWER is incredible including a CPU core guard for those adventurous souls who have taken it upon themselves to remove the heat spreader on the CPU The core is very delicate and the Delid Guard will make sure your CPU pot does not crush the core or apply uneven pressure which is likely to destroy the CPU

To further assist those cooling with LN2 therersquos a fan bracket which you may use to

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 25

Summary

Would you buy it

MSIrsquos steady improvements in motherboard and BIOS design have finally paid off with the Z97 generation There are so many features on the board and BIOS that MSI can probably claim to have as many and perhaps even more tuning options than any other vendor on the market Itrsquos incredible to see just how refined a product the Z97 XPOWER AC is

At a maringally lower price

mount any standard fan for extracting or directing LN2 fumes away from the POT and surrounding areas This is a small convenience that is an added bonus to an already impressive package The focus with which MSI has designed the XPOWER is commendable to say the least All the bases have been covered and MSI has gone the extra mile to deliver what overclockers had asked of MSI for years

Does it justify the retail price Well you have to determine that yourself Given that it automatically makes you legible for MOA qualification but costs about as much as an of the other high end Z79 motherboards then itrsquos certainly worth the investment The XPOWER does many things right but has a few kinks that prevent

it from being a definitive board for the chipset Wersquod not however say that therersquos an outright superior boardon the market as that would not be true Ultimately it will come down to what you are willing to pay for and what you may sacrifice We do suspect that these motherboards will end up in many high end gaming machines as well and even in that context the XPOWER does deliver the goods As MSIrsquos most high end Z79 offering the XPOWER is probably more than we could have ever expected it to be and it does leave us with a very positive and lasting impression If you have the cash and are not moved by any one of the other motherboards at the very high end do give serious thought to the MSI Z97 XPOWER itrsquos the best one yet

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 3DMark Sky Diver Catzilla 720P

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC (Tuned)

124474 41104 42133 39878 16279 30950 29755Graphics 17858 Graphics 43190 Hardware 28749

Physics 13117 Physics 13463

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 30708 29851Graphics 17841 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190 Physics 13215

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

126295 27555 33523 29876 15963 30689 29803Graphics 17870 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28828

Physics 12047 Physics 13012

Neo
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We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower 13as MSI has brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard yet
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26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
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at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 11: TheOverclocker Issue 31

8-Pack unleashed a SLI Firestrike Extreme record of 15011 nearly 1000 points higher than the previous record as soon as the embargo lifted

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 15

30 which INTEL has remedied by allowing a total of 14 USB ports directly from the Chipset eight of which are the older USB20 type and the remaining six super speed 30 This will hopefully get rid of those 3rd party controllers which were always an unnecessary cost to X79 motherboards In addition to that the number of SATA ports supported by the chipset increases from the previous six to ten but all of them support SATA 6Gbps Between these two changes it could eliminate the need for two additional third party ICs on the motherboard which should in theory allow cheaper manufacturing and lower prices to the end user

INTEL states that the chipset and more specifically the 5930K and 5960X support 40 PCI Express lanes This is identical to what we had before with the X79 chipset however natively supported configurations or distribution of these lanes seems to have changed For instance on the X79 platform INTEL offered the following schemes 2x16 amp 1x8 2x 16 amp 3x8 and finally 1x16 amp 2x8 amp 2x4 which is enough to support 4-Way SLICrossfire natively However with the X99 Chipset it looks as if the configurations have been simplified to 2x16 amp 1x8 or 5x8 The first Lane routing and distribution is familiar but the second and potentially the most interesting configuration of 5x8 is dependent on additional 3rd party logic Not in the sense that a the familiar PLX switching chip is necessary but that this configuration isnrsquot natively supported by the chipset but it is a

possible one provided the necessary logic is added to the particular motherboard Thus not all motherboards will be able to use all these schemes

We are particularly interested in what vendors will do with these new possibilities especially with M2 popularity already surpassing that of mSATA which just never got off the ground As a result of the chipset also offering more PCI-Express 30 lanes than Z97 therersquos potential to see better M2 performance as well for the vendors that choose to make use of more lanes on their solution than the standard 10Gbps we see on the majority of motherboards There simply isnrsquot a need to be as conservative with PCI-Express bandwidth Howe vendors will choose to use this chipset will vary and wersquoll be looking at that in all the X99 motherboard reviews to follow in future Until then we have to say that even the most basic motherboards for this chipset are offering a compelling set of features that we have longed for but were missing on all but the very high end X79 motherboards

GAMINGIt should come as little to no surprise to anyone that the 5960X offers no advantage in gaming over the 4960X or the Z97 CPUs for that matter If anything this CPU could be a little slower as a result of the drastically reduced operating frequency Fortunately the fact that it has no apparent advantage here in gaming does not mean that it is ldquoslowerrdquo or offers a sub-optimal gaming

Gunslinger pushed out an impressive 26417 in 3DMark

Firestrike Extreme this time over 1000

points higher than the previous record

set by 8-Pack

16 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

experience to the contrary Games are almost always GPU bound and have been so for at least a decade A faster CPU for the same architecture has not netted any benefit in gaming performance several generations of platforms Wersquove grown accustomed to this and things are no different today Games are simply unable to take advantage of more than four threads Thatrsquos why even today there are many gamers using older generation CPUs such as the Core i5 2500K and are enjoying the highest fidelity in visuals on the most modern and demanding games

or that very reason the 5960X does more than well enough in gaming In

the 5960X delivered identical performance the 4790K The GPU was the limiting factor here This would probably not be the case in a 4-way SLI or rossfire s but then wersquod either be looking at ridiculously high frame rates that have diminished academic va and even less practical

with no measurable performance difference between all the CPUs outside the margin of error Gaming at UHD4K resolutions across multiple screens however maybe a different story as the bandwidth advantage for the X79 and X99 CPUs would be clear but those are very extreme situations If you do game like that therersquos no denying that yoursquoll need a CPU such as this one to full utilize all the rendering power you have at your disposal

IN CLOSINGIf the X79 chipset is anything to go by X99 will be with us for a very long time perhaps

anywhere between one to three years Therersquos certainly no reason for INTEL to usher in a new platform or CPUs anytime soon The 5960X in particular is a sizeable leap forward in computing performance It comes with the penalty of a higher TDP at 140W but that is a negligible cost compared to the dramatically increased threading performance it gives over the 4960X The only losers in power consumption are the 5930K and 5820K They do represent an improvement in IPC over their predecessors but that improvement is minute in comparison If you are currently making use of the 4930K therersquos little to perhaps no practical reason to upgrade to the 5930K purely for IPC increase As an entire platform change there are merits to this

We didnrsquotrsquo get a lot of time to spend with the Core i7 5960X before this issue was due but we were impressed with the CPU almost instantly The motherboards this time around unlike with X79 are in a better state upon arrival There will be continued refreshes no doubt and with each firmware update they will get better so will the overclocking results We already have 6GHz capable CPUs and while we may not see speeds much faster than this the number of CPUs capable of this frequency is sure to increase as INTEL refine their process along with the ever improving motherboard firmware It is early in the platforms existence but the 5960X has delivered more than we could have expected and we are thoroughly impressed with what INTEL has done here The worldrsquos first true 8-core desktop system has arrived and it is in one word Mighty

[ The OverClocker ]

GAMING GEARAWARD

18 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos not often that we find ourselves testing and writing any kind of

editorial on ASUS Formula motherboards Usually itrsquos the Extreme Impact and that kind of SKU This time we have the MAXIMUS VII Formula The highest end Z97 SKU from ASUS at present and it shows in pricing but

ASUS Maximus VII FormulaRRP $35499 | Website wwwasuscom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

more importantly in the features set

Unlike with the Maximus VI

Extreme for example there is a strong emphasis here on gaming and less so on the overclocking capabilities That is not to say it is unsuitable for extreme overclocking it is to the contrary in fact

ASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps one of the best if not the best looking Z97 boards wersquove seen It has the benefit of aiding

cooling of all the components on the board as well This isnrsquot going to make a world of difference in anything but it does help longevity which is something you may care about considering that yoursquore paying nearly $350 for this piece of engineering Aesthetically then it looks the part and itrsquod be a waste to have it in a windowless case as this one deserves to be seen

What really makes a gaming motherboard these days is an intelligent NIC and a superior audio system both of which are present here Unlike other vendors though ASUS has gone with the INTEL I218V controller which they claim not only has

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 19

lower CPU overhead but a higher throughput as well In addition to that there are some changes to the actual RJ45 port which supposedly help protect the motherboard from lightning strikes and static electricity So itrsquos more than just network traffic Oddly enough ASUS does not claim lower latency with this implementation which is what KILLER network adapters are primarily known for in addition to prioritizing the right kind of traffic when gaming (which this controller does as well via the GameFirst III software)

How beneficial all this is to the end user is debatable but itrsquos innovation nonetheless and wersquod rather have it than

not It all speaks to the quality with which ASUS constructs these gaming motherboards

Second and perhaps even more important is the on-boardaudio solution Given that ASUS can boldly claim to make the best gaming enthusiast grade audio cards and USB DACs (Essence series anyone) itrsquos fitting that wersquod expect nothing but the best here To that end the MAXIMUS VII delivers in spades with a components list unlike any other vendors Being different doesnrsquot make it better but when we looked at the kind of equipment that features what ASUS has here it becomes very apparent that these component decisions were at the very least made

ldquoASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps oneof the best if not the bestlooking boards weve seen

20 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

for qualitative reasons in addition to economical ones Any solution that features ELNA audio capacitors paired with WIMA caps a Cirrus Logic DAC and a TI op-amp is going to impress you to some degree The only part of this entire equation which we canrsquot fathom is why ASUS chose the Realtek ALC1150 codec instead of the numerous others available on the market Therersquos nothing wrong with the ALC1150 per se but given that it is supported by such superior components which no doubt have added to the cost of the motherboard it is puzzling to find this CODEC on such a motherboard

The weakest link is here but you can be guaranteed that this is the best use of this CODEC on the market currently

Competing vendors have made it a point to highlight that there are specific USB ports located at the rear which are meant to have your keyboard and mouse plugged into These ports are supposedly low latency ports with a high polling frequency and more often than not feature some kind of gold plating for better contacts We can confirm that therersquos absolutely no difference between these ports and any other USB port on the motherboard in gaming

or in how your keyboard functions With the ASUS KeyBot however therersquos some ingenuity which allows you to assign almost any keyboard Macro functionality even if said keyboard does not have these features This little chip allows you to program a variety of functionality to any keyboard including cold booting the system into specific states and booting directly to the UEFI so you essentially donrsquotrsquo need a dedicated Direct to BIOS key Once again this is a nifty little feature that is many times more useful than the supposed gaming ports that others may tout on their products

This brings us to the motherboards performance There are many aspects of the Maximus VII Formula that we havenrsquot covered but we could not possibly write about an ROG motherboard without analysis of how it performs in an overclocking context Yes this is geared towards the premium gaming crowd but even then it should not preclude one from being competitive at the highest levels of overclocking This is where the power of the ASUS UEFI comes into play The interface is laid out simply and intuitively It is very detailed but most of the functionality and options are explained thoroughly eliminating any

guess work you may need to do Itrsquos a sublime interface that is not terribly exciting but is thoroughly detailed and simple to navigate Tuning memory on this motherboard is splendid because with every setting there is some kind of assistance letting you know what it is yoursquore tuning and how it may affect overclocking or stability Should it all go pear shaped you can always revert to safe settings using the MemOK button Speaking of which this button is located in the most inconvenient place on the motherboard where itrsquos very close to the edge of the aforementioned top cover It is reachable but perhaps another location would have been better

It should not come as a surprise that the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M time of all Z97 motherboards wersquove tested to date This lead was small but it was there and we couldnrsquot match it with other boards with similar timings You can rest assured that whatever limits you hit with the MVIIF they are due to your CPU or memory but not the motherboard as it is robust as it is finely tuned Thus far wersquove yet to find any vendor or any motherboard in fact that can marry gaming and overclocking so well on a single product For those

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 21

Summary

Would you buy it

No vendor balances gaming and overclocking features the way ASUS does with the Maximus range This one is geared entirely at the gaming crowd and it delivers in spades The features are numerous and the aesthetics unmatched Itrsquos a grand motherboard only a few hairs short of perfection

Yes

who happen to have the ROG control panel yoursquoll be happy to know that the MAXIMUS VII Formula is fully compatible with it and all the functionality you had on the MAXIMUS VI for example yoursquoll find here as well With just the addition of that panel alone (which isnrsquot included with the FORMULA by the way) therersquoll be few things if any you can do with the Z87 extreme board that you cannot do with this motherboard

Once again the package which ASUS provides and its presentation is second to none Wersquove been impressed to no end by other ASUS boards like the Rampage IV

Black Edition for example This isnrsquot that kind of product No this is an evolution of the already great MAXIMUS VI Formula Itrsquos the little changes here and there that culminate into the best Formula motherboard ASUS has ever created From where we stand there arenrsquot any boards which cater to high end gamers and enthusiasts like this one does Itrsquos the best combination of features available today for its intended market If yoursquore building the ultimate Z97 gaming machine and are unwilling to compromise the MAXIMUS VII Formula just may be what you need

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

MAXIMUS VII Formula (Tuned)

124178 41139 42115 39878 16372 1222 29826Graphics 17888 Hardware 28807Physics 13314

ASUS MAXIMUS VII Formula

124677 33332 41923 36199 16307 1202 29736Graphics 17810 Hardware 28725Physics 13207

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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Neo
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Neo
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the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M13time of all Z97 motherboards weve tested to date
Neo
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Hardware Award

22 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSIrsquos overclocking motherboards have come a long

way With hits and misses along the journey the last couple of years have resulted in solid progress and improvements all around The biggest criticism leveled at MSI motherboards was almost always weak memory overclocking

MSI Z97 XPOWER ACRRP $37999 | Website wwwmsicom

Test Machinebull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

capacity or capability Given just how important this is it became somewhat of a forgone conclusion that MSI motherboards were not capable of extracting the most out of your hardware After all other than memory there really isnrsquot anything else you can tune on a motherboard as the end user It is in this regard that this stigma followed MSIrsquos boards even when they did not deserve it (which they havenrsquot for a while)

With the Z97 XPOWER and

perhaps even the MPOWER itrsquos a whole different story At least from our perspective there isnrsquot anything about the XPOWER that makes it incapable of memory

overclocking compared to other OC focused offerings on the market In our tests it was truly the limitation of the CPU if anything that prevented any further tuning or frequency scaling that might have been possible What is worth saying though is that we did find it takes a higher voltage across the board to reach the same frequencies or at least tune it to the same efficiency as compared to the other motherboards This isnrsquot anything that should endanger your components at all (especially SAMSUNG memory) but it is worth keepingin mind that what is stable on another motherboard and not so on the XPOWER could simply be a matter of needing to use a higher voltage

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 23

What that means or says about the power delivery on MSI motherboards we will leave for you to decide but it certainly isnrsquot anything we would take away points for On the flip side to this we found that the MSI board mustered up some truly incredible numbers and efficiency wise matched all other boards

we tested and in some cases even exceeded them This is perhaps not because the other motherboards are not capable but by way of the vast array of options MSI brings to their UEFI In addition to this the effect such options have on overclocking and recommended setting help greatly As with all

motherboards we have previously found to be immaculate the entire experience of overclocking is a learning one One is better at overclocking and tuning memory across the board after having used the XPOWER and this is something that not only inspires confidence in the user but allows one to appreciate the exhaustive features presented by MSI and their efforts We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower because MSI has truly brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard ever Is this a perfect board Well - no it isnrsquot but for the most part its close enough What prevents us from having the confidence to proclaim it so is the inconsistency we experienced with it This is a major one that we arenrsquot sure how MSI would address but there certainly has to be a solution to this and it could be a simple matter of a UEFI option (it most certainly is) that is not user tunable or should be tuned by default by

24 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

the engineers During testing we only used settings that are Hyper Pi 32M stable Regular Super Pi 32M isnrsquot good enough and to make sure that we were not running a system that may keel over at any time or represent settings that we may not be able to repeat in future we made sure that both normal and tuned benchmark results were Hyper Pi 32M capable Itrsquos not Prime95 but itrsquos a pretty intense test that is very much indicative of systems stability

We would configure the system and it would appear stable running endless loops of any given benchmark then after a single reboot the system would fail to POST This was an intermittent issue When the board did recover just to make doubly sure that it was not overly aggressive memory tuning we would decrease the memory frequency to 2133MHz and even lower to just 1600MHz However we would experience the same failure to POST at

settings that were previously rock solid At this point we would have to clear the CMOS and start over again loading the profile and lo and behold it would work A subsequent reboot would be fine only for it to fail on the third attempt This was very frustrating as there was no way of knowing what it was exactly that was causing the issue Wersquove not had this issue with any other motherboard and it is certainly an isolated case with this XPOWER Perhaps it is just our perfect combination of hardware but whatever it was it marred what was otherwise an incredible experience

That aside MSI has really gone to town with the features and package MSI has all the necessary switches and buttons you expect They are not as numerous as what yoursquod find on the Z97X-SOC Force for example but they more than cover all the basics and a bit more For $380 USD one does expect to have every option available and in this

regard the XPOWER gets it right We would appreciate having a ldquoMem OKrdquo like feature as on the numerous ASUS motherboards and it would be great if there werenrsquot a limited number of ground points for V-check There are three points which is an improvement over the older boards however you can check more than three voltages at any given time so why there arenrsquot any more ground points is anybodyrsquos guess

Much like the UEFI options

the package that MSI has put together with the XPOWER is incredible including a CPU core guard for those adventurous souls who have taken it upon themselves to remove the heat spreader on the CPU The core is very delicate and the Delid Guard will make sure your CPU pot does not crush the core or apply uneven pressure which is likely to destroy the CPU

To further assist those cooling with LN2 therersquos a fan bracket which you may use to

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 25

Summary

Would you buy it

MSIrsquos steady improvements in motherboard and BIOS design have finally paid off with the Z97 generation There are so many features on the board and BIOS that MSI can probably claim to have as many and perhaps even more tuning options than any other vendor on the market Itrsquos incredible to see just how refined a product the Z97 XPOWER AC is

At a maringally lower price

mount any standard fan for extracting or directing LN2 fumes away from the POT and surrounding areas This is a small convenience that is an added bonus to an already impressive package The focus with which MSI has designed the XPOWER is commendable to say the least All the bases have been covered and MSI has gone the extra mile to deliver what overclockers had asked of MSI for years

Does it justify the retail price Well you have to determine that yourself Given that it automatically makes you legible for MOA qualification but costs about as much as an of the other high end Z79 motherboards then itrsquos certainly worth the investment The XPOWER does many things right but has a few kinks that prevent

it from being a definitive board for the chipset Wersquod not however say that therersquos an outright superior boardon the market as that would not be true Ultimately it will come down to what you are willing to pay for and what you may sacrifice We do suspect that these motherboards will end up in many high end gaming machines as well and even in that context the XPOWER does deliver the goods As MSIrsquos most high end Z79 offering the XPOWER is probably more than we could have ever expected it to be and it does leave us with a very positive and lasting impression If you have the cash and are not moved by any one of the other motherboards at the very high end do give serious thought to the MSI Z97 XPOWER itrsquos the best one yet

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 3DMark Sky Diver Catzilla 720P

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC (Tuned)

124474 41104 42133 39878 16279 30950 29755Graphics 17858 Graphics 43190 Hardware 28749

Physics 13117 Physics 13463

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 30708 29851Graphics 17841 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190 Physics 13215

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

126295 27555 33523 29876 15963 30689 29803Graphics 17870 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28828

Physics 12047 Physics 13012

Neo
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We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower 13as MSI has brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard yet
Neo
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26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
Typewritten Text
at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
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Neo
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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Neo
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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
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Neo
Typewritten Text
GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
Neo
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Neo
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Neo
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Neo
Typewritten Text

2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 12: TheOverclocker Issue 31

Gunslinger pushed out an impressive 26417 in 3DMark

Firestrike Extreme this time over 1000

points higher than the previous record

set by 8-Pack

16 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

experience to the contrary Games are almost always GPU bound and have been so for at least a decade A faster CPU for the same architecture has not netted any benefit in gaming performance several generations of platforms Wersquove grown accustomed to this and things are no different today Games are simply unable to take advantage of more than four threads Thatrsquos why even today there are many gamers using older generation CPUs such as the Core i5 2500K and are enjoying the highest fidelity in visuals on the most modern and demanding games

or that very reason the 5960X does more than well enough in gaming In

the 5960X delivered identical performance the 4790K The GPU was the limiting factor here This would probably not be the case in a 4-way SLI or rossfire s but then wersquod either be looking at ridiculously high frame rates that have diminished academic va and even less practical

with no measurable performance difference between all the CPUs outside the margin of error Gaming at UHD4K resolutions across multiple screens however maybe a different story as the bandwidth advantage for the X79 and X99 CPUs would be clear but those are very extreme situations If you do game like that therersquos no denying that yoursquoll need a CPU such as this one to full utilize all the rendering power you have at your disposal

IN CLOSINGIf the X79 chipset is anything to go by X99 will be with us for a very long time perhaps

anywhere between one to three years Therersquos certainly no reason for INTEL to usher in a new platform or CPUs anytime soon The 5960X in particular is a sizeable leap forward in computing performance It comes with the penalty of a higher TDP at 140W but that is a negligible cost compared to the dramatically increased threading performance it gives over the 4960X The only losers in power consumption are the 5930K and 5820K They do represent an improvement in IPC over their predecessors but that improvement is minute in comparison If you are currently making use of the 4930K therersquos little to perhaps no practical reason to upgrade to the 5930K purely for IPC increase As an entire platform change there are merits to this

We didnrsquotrsquo get a lot of time to spend with the Core i7 5960X before this issue was due but we were impressed with the CPU almost instantly The motherboards this time around unlike with X79 are in a better state upon arrival There will be continued refreshes no doubt and with each firmware update they will get better so will the overclocking results We already have 6GHz capable CPUs and while we may not see speeds much faster than this the number of CPUs capable of this frequency is sure to increase as INTEL refine their process along with the ever improving motherboard firmware It is early in the platforms existence but the 5960X has delivered more than we could have expected and we are thoroughly impressed with what INTEL has done here The worldrsquos first true 8-core desktop system has arrived and it is in one word Mighty

[ The OverClocker ]

GAMING GEARAWARD

18 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos not often that we find ourselves testing and writing any kind of

editorial on ASUS Formula motherboards Usually itrsquos the Extreme Impact and that kind of SKU This time we have the MAXIMUS VII Formula The highest end Z97 SKU from ASUS at present and it shows in pricing but

ASUS Maximus VII FormulaRRP $35499 | Website wwwasuscom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

more importantly in the features set

Unlike with the Maximus VI

Extreme for example there is a strong emphasis here on gaming and less so on the overclocking capabilities That is not to say it is unsuitable for extreme overclocking it is to the contrary in fact

ASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps one of the best if not the best looking Z97 boards wersquove seen It has the benefit of aiding

cooling of all the components on the board as well This isnrsquot going to make a world of difference in anything but it does help longevity which is something you may care about considering that yoursquore paying nearly $350 for this piece of engineering Aesthetically then it looks the part and itrsquod be a waste to have it in a windowless case as this one deserves to be seen

What really makes a gaming motherboard these days is an intelligent NIC and a superior audio system both of which are present here Unlike other vendors though ASUS has gone with the INTEL I218V controller which they claim not only has

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 19

lower CPU overhead but a higher throughput as well In addition to that there are some changes to the actual RJ45 port which supposedly help protect the motherboard from lightning strikes and static electricity So itrsquos more than just network traffic Oddly enough ASUS does not claim lower latency with this implementation which is what KILLER network adapters are primarily known for in addition to prioritizing the right kind of traffic when gaming (which this controller does as well via the GameFirst III software)

How beneficial all this is to the end user is debatable but itrsquos innovation nonetheless and wersquod rather have it than

not It all speaks to the quality with which ASUS constructs these gaming motherboards

Second and perhaps even more important is the on-boardaudio solution Given that ASUS can boldly claim to make the best gaming enthusiast grade audio cards and USB DACs (Essence series anyone) itrsquos fitting that wersquod expect nothing but the best here To that end the MAXIMUS VII delivers in spades with a components list unlike any other vendors Being different doesnrsquot make it better but when we looked at the kind of equipment that features what ASUS has here it becomes very apparent that these component decisions were at the very least made

ldquoASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps oneof the best if not the bestlooking boards weve seen

20 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

for qualitative reasons in addition to economical ones Any solution that features ELNA audio capacitors paired with WIMA caps a Cirrus Logic DAC and a TI op-amp is going to impress you to some degree The only part of this entire equation which we canrsquot fathom is why ASUS chose the Realtek ALC1150 codec instead of the numerous others available on the market Therersquos nothing wrong with the ALC1150 per se but given that it is supported by such superior components which no doubt have added to the cost of the motherboard it is puzzling to find this CODEC on such a motherboard

The weakest link is here but you can be guaranteed that this is the best use of this CODEC on the market currently

Competing vendors have made it a point to highlight that there are specific USB ports located at the rear which are meant to have your keyboard and mouse plugged into These ports are supposedly low latency ports with a high polling frequency and more often than not feature some kind of gold plating for better contacts We can confirm that therersquos absolutely no difference between these ports and any other USB port on the motherboard in gaming

or in how your keyboard functions With the ASUS KeyBot however therersquos some ingenuity which allows you to assign almost any keyboard Macro functionality even if said keyboard does not have these features This little chip allows you to program a variety of functionality to any keyboard including cold booting the system into specific states and booting directly to the UEFI so you essentially donrsquotrsquo need a dedicated Direct to BIOS key Once again this is a nifty little feature that is many times more useful than the supposed gaming ports that others may tout on their products

This brings us to the motherboards performance There are many aspects of the Maximus VII Formula that we havenrsquot covered but we could not possibly write about an ROG motherboard without analysis of how it performs in an overclocking context Yes this is geared towards the premium gaming crowd but even then it should not preclude one from being competitive at the highest levels of overclocking This is where the power of the ASUS UEFI comes into play The interface is laid out simply and intuitively It is very detailed but most of the functionality and options are explained thoroughly eliminating any

guess work you may need to do Itrsquos a sublime interface that is not terribly exciting but is thoroughly detailed and simple to navigate Tuning memory on this motherboard is splendid because with every setting there is some kind of assistance letting you know what it is yoursquore tuning and how it may affect overclocking or stability Should it all go pear shaped you can always revert to safe settings using the MemOK button Speaking of which this button is located in the most inconvenient place on the motherboard where itrsquos very close to the edge of the aforementioned top cover It is reachable but perhaps another location would have been better

It should not come as a surprise that the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M time of all Z97 motherboards wersquove tested to date This lead was small but it was there and we couldnrsquot match it with other boards with similar timings You can rest assured that whatever limits you hit with the MVIIF they are due to your CPU or memory but not the motherboard as it is robust as it is finely tuned Thus far wersquove yet to find any vendor or any motherboard in fact that can marry gaming and overclocking so well on a single product For those

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 21

Summary

Would you buy it

No vendor balances gaming and overclocking features the way ASUS does with the Maximus range This one is geared entirely at the gaming crowd and it delivers in spades The features are numerous and the aesthetics unmatched Itrsquos a grand motherboard only a few hairs short of perfection

Yes

who happen to have the ROG control panel yoursquoll be happy to know that the MAXIMUS VII Formula is fully compatible with it and all the functionality you had on the MAXIMUS VI for example yoursquoll find here as well With just the addition of that panel alone (which isnrsquot included with the FORMULA by the way) therersquoll be few things if any you can do with the Z87 extreme board that you cannot do with this motherboard

Once again the package which ASUS provides and its presentation is second to none Wersquove been impressed to no end by other ASUS boards like the Rampage IV

Black Edition for example This isnrsquot that kind of product No this is an evolution of the already great MAXIMUS VI Formula Itrsquos the little changes here and there that culminate into the best Formula motherboard ASUS has ever created From where we stand there arenrsquot any boards which cater to high end gamers and enthusiasts like this one does Itrsquos the best combination of features available today for its intended market If yoursquore building the ultimate Z97 gaming machine and are unwilling to compromise the MAXIMUS VII Formula just may be what you need

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

MAXIMUS VII Formula (Tuned)

124178 41139 42115 39878 16372 1222 29826Graphics 17888 Hardware 28807Physics 13314

ASUS MAXIMUS VII Formula

124677 33332 41923 36199 16307 1202 29736Graphics 17810 Hardware 28725Physics 13207

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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Neo
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Neo
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Neo
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the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M13time of all Z97 motherboards weve tested to date
Neo
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Hardware Award

22 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSIrsquos overclocking motherboards have come a long

way With hits and misses along the journey the last couple of years have resulted in solid progress and improvements all around The biggest criticism leveled at MSI motherboards was almost always weak memory overclocking

MSI Z97 XPOWER ACRRP $37999 | Website wwwmsicom

Test Machinebull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

capacity or capability Given just how important this is it became somewhat of a forgone conclusion that MSI motherboards were not capable of extracting the most out of your hardware After all other than memory there really isnrsquot anything else you can tune on a motherboard as the end user It is in this regard that this stigma followed MSIrsquos boards even when they did not deserve it (which they havenrsquot for a while)

With the Z97 XPOWER and

perhaps even the MPOWER itrsquos a whole different story At least from our perspective there isnrsquot anything about the XPOWER that makes it incapable of memory

overclocking compared to other OC focused offerings on the market In our tests it was truly the limitation of the CPU if anything that prevented any further tuning or frequency scaling that might have been possible What is worth saying though is that we did find it takes a higher voltage across the board to reach the same frequencies or at least tune it to the same efficiency as compared to the other motherboards This isnrsquot anything that should endanger your components at all (especially SAMSUNG memory) but it is worth keepingin mind that what is stable on another motherboard and not so on the XPOWER could simply be a matter of needing to use a higher voltage

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 23

What that means or says about the power delivery on MSI motherboards we will leave for you to decide but it certainly isnrsquot anything we would take away points for On the flip side to this we found that the MSI board mustered up some truly incredible numbers and efficiency wise matched all other boards

we tested and in some cases even exceeded them This is perhaps not because the other motherboards are not capable but by way of the vast array of options MSI brings to their UEFI In addition to this the effect such options have on overclocking and recommended setting help greatly As with all

motherboards we have previously found to be immaculate the entire experience of overclocking is a learning one One is better at overclocking and tuning memory across the board after having used the XPOWER and this is something that not only inspires confidence in the user but allows one to appreciate the exhaustive features presented by MSI and their efforts We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower because MSI has truly brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard ever Is this a perfect board Well - no it isnrsquot but for the most part its close enough What prevents us from having the confidence to proclaim it so is the inconsistency we experienced with it This is a major one that we arenrsquot sure how MSI would address but there certainly has to be a solution to this and it could be a simple matter of a UEFI option (it most certainly is) that is not user tunable or should be tuned by default by

24 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

the engineers During testing we only used settings that are Hyper Pi 32M stable Regular Super Pi 32M isnrsquot good enough and to make sure that we were not running a system that may keel over at any time or represent settings that we may not be able to repeat in future we made sure that both normal and tuned benchmark results were Hyper Pi 32M capable Itrsquos not Prime95 but itrsquos a pretty intense test that is very much indicative of systems stability

We would configure the system and it would appear stable running endless loops of any given benchmark then after a single reboot the system would fail to POST This was an intermittent issue When the board did recover just to make doubly sure that it was not overly aggressive memory tuning we would decrease the memory frequency to 2133MHz and even lower to just 1600MHz However we would experience the same failure to POST at

settings that were previously rock solid At this point we would have to clear the CMOS and start over again loading the profile and lo and behold it would work A subsequent reboot would be fine only for it to fail on the third attempt This was very frustrating as there was no way of knowing what it was exactly that was causing the issue Wersquove not had this issue with any other motherboard and it is certainly an isolated case with this XPOWER Perhaps it is just our perfect combination of hardware but whatever it was it marred what was otherwise an incredible experience

That aside MSI has really gone to town with the features and package MSI has all the necessary switches and buttons you expect They are not as numerous as what yoursquod find on the Z97X-SOC Force for example but they more than cover all the basics and a bit more For $380 USD one does expect to have every option available and in this

regard the XPOWER gets it right We would appreciate having a ldquoMem OKrdquo like feature as on the numerous ASUS motherboards and it would be great if there werenrsquot a limited number of ground points for V-check There are three points which is an improvement over the older boards however you can check more than three voltages at any given time so why there arenrsquot any more ground points is anybodyrsquos guess

Much like the UEFI options

the package that MSI has put together with the XPOWER is incredible including a CPU core guard for those adventurous souls who have taken it upon themselves to remove the heat spreader on the CPU The core is very delicate and the Delid Guard will make sure your CPU pot does not crush the core or apply uneven pressure which is likely to destroy the CPU

To further assist those cooling with LN2 therersquos a fan bracket which you may use to

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 25

Summary

Would you buy it

MSIrsquos steady improvements in motherboard and BIOS design have finally paid off with the Z97 generation There are so many features on the board and BIOS that MSI can probably claim to have as many and perhaps even more tuning options than any other vendor on the market Itrsquos incredible to see just how refined a product the Z97 XPOWER AC is

At a maringally lower price

mount any standard fan for extracting or directing LN2 fumes away from the POT and surrounding areas This is a small convenience that is an added bonus to an already impressive package The focus with which MSI has designed the XPOWER is commendable to say the least All the bases have been covered and MSI has gone the extra mile to deliver what overclockers had asked of MSI for years

Does it justify the retail price Well you have to determine that yourself Given that it automatically makes you legible for MOA qualification but costs about as much as an of the other high end Z79 motherboards then itrsquos certainly worth the investment The XPOWER does many things right but has a few kinks that prevent

it from being a definitive board for the chipset Wersquod not however say that therersquos an outright superior boardon the market as that would not be true Ultimately it will come down to what you are willing to pay for and what you may sacrifice We do suspect that these motherboards will end up in many high end gaming machines as well and even in that context the XPOWER does deliver the goods As MSIrsquos most high end Z79 offering the XPOWER is probably more than we could have ever expected it to be and it does leave us with a very positive and lasting impression If you have the cash and are not moved by any one of the other motherboards at the very high end do give serious thought to the MSI Z97 XPOWER itrsquos the best one yet

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 3DMark Sky Diver Catzilla 720P

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC (Tuned)

124474 41104 42133 39878 16279 30950 29755Graphics 17858 Graphics 43190 Hardware 28749

Physics 13117 Physics 13463

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 30708 29851Graphics 17841 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190 Physics 13215

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

126295 27555 33523 29876 15963 30689 29803Graphics 17870 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28828

Physics 12047 Physics 13012

Neo
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We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower 13as MSI has brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard yet
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26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
Typewritten Text
at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
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Neo
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
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Neo
Typewritten Text
GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
Neo
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Neo
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Neo
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Neo
Typewritten Text

2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 13: TheOverclocker Issue 31

GAMING GEARAWARD

18 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Itrsquos not often that we find ourselves testing and writing any kind of

editorial on ASUS Formula motherboards Usually itrsquos the Extreme Impact and that kind of SKU This time we have the MAXIMUS VII Formula The highest end Z97 SKU from ASUS at present and it shows in pricing but

ASUS Maximus VII FormulaRRP $35499 | Website wwwasuscom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

more importantly in the features set

Unlike with the Maximus VI

Extreme for example there is a strong emphasis here on gaming and less so on the overclocking capabilities That is not to say it is unsuitable for extreme overclocking it is to the contrary in fact

ASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps one of the best if not the best looking Z97 boards wersquove seen It has the benefit of aiding

cooling of all the components on the board as well This isnrsquot going to make a world of difference in anything but it does help longevity which is something you may care about considering that yoursquore paying nearly $350 for this piece of engineering Aesthetically then it looks the part and itrsquod be a waste to have it in a windowless case as this one deserves to be seen

What really makes a gaming motherboard these days is an intelligent NIC and a superior audio system both of which are present here Unlike other vendors though ASUS has gone with the INTEL I218V controller which they claim not only has

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 19

lower CPU overhead but a higher throughput as well In addition to that there are some changes to the actual RJ45 port which supposedly help protect the motherboard from lightning strikes and static electricity So itrsquos more than just network traffic Oddly enough ASUS does not claim lower latency with this implementation which is what KILLER network adapters are primarily known for in addition to prioritizing the right kind of traffic when gaming (which this controller does as well via the GameFirst III software)

How beneficial all this is to the end user is debatable but itrsquos innovation nonetheless and wersquod rather have it than

not It all speaks to the quality with which ASUS constructs these gaming motherboards

Second and perhaps even more important is the on-boardaudio solution Given that ASUS can boldly claim to make the best gaming enthusiast grade audio cards and USB DACs (Essence series anyone) itrsquos fitting that wersquod expect nothing but the best here To that end the MAXIMUS VII delivers in spades with a components list unlike any other vendors Being different doesnrsquot make it better but when we looked at the kind of equipment that features what ASUS has here it becomes very apparent that these component decisions were at the very least made

ldquoASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps oneof the best if not the bestlooking boards weve seen

20 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

for qualitative reasons in addition to economical ones Any solution that features ELNA audio capacitors paired with WIMA caps a Cirrus Logic DAC and a TI op-amp is going to impress you to some degree The only part of this entire equation which we canrsquot fathom is why ASUS chose the Realtek ALC1150 codec instead of the numerous others available on the market Therersquos nothing wrong with the ALC1150 per se but given that it is supported by such superior components which no doubt have added to the cost of the motherboard it is puzzling to find this CODEC on such a motherboard

The weakest link is here but you can be guaranteed that this is the best use of this CODEC on the market currently

Competing vendors have made it a point to highlight that there are specific USB ports located at the rear which are meant to have your keyboard and mouse plugged into These ports are supposedly low latency ports with a high polling frequency and more often than not feature some kind of gold plating for better contacts We can confirm that therersquos absolutely no difference between these ports and any other USB port on the motherboard in gaming

or in how your keyboard functions With the ASUS KeyBot however therersquos some ingenuity which allows you to assign almost any keyboard Macro functionality even if said keyboard does not have these features This little chip allows you to program a variety of functionality to any keyboard including cold booting the system into specific states and booting directly to the UEFI so you essentially donrsquotrsquo need a dedicated Direct to BIOS key Once again this is a nifty little feature that is many times more useful than the supposed gaming ports that others may tout on their products

This brings us to the motherboards performance There are many aspects of the Maximus VII Formula that we havenrsquot covered but we could not possibly write about an ROG motherboard without analysis of how it performs in an overclocking context Yes this is geared towards the premium gaming crowd but even then it should not preclude one from being competitive at the highest levels of overclocking This is where the power of the ASUS UEFI comes into play The interface is laid out simply and intuitively It is very detailed but most of the functionality and options are explained thoroughly eliminating any

guess work you may need to do Itrsquos a sublime interface that is not terribly exciting but is thoroughly detailed and simple to navigate Tuning memory on this motherboard is splendid because with every setting there is some kind of assistance letting you know what it is yoursquore tuning and how it may affect overclocking or stability Should it all go pear shaped you can always revert to safe settings using the MemOK button Speaking of which this button is located in the most inconvenient place on the motherboard where itrsquos very close to the edge of the aforementioned top cover It is reachable but perhaps another location would have been better

It should not come as a surprise that the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M time of all Z97 motherboards wersquove tested to date This lead was small but it was there and we couldnrsquot match it with other boards with similar timings You can rest assured that whatever limits you hit with the MVIIF they are due to your CPU or memory but not the motherboard as it is robust as it is finely tuned Thus far wersquove yet to find any vendor or any motherboard in fact that can marry gaming and overclocking so well on a single product For those

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 21

Summary

Would you buy it

No vendor balances gaming and overclocking features the way ASUS does with the Maximus range This one is geared entirely at the gaming crowd and it delivers in spades The features are numerous and the aesthetics unmatched Itrsquos a grand motherboard only a few hairs short of perfection

Yes

who happen to have the ROG control panel yoursquoll be happy to know that the MAXIMUS VII Formula is fully compatible with it and all the functionality you had on the MAXIMUS VI for example yoursquoll find here as well With just the addition of that panel alone (which isnrsquot included with the FORMULA by the way) therersquoll be few things if any you can do with the Z87 extreme board that you cannot do with this motherboard

Once again the package which ASUS provides and its presentation is second to none Wersquove been impressed to no end by other ASUS boards like the Rampage IV

Black Edition for example This isnrsquot that kind of product No this is an evolution of the already great MAXIMUS VI Formula Itrsquos the little changes here and there that culminate into the best Formula motherboard ASUS has ever created From where we stand there arenrsquot any boards which cater to high end gamers and enthusiasts like this one does Itrsquos the best combination of features available today for its intended market If yoursquore building the ultimate Z97 gaming machine and are unwilling to compromise the MAXIMUS VII Formula just may be what you need

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

MAXIMUS VII Formula (Tuned)

124178 41139 42115 39878 16372 1222 29826Graphics 17888 Hardware 28807Physics 13314

ASUS MAXIMUS VII Formula

124677 33332 41923 36199 16307 1202 29736Graphics 17810 Hardware 28725Physics 13207

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M13time of all Z97 motherboards weve tested to date
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text

Hardware Award

22 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSIrsquos overclocking motherboards have come a long

way With hits and misses along the journey the last couple of years have resulted in solid progress and improvements all around The biggest criticism leveled at MSI motherboards was almost always weak memory overclocking

MSI Z97 XPOWER ACRRP $37999 | Website wwwmsicom

Test Machinebull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

capacity or capability Given just how important this is it became somewhat of a forgone conclusion that MSI motherboards were not capable of extracting the most out of your hardware After all other than memory there really isnrsquot anything else you can tune on a motherboard as the end user It is in this regard that this stigma followed MSIrsquos boards even when they did not deserve it (which they havenrsquot for a while)

With the Z97 XPOWER and

perhaps even the MPOWER itrsquos a whole different story At least from our perspective there isnrsquot anything about the XPOWER that makes it incapable of memory

overclocking compared to other OC focused offerings on the market In our tests it was truly the limitation of the CPU if anything that prevented any further tuning or frequency scaling that might have been possible What is worth saying though is that we did find it takes a higher voltage across the board to reach the same frequencies or at least tune it to the same efficiency as compared to the other motherboards This isnrsquot anything that should endanger your components at all (especially SAMSUNG memory) but it is worth keepingin mind that what is stable on another motherboard and not so on the XPOWER could simply be a matter of needing to use a higher voltage

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 23

What that means or says about the power delivery on MSI motherboards we will leave for you to decide but it certainly isnrsquot anything we would take away points for On the flip side to this we found that the MSI board mustered up some truly incredible numbers and efficiency wise matched all other boards

we tested and in some cases even exceeded them This is perhaps not because the other motherboards are not capable but by way of the vast array of options MSI brings to their UEFI In addition to this the effect such options have on overclocking and recommended setting help greatly As with all

motherboards we have previously found to be immaculate the entire experience of overclocking is a learning one One is better at overclocking and tuning memory across the board after having used the XPOWER and this is something that not only inspires confidence in the user but allows one to appreciate the exhaustive features presented by MSI and their efforts We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower because MSI has truly brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard ever Is this a perfect board Well - no it isnrsquot but for the most part its close enough What prevents us from having the confidence to proclaim it so is the inconsistency we experienced with it This is a major one that we arenrsquot sure how MSI would address but there certainly has to be a solution to this and it could be a simple matter of a UEFI option (it most certainly is) that is not user tunable or should be tuned by default by

24 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

the engineers During testing we only used settings that are Hyper Pi 32M stable Regular Super Pi 32M isnrsquot good enough and to make sure that we were not running a system that may keel over at any time or represent settings that we may not be able to repeat in future we made sure that both normal and tuned benchmark results were Hyper Pi 32M capable Itrsquos not Prime95 but itrsquos a pretty intense test that is very much indicative of systems stability

We would configure the system and it would appear stable running endless loops of any given benchmark then after a single reboot the system would fail to POST This was an intermittent issue When the board did recover just to make doubly sure that it was not overly aggressive memory tuning we would decrease the memory frequency to 2133MHz and even lower to just 1600MHz However we would experience the same failure to POST at

settings that were previously rock solid At this point we would have to clear the CMOS and start over again loading the profile and lo and behold it would work A subsequent reboot would be fine only for it to fail on the third attempt This was very frustrating as there was no way of knowing what it was exactly that was causing the issue Wersquove not had this issue with any other motherboard and it is certainly an isolated case with this XPOWER Perhaps it is just our perfect combination of hardware but whatever it was it marred what was otherwise an incredible experience

That aside MSI has really gone to town with the features and package MSI has all the necessary switches and buttons you expect They are not as numerous as what yoursquod find on the Z97X-SOC Force for example but they more than cover all the basics and a bit more For $380 USD one does expect to have every option available and in this

regard the XPOWER gets it right We would appreciate having a ldquoMem OKrdquo like feature as on the numerous ASUS motherboards and it would be great if there werenrsquot a limited number of ground points for V-check There are three points which is an improvement over the older boards however you can check more than three voltages at any given time so why there arenrsquot any more ground points is anybodyrsquos guess

Much like the UEFI options

the package that MSI has put together with the XPOWER is incredible including a CPU core guard for those adventurous souls who have taken it upon themselves to remove the heat spreader on the CPU The core is very delicate and the Delid Guard will make sure your CPU pot does not crush the core or apply uneven pressure which is likely to destroy the CPU

To further assist those cooling with LN2 therersquos a fan bracket which you may use to

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 25

Summary

Would you buy it

MSIrsquos steady improvements in motherboard and BIOS design have finally paid off with the Z97 generation There are so many features on the board and BIOS that MSI can probably claim to have as many and perhaps even more tuning options than any other vendor on the market Itrsquos incredible to see just how refined a product the Z97 XPOWER AC is

At a maringally lower price

mount any standard fan for extracting or directing LN2 fumes away from the POT and surrounding areas This is a small convenience that is an added bonus to an already impressive package The focus with which MSI has designed the XPOWER is commendable to say the least All the bases have been covered and MSI has gone the extra mile to deliver what overclockers had asked of MSI for years

Does it justify the retail price Well you have to determine that yourself Given that it automatically makes you legible for MOA qualification but costs about as much as an of the other high end Z79 motherboards then itrsquos certainly worth the investment The XPOWER does many things right but has a few kinks that prevent

it from being a definitive board for the chipset Wersquod not however say that therersquos an outright superior boardon the market as that would not be true Ultimately it will come down to what you are willing to pay for and what you may sacrifice We do suspect that these motherboards will end up in many high end gaming machines as well and even in that context the XPOWER does deliver the goods As MSIrsquos most high end Z79 offering the XPOWER is probably more than we could have ever expected it to be and it does leave us with a very positive and lasting impression If you have the cash and are not moved by any one of the other motherboards at the very high end do give serious thought to the MSI Z97 XPOWER itrsquos the best one yet

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 3DMark Sky Diver Catzilla 720P

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC (Tuned)

124474 41104 42133 39878 16279 30950 29755Graphics 17858 Graphics 43190 Hardware 28749

Physics 13117 Physics 13463

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 30708 29851Graphics 17841 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190 Physics 13215

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

126295 27555 33523 29876 15963 30689 29803Graphics 17870 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28828

Physics 12047 Physics 13012

Neo
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We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower 13as MSI has brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard yet
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26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
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at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 14: TheOverclocker Issue 31

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 19

lower CPU overhead but a higher throughput as well In addition to that there are some changes to the actual RJ45 port which supposedly help protect the motherboard from lightning strikes and static electricity So itrsquos more than just network traffic Oddly enough ASUS does not claim lower latency with this implementation which is what KILLER network adapters are primarily known for in addition to prioritizing the right kind of traffic when gaming (which this controller does as well via the GameFirst III software)

How beneficial all this is to the end user is debatable but itrsquos innovation nonetheless and wersquod rather have it than

not It all speaks to the quality with which ASUS constructs these gaming motherboards

Second and perhaps even more important is the on-boardaudio solution Given that ASUS can boldly claim to make the best gaming enthusiast grade audio cards and USB DACs (Essence series anyone) itrsquos fitting that wersquod expect nothing but the best here To that end the MAXIMUS VII delivers in spades with a components list unlike any other vendors Being different doesnrsquot make it better but when we looked at the kind of equipment that features what ASUS has here it becomes very apparent that these component decisions were at the very least made

ldquoASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps oneof the best if not the bestlooking boards weve seen

20 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

for qualitative reasons in addition to economical ones Any solution that features ELNA audio capacitors paired with WIMA caps a Cirrus Logic DAC and a TI op-amp is going to impress you to some degree The only part of this entire equation which we canrsquot fathom is why ASUS chose the Realtek ALC1150 codec instead of the numerous others available on the market Therersquos nothing wrong with the ALC1150 per se but given that it is supported by such superior components which no doubt have added to the cost of the motherboard it is puzzling to find this CODEC on such a motherboard

The weakest link is here but you can be guaranteed that this is the best use of this CODEC on the market currently

Competing vendors have made it a point to highlight that there are specific USB ports located at the rear which are meant to have your keyboard and mouse plugged into These ports are supposedly low latency ports with a high polling frequency and more often than not feature some kind of gold plating for better contacts We can confirm that therersquos absolutely no difference between these ports and any other USB port on the motherboard in gaming

or in how your keyboard functions With the ASUS KeyBot however therersquos some ingenuity which allows you to assign almost any keyboard Macro functionality even if said keyboard does not have these features This little chip allows you to program a variety of functionality to any keyboard including cold booting the system into specific states and booting directly to the UEFI so you essentially donrsquotrsquo need a dedicated Direct to BIOS key Once again this is a nifty little feature that is many times more useful than the supposed gaming ports that others may tout on their products

This brings us to the motherboards performance There are many aspects of the Maximus VII Formula that we havenrsquot covered but we could not possibly write about an ROG motherboard without analysis of how it performs in an overclocking context Yes this is geared towards the premium gaming crowd but even then it should not preclude one from being competitive at the highest levels of overclocking This is where the power of the ASUS UEFI comes into play The interface is laid out simply and intuitively It is very detailed but most of the functionality and options are explained thoroughly eliminating any

guess work you may need to do Itrsquos a sublime interface that is not terribly exciting but is thoroughly detailed and simple to navigate Tuning memory on this motherboard is splendid because with every setting there is some kind of assistance letting you know what it is yoursquore tuning and how it may affect overclocking or stability Should it all go pear shaped you can always revert to safe settings using the MemOK button Speaking of which this button is located in the most inconvenient place on the motherboard where itrsquos very close to the edge of the aforementioned top cover It is reachable but perhaps another location would have been better

It should not come as a surprise that the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M time of all Z97 motherboards wersquove tested to date This lead was small but it was there and we couldnrsquot match it with other boards with similar timings You can rest assured that whatever limits you hit with the MVIIF they are due to your CPU or memory but not the motherboard as it is robust as it is finely tuned Thus far wersquove yet to find any vendor or any motherboard in fact that can marry gaming and overclocking so well on a single product For those

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 21

Summary

Would you buy it

No vendor balances gaming and overclocking features the way ASUS does with the Maximus range This one is geared entirely at the gaming crowd and it delivers in spades The features are numerous and the aesthetics unmatched Itrsquos a grand motherboard only a few hairs short of perfection

Yes

who happen to have the ROG control panel yoursquoll be happy to know that the MAXIMUS VII Formula is fully compatible with it and all the functionality you had on the MAXIMUS VI for example yoursquoll find here as well With just the addition of that panel alone (which isnrsquot included with the FORMULA by the way) therersquoll be few things if any you can do with the Z87 extreme board that you cannot do with this motherboard

Once again the package which ASUS provides and its presentation is second to none Wersquove been impressed to no end by other ASUS boards like the Rampage IV

Black Edition for example This isnrsquot that kind of product No this is an evolution of the already great MAXIMUS VI Formula Itrsquos the little changes here and there that culminate into the best Formula motherboard ASUS has ever created From where we stand there arenrsquot any boards which cater to high end gamers and enthusiasts like this one does Itrsquos the best combination of features available today for its intended market If yoursquore building the ultimate Z97 gaming machine and are unwilling to compromise the MAXIMUS VII Formula just may be what you need

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

MAXIMUS VII Formula (Tuned)

124178 41139 42115 39878 16372 1222 29826Graphics 17888 Hardware 28807Physics 13314

ASUS MAXIMUS VII Formula

124677 33332 41923 36199 16307 1202 29736Graphics 17810 Hardware 28725Physics 13207

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M13time of all Z97 motherboards weve tested to date
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text

Hardware Award

22 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSIrsquos overclocking motherboards have come a long

way With hits and misses along the journey the last couple of years have resulted in solid progress and improvements all around The biggest criticism leveled at MSI motherboards was almost always weak memory overclocking

MSI Z97 XPOWER ACRRP $37999 | Website wwwmsicom

Test Machinebull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

capacity or capability Given just how important this is it became somewhat of a forgone conclusion that MSI motherboards were not capable of extracting the most out of your hardware After all other than memory there really isnrsquot anything else you can tune on a motherboard as the end user It is in this regard that this stigma followed MSIrsquos boards even when they did not deserve it (which they havenrsquot for a while)

With the Z97 XPOWER and

perhaps even the MPOWER itrsquos a whole different story At least from our perspective there isnrsquot anything about the XPOWER that makes it incapable of memory

overclocking compared to other OC focused offerings on the market In our tests it was truly the limitation of the CPU if anything that prevented any further tuning or frequency scaling that might have been possible What is worth saying though is that we did find it takes a higher voltage across the board to reach the same frequencies or at least tune it to the same efficiency as compared to the other motherboards This isnrsquot anything that should endanger your components at all (especially SAMSUNG memory) but it is worth keepingin mind that what is stable on another motherboard and not so on the XPOWER could simply be a matter of needing to use a higher voltage

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 23

What that means or says about the power delivery on MSI motherboards we will leave for you to decide but it certainly isnrsquot anything we would take away points for On the flip side to this we found that the MSI board mustered up some truly incredible numbers and efficiency wise matched all other boards

we tested and in some cases even exceeded them This is perhaps not because the other motherboards are not capable but by way of the vast array of options MSI brings to their UEFI In addition to this the effect such options have on overclocking and recommended setting help greatly As with all

motherboards we have previously found to be immaculate the entire experience of overclocking is a learning one One is better at overclocking and tuning memory across the board after having used the XPOWER and this is something that not only inspires confidence in the user but allows one to appreciate the exhaustive features presented by MSI and their efforts We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower because MSI has truly brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard ever Is this a perfect board Well - no it isnrsquot but for the most part its close enough What prevents us from having the confidence to proclaim it so is the inconsistency we experienced with it This is a major one that we arenrsquot sure how MSI would address but there certainly has to be a solution to this and it could be a simple matter of a UEFI option (it most certainly is) that is not user tunable or should be tuned by default by

24 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

the engineers During testing we only used settings that are Hyper Pi 32M stable Regular Super Pi 32M isnrsquot good enough and to make sure that we were not running a system that may keel over at any time or represent settings that we may not be able to repeat in future we made sure that both normal and tuned benchmark results were Hyper Pi 32M capable Itrsquos not Prime95 but itrsquos a pretty intense test that is very much indicative of systems stability

We would configure the system and it would appear stable running endless loops of any given benchmark then after a single reboot the system would fail to POST This was an intermittent issue When the board did recover just to make doubly sure that it was not overly aggressive memory tuning we would decrease the memory frequency to 2133MHz and even lower to just 1600MHz However we would experience the same failure to POST at

settings that were previously rock solid At this point we would have to clear the CMOS and start over again loading the profile and lo and behold it would work A subsequent reboot would be fine only for it to fail on the third attempt This was very frustrating as there was no way of knowing what it was exactly that was causing the issue Wersquove not had this issue with any other motherboard and it is certainly an isolated case with this XPOWER Perhaps it is just our perfect combination of hardware but whatever it was it marred what was otherwise an incredible experience

That aside MSI has really gone to town with the features and package MSI has all the necessary switches and buttons you expect They are not as numerous as what yoursquod find on the Z97X-SOC Force for example but they more than cover all the basics and a bit more For $380 USD one does expect to have every option available and in this

regard the XPOWER gets it right We would appreciate having a ldquoMem OKrdquo like feature as on the numerous ASUS motherboards and it would be great if there werenrsquot a limited number of ground points for V-check There are three points which is an improvement over the older boards however you can check more than three voltages at any given time so why there arenrsquot any more ground points is anybodyrsquos guess

Much like the UEFI options

the package that MSI has put together with the XPOWER is incredible including a CPU core guard for those adventurous souls who have taken it upon themselves to remove the heat spreader on the CPU The core is very delicate and the Delid Guard will make sure your CPU pot does not crush the core or apply uneven pressure which is likely to destroy the CPU

To further assist those cooling with LN2 therersquos a fan bracket which you may use to

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 25

Summary

Would you buy it

MSIrsquos steady improvements in motherboard and BIOS design have finally paid off with the Z97 generation There are so many features on the board and BIOS that MSI can probably claim to have as many and perhaps even more tuning options than any other vendor on the market Itrsquos incredible to see just how refined a product the Z97 XPOWER AC is

At a maringally lower price

mount any standard fan for extracting or directing LN2 fumes away from the POT and surrounding areas This is a small convenience that is an added bonus to an already impressive package The focus with which MSI has designed the XPOWER is commendable to say the least All the bases have been covered and MSI has gone the extra mile to deliver what overclockers had asked of MSI for years

Does it justify the retail price Well you have to determine that yourself Given that it automatically makes you legible for MOA qualification but costs about as much as an of the other high end Z79 motherboards then itrsquos certainly worth the investment The XPOWER does many things right but has a few kinks that prevent

it from being a definitive board for the chipset Wersquod not however say that therersquos an outright superior boardon the market as that would not be true Ultimately it will come down to what you are willing to pay for and what you may sacrifice We do suspect that these motherboards will end up in many high end gaming machines as well and even in that context the XPOWER does deliver the goods As MSIrsquos most high end Z79 offering the XPOWER is probably more than we could have ever expected it to be and it does leave us with a very positive and lasting impression If you have the cash and are not moved by any one of the other motherboards at the very high end do give serious thought to the MSI Z97 XPOWER itrsquos the best one yet

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 3DMark Sky Diver Catzilla 720P

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC (Tuned)

124474 41104 42133 39878 16279 30950 29755Graphics 17858 Graphics 43190 Hardware 28749

Physics 13117 Physics 13463

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 30708 29851Graphics 17841 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190 Physics 13215

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

126295 27555 33523 29876 15963 30689 29803Graphics 17870 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28828

Physics 12047 Physics 13012

Neo
Typewritten Text
We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower 13as MSI has brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard yet
Neo
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26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
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at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 15: TheOverclocker Issue 31

ldquoASUS for the Maximus VII Formula has elected yet again an abs plastic shroud over the motherboard and a steel backplate on the underside Resulting in perhaps oneof the best if not the bestlooking boards weve seen

20 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

for qualitative reasons in addition to economical ones Any solution that features ELNA audio capacitors paired with WIMA caps a Cirrus Logic DAC and a TI op-amp is going to impress you to some degree The only part of this entire equation which we canrsquot fathom is why ASUS chose the Realtek ALC1150 codec instead of the numerous others available on the market Therersquos nothing wrong with the ALC1150 per se but given that it is supported by such superior components which no doubt have added to the cost of the motherboard it is puzzling to find this CODEC on such a motherboard

The weakest link is here but you can be guaranteed that this is the best use of this CODEC on the market currently

Competing vendors have made it a point to highlight that there are specific USB ports located at the rear which are meant to have your keyboard and mouse plugged into These ports are supposedly low latency ports with a high polling frequency and more often than not feature some kind of gold plating for better contacts We can confirm that therersquos absolutely no difference between these ports and any other USB port on the motherboard in gaming

or in how your keyboard functions With the ASUS KeyBot however therersquos some ingenuity which allows you to assign almost any keyboard Macro functionality even if said keyboard does not have these features This little chip allows you to program a variety of functionality to any keyboard including cold booting the system into specific states and booting directly to the UEFI so you essentially donrsquotrsquo need a dedicated Direct to BIOS key Once again this is a nifty little feature that is many times more useful than the supposed gaming ports that others may tout on their products

This brings us to the motherboards performance There are many aspects of the Maximus VII Formula that we havenrsquot covered but we could not possibly write about an ROG motherboard without analysis of how it performs in an overclocking context Yes this is geared towards the premium gaming crowd but even then it should not preclude one from being competitive at the highest levels of overclocking This is where the power of the ASUS UEFI comes into play The interface is laid out simply and intuitively It is very detailed but most of the functionality and options are explained thoroughly eliminating any

guess work you may need to do Itrsquos a sublime interface that is not terribly exciting but is thoroughly detailed and simple to navigate Tuning memory on this motherboard is splendid because with every setting there is some kind of assistance letting you know what it is yoursquore tuning and how it may affect overclocking or stability Should it all go pear shaped you can always revert to safe settings using the MemOK button Speaking of which this button is located in the most inconvenient place on the motherboard where itrsquos very close to the edge of the aforementioned top cover It is reachable but perhaps another location would have been better

It should not come as a surprise that the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M time of all Z97 motherboards wersquove tested to date This lead was small but it was there and we couldnrsquot match it with other boards with similar timings You can rest assured that whatever limits you hit with the MVIIF they are due to your CPU or memory but not the motherboard as it is robust as it is finely tuned Thus far wersquove yet to find any vendor or any motherboard in fact that can marry gaming and overclocking so well on a single product For those

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 21

Summary

Would you buy it

No vendor balances gaming and overclocking features the way ASUS does with the Maximus range This one is geared entirely at the gaming crowd and it delivers in spades The features are numerous and the aesthetics unmatched Itrsquos a grand motherboard only a few hairs short of perfection

Yes

who happen to have the ROG control panel yoursquoll be happy to know that the MAXIMUS VII Formula is fully compatible with it and all the functionality you had on the MAXIMUS VI for example yoursquoll find here as well With just the addition of that panel alone (which isnrsquot included with the FORMULA by the way) therersquoll be few things if any you can do with the Z87 extreme board that you cannot do with this motherboard

Once again the package which ASUS provides and its presentation is second to none Wersquove been impressed to no end by other ASUS boards like the Rampage IV

Black Edition for example This isnrsquot that kind of product No this is an evolution of the already great MAXIMUS VI Formula Itrsquos the little changes here and there that culminate into the best Formula motherboard ASUS has ever created From where we stand there arenrsquot any boards which cater to high end gamers and enthusiasts like this one does Itrsquos the best combination of features available today for its intended market If yoursquore building the ultimate Z97 gaming machine and are unwilling to compromise the MAXIMUS VII Formula just may be what you need

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

MAXIMUS VII Formula (Tuned)

124178 41139 42115 39878 16372 1222 29826Graphics 17888 Hardware 28807Physics 13314

ASUS MAXIMUS VII Formula

124677 33332 41923 36199 16307 1202 29736Graphics 17810 Hardware 28725Physics 13207

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M13time of all Z97 motherboards weve tested to date
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Hardware Award

22 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSIrsquos overclocking motherboards have come a long

way With hits and misses along the journey the last couple of years have resulted in solid progress and improvements all around The biggest criticism leveled at MSI motherboards was almost always weak memory overclocking

MSI Z97 XPOWER ACRRP $37999 | Website wwwmsicom

Test Machinebull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

capacity or capability Given just how important this is it became somewhat of a forgone conclusion that MSI motherboards were not capable of extracting the most out of your hardware After all other than memory there really isnrsquot anything else you can tune on a motherboard as the end user It is in this regard that this stigma followed MSIrsquos boards even when they did not deserve it (which they havenrsquot for a while)

With the Z97 XPOWER and

perhaps even the MPOWER itrsquos a whole different story At least from our perspective there isnrsquot anything about the XPOWER that makes it incapable of memory

overclocking compared to other OC focused offerings on the market In our tests it was truly the limitation of the CPU if anything that prevented any further tuning or frequency scaling that might have been possible What is worth saying though is that we did find it takes a higher voltage across the board to reach the same frequencies or at least tune it to the same efficiency as compared to the other motherboards This isnrsquot anything that should endanger your components at all (especially SAMSUNG memory) but it is worth keepingin mind that what is stable on another motherboard and not so on the XPOWER could simply be a matter of needing to use a higher voltage

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 23

What that means or says about the power delivery on MSI motherboards we will leave for you to decide but it certainly isnrsquot anything we would take away points for On the flip side to this we found that the MSI board mustered up some truly incredible numbers and efficiency wise matched all other boards

we tested and in some cases even exceeded them This is perhaps not because the other motherboards are not capable but by way of the vast array of options MSI brings to their UEFI In addition to this the effect such options have on overclocking and recommended setting help greatly As with all

motherboards we have previously found to be immaculate the entire experience of overclocking is a learning one One is better at overclocking and tuning memory across the board after having used the XPOWER and this is something that not only inspires confidence in the user but allows one to appreciate the exhaustive features presented by MSI and their efforts We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower because MSI has truly brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard ever Is this a perfect board Well - no it isnrsquot but for the most part its close enough What prevents us from having the confidence to proclaim it so is the inconsistency we experienced with it This is a major one that we arenrsquot sure how MSI would address but there certainly has to be a solution to this and it could be a simple matter of a UEFI option (it most certainly is) that is not user tunable or should be tuned by default by

24 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

the engineers During testing we only used settings that are Hyper Pi 32M stable Regular Super Pi 32M isnrsquot good enough and to make sure that we were not running a system that may keel over at any time or represent settings that we may not be able to repeat in future we made sure that both normal and tuned benchmark results were Hyper Pi 32M capable Itrsquos not Prime95 but itrsquos a pretty intense test that is very much indicative of systems stability

We would configure the system and it would appear stable running endless loops of any given benchmark then after a single reboot the system would fail to POST This was an intermittent issue When the board did recover just to make doubly sure that it was not overly aggressive memory tuning we would decrease the memory frequency to 2133MHz and even lower to just 1600MHz However we would experience the same failure to POST at

settings that were previously rock solid At this point we would have to clear the CMOS and start over again loading the profile and lo and behold it would work A subsequent reboot would be fine only for it to fail on the third attempt This was very frustrating as there was no way of knowing what it was exactly that was causing the issue Wersquove not had this issue with any other motherboard and it is certainly an isolated case with this XPOWER Perhaps it is just our perfect combination of hardware but whatever it was it marred what was otherwise an incredible experience

That aside MSI has really gone to town with the features and package MSI has all the necessary switches and buttons you expect They are not as numerous as what yoursquod find on the Z97X-SOC Force for example but they more than cover all the basics and a bit more For $380 USD one does expect to have every option available and in this

regard the XPOWER gets it right We would appreciate having a ldquoMem OKrdquo like feature as on the numerous ASUS motherboards and it would be great if there werenrsquot a limited number of ground points for V-check There are three points which is an improvement over the older boards however you can check more than three voltages at any given time so why there arenrsquot any more ground points is anybodyrsquos guess

Much like the UEFI options

the package that MSI has put together with the XPOWER is incredible including a CPU core guard for those adventurous souls who have taken it upon themselves to remove the heat spreader on the CPU The core is very delicate and the Delid Guard will make sure your CPU pot does not crush the core or apply uneven pressure which is likely to destroy the CPU

To further assist those cooling with LN2 therersquos a fan bracket which you may use to

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 25

Summary

Would you buy it

MSIrsquos steady improvements in motherboard and BIOS design have finally paid off with the Z97 generation There are so many features on the board and BIOS that MSI can probably claim to have as many and perhaps even more tuning options than any other vendor on the market Itrsquos incredible to see just how refined a product the Z97 XPOWER AC is

At a maringally lower price

mount any standard fan for extracting or directing LN2 fumes away from the POT and surrounding areas This is a small convenience that is an added bonus to an already impressive package The focus with which MSI has designed the XPOWER is commendable to say the least All the bases have been covered and MSI has gone the extra mile to deliver what overclockers had asked of MSI for years

Does it justify the retail price Well you have to determine that yourself Given that it automatically makes you legible for MOA qualification but costs about as much as an of the other high end Z79 motherboards then itrsquos certainly worth the investment The XPOWER does many things right but has a few kinks that prevent

it from being a definitive board for the chipset Wersquod not however say that therersquos an outright superior boardon the market as that would not be true Ultimately it will come down to what you are willing to pay for and what you may sacrifice We do suspect that these motherboards will end up in many high end gaming machines as well and even in that context the XPOWER does deliver the goods As MSIrsquos most high end Z79 offering the XPOWER is probably more than we could have ever expected it to be and it does leave us with a very positive and lasting impression If you have the cash and are not moved by any one of the other motherboards at the very high end do give serious thought to the MSI Z97 XPOWER itrsquos the best one yet

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 3DMark Sky Diver Catzilla 720P

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC (Tuned)

124474 41104 42133 39878 16279 30950 29755Graphics 17858 Graphics 43190 Hardware 28749

Physics 13117 Physics 13463

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 30708 29851Graphics 17841 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190 Physics 13215

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

126295 27555 33523 29876 15963 30689 29803Graphics 17870 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28828

Physics 12047 Physics 13012

Neo
Typewritten Text
We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower 13as MSI has brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard yet
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26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
Typewritten Text
at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
Neo
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Neo
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 16: TheOverclocker Issue 31

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 21

Summary

Would you buy it

No vendor balances gaming and overclocking features the way ASUS does with the Maximus range This one is geared entirely at the gaming crowd and it delivers in spades The features are numerous and the aesthetics unmatched Itrsquos a grand motherboard only a few hairs short of perfection

Yes

who happen to have the ROG control panel yoursquoll be happy to know that the MAXIMUS VII Formula is fully compatible with it and all the functionality you had on the MAXIMUS VI for example yoursquoll find here as well With just the addition of that panel alone (which isnrsquot included with the FORMULA by the way) therersquoll be few things if any you can do with the Z87 extreme board that you cannot do with this motherboard

Once again the package which ASUS provides and its presentation is second to none Wersquove been impressed to no end by other ASUS boards like the Rampage IV

Black Edition for example This isnrsquot that kind of product No this is an evolution of the already great MAXIMUS VI Formula Itrsquos the little changes here and there that culminate into the best Formula motherboard ASUS has ever created From where we stand there arenrsquot any boards which cater to high end gamers and enthusiasts like this one does Itrsquos the best combination of features available today for its intended market If yoursquore building the ultimate Z97 gaming machine and are unwilling to compromise the MAXIMUS VII Formula just may be what you need

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

MAXIMUS VII Formula (Tuned)

124178 41139 42115 39878 16372 1222 29826Graphics 17888 Hardware 28807Physics 13314

ASUS MAXIMUS VII Formula

124677 33332 41923 36199 16307 1202 29736Graphics 17810 Hardware 28725Physics 13207

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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the Maximus VII delivered the quickest SuperPi 8M13time of all Z97 motherboards weve tested to date
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Hardware Award

22 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSIrsquos overclocking motherboards have come a long

way With hits and misses along the journey the last couple of years have resulted in solid progress and improvements all around The biggest criticism leveled at MSI motherboards was almost always weak memory overclocking

MSI Z97 XPOWER ACRRP $37999 | Website wwwmsicom

Test Machinebull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

capacity or capability Given just how important this is it became somewhat of a forgone conclusion that MSI motherboards were not capable of extracting the most out of your hardware After all other than memory there really isnrsquot anything else you can tune on a motherboard as the end user It is in this regard that this stigma followed MSIrsquos boards even when they did not deserve it (which they havenrsquot for a while)

With the Z97 XPOWER and

perhaps even the MPOWER itrsquos a whole different story At least from our perspective there isnrsquot anything about the XPOWER that makes it incapable of memory

overclocking compared to other OC focused offerings on the market In our tests it was truly the limitation of the CPU if anything that prevented any further tuning or frequency scaling that might have been possible What is worth saying though is that we did find it takes a higher voltage across the board to reach the same frequencies or at least tune it to the same efficiency as compared to the other motherboards This isnrsquot anything that should endanger your components at all (especially SAMSUNG memory) but it is worth keepingin mind that what is stable on another motherboard and not so on the XPOWER could simply be a matter of needing to use a higher voltage

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 23

What that means or says about the power delivery on MSI motherboards we will leave for you to decide but it certainly isnrsquot anything we would take away points for On the flip side to this we found that the MSI board mustered up some truly incredible numbers and efficiency wise matched all other boards

we tested and in some cases even exceeded them This is perhaps not because the other motherboards are not capable but by way of the vast array of options MSI brings to their UEFI In addition to this the effect such options have on overclocking and recommended setting help greatly As with all

motherboards we have previously found to be immaculate the entire experience of overclocking is a learning one One is better at overclocking and tuning memory across the board after having used the XPOWER and this is something that not only inspires confidence in the user but allows one to appreciate the exhaustive features presented by MSI and their efforts We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower because MSI has truly brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard ever Is this a perfect board Well - no it isnrsquot but for the most part its close enough What prevents us from having the confidence to proclaim it so is the inconsistency we experienced with it This is a major one that we arenrsquot sure how MSI would address but there certainly has to be a solution to this and it could be a simple matter of a UEFI option (it most certainly is) that is not user tunable or should be tuned by default by

24 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

the engineers During testing we only used settings that are Hyper Pi 32M stable Regular Super Pi 32M isnrsquot good enough and to make sure that we were not running a system that may keel over at any time or represent settings that we may not be able to repeat in future we made sure that both normal and tuned benchmark results were Hyper Pi 32M capable Itrsquos not Prime95 but itrsquos a pretty intense test that is very much indicative of systems stability

We would configure the system and it would appear stable running endless loops of any given benchmark then after a single reboot the system would fail to POST This was an intermittent issue When the board did recover just to make doubly sure that it was not overly aggressive memory tuning we would decrease the memory frequency to 2133MHz and even lower to just 1600MHz However we would experience the same failure to POST at

settings that were previously rock solid At this point we would have to clear the CMOS and start over again loading the profile and lo and behold it would work A subsequent reboot would be fine only for it to fail on the third attempt This was very frustrating as there was no way of knowing what it was exactly that was causing the issue Wersquove not had this issue with any other motherboard and it is certainly an isolated case with this XPOWER Perhaps it is just our perfect combination of hardware but whatever it was it marred what was otherwise an incredible experience

That aside MSI has really gone to town with the features and package MSI has all the necessary switches and buttons you expect They are not as numerous as what yoursquod find on the Z97X-SOC Force for example but they more than cover all the basics and a bit more For $380 USD one does expect to have every option available and in this

regard the XPOWER gets it right We would appreciate having a ldquoMem OKrdquo like feature as on the numerous ASUS motherboards and it would be great if there werenrsquot a limited number of ground points for V-check There are three points which is an improvement over the older boards however you can check more than three voltages at any given time so why there arenrsquot any more ground points is anybodyrsquos guess

Much like the UEFI options

the package that MSI has put together with the XPOWER is incredible including a CPU core guard for those adventurous souls who have taken it upon themselves to remove the heat spreader on the CPU The core is very delicate and the Delid Guard will make sure your CPU pot does not crush the core or apply uneven pressure which is likely to destroy the CPU

To further assist those cooling with LN2 therersquos a fan bracket which you may use to

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 25

Summary

Would you buy it

MSIrsquos steady improvements in motherboard and BIOS design have finally paid off with the Z97 generation There are so many features on the board and BIOS that MSI can probably claim to have as many and perhaps even more tuning options than any other vendor on the market Itrsquos incredible to see just how refined a product the Z97 XPOWER AC is

At a maringally lower price

mount any standard fan for extracting or directing LN2 fumes away from the POT and surrounding areas This is a small convenience that is an added bonus to an already impressive package The focus with which MSI has designed the XPOWER is commendable to say the least All the bases have been covered and MSI has gone the extra mile to deliver what overclockers had asked of MSI for years

Does it justify the retail price Well you have to determine that yourself Given that it automatically makes you legible for MOA qualification but costs about as much as an of the other high end Z79 motherboards then itrsquos certainly worth the investment The XPOWER does many things right but has a few kinks that prevent

it from being a definitive board for the chipset Wersquod not however say that therersquos an outright superior boardon the market as that would not be true Ultimately it will come down to what you are willing to pay for and what you may sacrifice We do suspect that these motherboards will end up in many high end gaming machines as well and even in that context the XPOWER does deliver the goods As MSIrsquos most high end Z79 offering the XPOWER is probably more than we could have ever expected it to be and it does leave us with a very positive and lasting impression If you have the cash and are not moved by any one of the other motherboards at the very high end do give serious thought to the MSI Z97 XPOWER itrsquos the best one yet

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 3DMark Sky Diver Catzilla 720P

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC (Tuned)

124474 41104 42133 39878 16279 30950 29755Graphics 17858 Graphics 43190 Hardware 28749

Physics 13117 Physics 13463

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 30708 29851Graphics 17841 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190 Physics 13215

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

126295 27555 33523 29876 15963 30689 29803Graphics 17870 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28828

Physics 12047 Physics 13012

Neo
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We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower 13as MSI has brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard yet
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26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
Typewritten Text
at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
Neo
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Neo
Typewritten Text

30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
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Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 17: TheOverclocker Issue 31

Hardware Award

22 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSIrsquos overclocking motherboards have come a long

way With hits and misses along the journey the last couple of years have resulted in solid progress and improvements all around The biggest criticism leveled at MSI motherboards was almost always weak memory overclocking

MSI Z97 XPOWER ACRRP $37999 | Website wwwmsicom

Test Machinebull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

capacity or capability Given just how important this is it became somewhat of a forgone conclusion that MSI motherboards were not capable of extracting the most out of your hardware After all other than memory there really isnrsquot anything else you can tune on a motherboard as the end user It is in this regard that this stigma followed MSIrsquos boards even when they did not deserve it (which they havenrsquot for a while)

With the Z97 XPOWER and

perhaps even the MPOWER itrsquos a whole different story At least from our perspective there isnrsquot anything about the XPOWER that makes it incapable of memory

overclocking compared to other OC focused offerings on the market In our tests it was truly the limitation of the CPU if anything that prevented any further tuning or frequency scaling that might have been possible What is worth saying though is that we did find it takes a higher voltage across the board to reach the same frequencies or at least tune it to the same efficiency as compared to the other motherboards This isnrsquot anything that should endanger your components at all (especially SAMSUNG memory) but it is worth keepingin mind that what is stable on another motherboard and not so on the XPOWER could simply be a matter of needing to use a higher voltage

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 23

What that means or says about the power delivery on MSI motherboards we will leave for you to decide but it certainly isnrsquot anything we would take away points for On the flip side to this we found that the MSI board mustered up some truly incredible numbers and efficiency wise matched all other boards

we tested and in some cases even exceeded them This is perhaps not because the other motherboards are not capable but by way of the vast array of options MSI brings to their UEFI In addition to this the effect such options have on overclocking and recommended setting help greatly As with all

motherboards we have previously found to be immaculate the entire experience of overclocking is a learning one One is better at overclocking and tuning memory across the board after having used the XPOWER and this is something that not only inspires confidence in the user but allows one to appreciate the exhaustive features presented by MSI and their efforts We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower because MSI has truly brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard ever Is this a perfect board Well - no it isnrsquot but for the most part its close enough What prevents us from having the confidence to proclaim it so is the inconsistency we experienced with it This is a major one that we arenrsquot sure how MSI would address but there certainly has to be a solution to this and it could be a simple matter of a UEFI option (it most certainly is) that is not user tunable or should be tuned by default by

24 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

the engineers During testing we only used settings that are Hyper Pi 32M stable Regular Super Pi 32M isnrsquot good enough and to make sure that we were not running a system that may keel over at any time or represent settings that we may not be able to repeat in future we made sure that both normal and tuned benchmark results were Hyper Pi 32M capable Itrsquos not Prime95 but itrsquos a pretty intense test that is very much indicative of systems stability

We would configure the system and it would appear stable running endless loops of any given benchmark then after a single reboot the system would fail to POST This was an intermittent issue When the board did recover just to make doubly sure that it was not overly aggressive memory tuning we would decrease the memory frequency to 2133MHz and even lower to just 1600MHz However we would experience the same failure to POST at

settings that were previously rock solid At this point we would have to clear the CMOS and start over again loading the profile and lo and behold it would work A subsequent reboot would be fine only for it to fail on the third attempt This was very frustrating as there was no way of knowing what it was exactly that was causing the issue Wersquove not had this issue with any other motherboard and it is certainly an isolated case with this XPOWER Perhaps it is just our perfect combination of hardware but whatever it was it marred what was otherwise an incredible experience

That aside MSI has really gone to town with the features and package MSI has all the necessary switches and buttons you expect They are not as numerous as what yoursquod find on the Z97X-SOC Force for example but they more than cover all the basics and a bit more For $380 USD one does expect to have every option available and in this

regard the XPOWER gets it right We would appreciate having a ldquoMem OKrdquo like feature as on the numerous ASUS motherboards and it would be great if there werenrsquot a limited number of ground points for V-check There are three points which is an improvement over the older boards however you can check more than three voltages at any given time so why there arenrsquot any more ground points is anybodyrsquos guess

Much like the UEFI options

the package that MSI has put together with the XPOWER is incredible including a CPU core guard for those adventurous souls who have taken it upon themselves to remove the heat spreader on the CPU The core is very delicate and the Delid Guard will make sure your CPU pot does not crush the core or apply uneven pressure which is likely to destroy the CPU

To further assist those cooling with LN2 therersquos a fan bracket which you may use to

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 25

Summary

Would you buy it

MSIrsquos steady improvements in motherboard and BIOS design have finally paid off with the Z97 generation There are so many features on the board and BIOS that MSI can probably claim to have as many and perhaps even more tuning options than any other vendor on the market Itrsquos incredible to see just how refined a product the Z97 XPOWER AC is

At a maringally lower price

mount any standard fan for extracting or directing LN2 fumes away from the POT and surrounding areas This is a small convenience that is an added bonus to an already impressive package The focus with which MSI has designed the XPOWER is commendable to say the least All the bases have been covered and MSI has gone the extra mile to deliver what overclockers had asked of MSI for years

Does it justify the retail price Well you have to determine that yourself Given that it automatically makes you legible for MOA qualification but costs about as much as an of the other high end Z79 motherboards then itrsquos certainly worth the investment The XPOWER does many things right but has a few kinks that prevent

it from being a definitive board for the chipset Wersquod not however say that therersquos an outright superior boardon the market as that would not be true Ultimately it will come down to what you are willing to pay for and what you may sacrifice We do suspect that these motherboards will end up in many high end gaming machines as well and even in that context the XPOWER does deliver the goods As MSIrsquos most high end Z79 offering the XPOWER is probably more than we could have ever expected it to be and it does leave us with a very positive and lasting impression If you have the cash and are not moved by any one of the other motherboards at the very high end do give serious thought to the MSI Z97 XPOWER itrsquos the best one yet

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 3DMark Sky Diver Catzilla 720P

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC (Tuned)

124474 41104 42133 39878 16279 30950 29755Graphics 17858 Graphics 43190 Hardware 28749

Physics 13117 Physics 13463

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 30708 29851Graphics 17841 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190 Physics 13215

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

126295 27555 33523 29876 15963 30689 29803Graphics 17870 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28828

Physics 12047 Physics 13012

Neo
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We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower 13as MSI has brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard yet
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26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
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at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 23

What that means or says about the power delivery on MSI motherboards we will leave for you to decide but it certainly isnrsquot anything we would take away points for On the flip side to this we found that the MSI board mustered up some truly incredible numbers and efficiency wise matched all other boards

we tested and in some cases even exceeded them This is perhaps not because the other motherboards are not capable but by way of the vast array of options MSI brings to their UEFI In addition to this the effect such options have on overclocking and recommended setting help greatly As with all

motherboards we have previously found to be immaculate the entire experience of overclocking is a learning one One is better at overclocking and tuning memory across the board after having used the XPOWER and this is something that not only inspires confidence in the user but allows one to appreciate the exhaustive features presented by MSI and their efforts We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower because MSI has truly brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard ever Is this a perfect board Well - no it isnrsquot but for the most part its close enough What prevents us from having the confidence to proclaim it so is the inconsistency we experienced with it This is a major one that we arenrsquot sure how MSI would address but there certainly has to be a solution to this and it could be a simple matter of a UEFI option (it most certainly is) that is not user tunable or should be tuned by default by

24 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

the engineers During testing we only used settings that are Hyper Pi 32M stable Regular Super Pi 32M isnrsquot good enough and to make sure that we were not running a system that may keel over at any time or represent settings that we may not be able to repeat in future we made sure that both normal and tuned benchmark results were Hyper Pi 32M capable Itrsquos not Prime95 but itrsquos a pretty intense test that is very much indicative of systems stability

We would configure the system and it would appear stable running endless loops of any given benchmark then after a single reboot the system would fail to POST This was an intermittent issue When the board did recover just to make doubly sure that it was not overly aggressive memory tuning we would decrease the memory frequency to 2133MHz and even lower to just 1600MHz However we would experience the same failure to POST at

settings that were previously rock solid At this point we would have to clear the CMOS and start over again loading the profile and lo and behold it would work A subsequent reboot would be fine only for it to fail on the third attempt This was very frustrating as there was no way of knowing what it was exactly that was causing the issue Wersquove not had this issue with any other motherboard and it is certainly an isolated case with this XPOWER Perhaps it is just our perfect combination of hardware but whatever it was it marred what was otherwise an incredible experience

That aside MSI has really gone to town with the features and package MSI has all the necessary switches and buttons you expect They are not as numerous as what yoursquod find on the Z97X-SOC Force for example but they more than cover all the basics and a bit more For $380 USD one does expect to have every option available and in this

regard the XPOWER gets it right We would appreciate having a ldquoMem OKrdquo like feature as on the numerous ASUS motherboards and it would be great if there werenrsquot a limited number of ground points for V-check There are three points which is an improvement over the older boards however you can check more than three voltages at any given time so why there arenrsquot any more ground points is anybodyrsquos guess

Much like the UEFI options

the package that MSI has put together with the XPOWER is incredible including a CPU core guard for those adventurous souls who have taken it upon themselves to remove the heat spreader on the CPU The core is very delicate and the Delid Guard will make sure your CPU pot does not crush the core or apply uneven pressure which is likely to destroy the CPU

To further assist those cooling with LN2 therersquos a fan bracket which you may use to

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 25

Summary

Would you buy it

MSIrsquos steady improvements in motherboard and BIOS design have finally paid off with the Z97 generation There are so many features on the board and BIOS that MSI can probably claim to have as many and perhaps even more tuning options than any other vendor on the market Itrsquos incredible to see just how refined a product the Z97 XPOWER AC is

At a maringally lower price

mount any standard fan for extracting or directing LN2 fumes away from the POT and surrounding areas This is a small convenience that is an added bonus to an already impressive package The focus with which MSI has designed the XPOWER is commendable to say the least All the bases have been covered and MSI has gone the extra mile to deliver what overclockers had asked of MSI for years

Does it justify the retail price Well you have to determine that yourself Given that it automatically makes you legible for MOA qualification but costs about as much as an of the other high end Z79 motherboards then itrsquos certainly worth the investment The XPOWER does many things right but has a few kinks that prevent

it from being a definitive board for the chipset Wersquod not however say that therersquos an outright superior boardon the market as that would not be true Ultimately it will come down to what you are willing to pay for and what you may sacrifice We do suspect that these motherboards will end up in many high end gaming machines as well and even in that context the XPOWER does deliver the goods As MSIrsquos most high end Z79 offering the XPOWER is probably more than we could have ever expected it to be and it does leave us with a very positive and lasting impression If you have the cash and are not moved by any one of the other motherboards at the very high end do give serious thought to the MSI Z97 XPOWER itrsquos the best one yet

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 3DMark Sky Diver Catzilla 720P

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC (Tuned)

124474 41104 42133 39878 16279 30950 29755Graphics 17858 Graphics 43190 Hardware 28749

Physics 13117 Physics 13463

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 30708 29851Graphics 17841 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190 Physics 13215

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

126295 27555 33523 29876 15963 30689 29803Graphics 17870 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28828

Physics 12047 Physics 13012

Neo
Typewritten Text
We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower 13as MSI has brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard yet
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
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Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
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Neo
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Typewritten Text

26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
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at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
Neo
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
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Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 19: TheOverclocker Issue 31

24 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

the engineers During testing we only used settings that are Hyper Pi 32M stable Regular Super Pi 32M isnrsquot good enough and to make sure that we were not running a system that may keel over at any time or represent settings that we may not be able to repeat in future we made sure that both normal and tuned benchmark results were Hyper Pi 32M capable Itrsquos not Prime95 but itrsquos a pretty intense test that is very much indicative of systems stability

We would configure the system and it would appear stable running endless loops of any given benchmark then after a single reboot the system would fail to POST This was an intermittent issue When the board did recover just to make doubly sure that it was not overly aggressive memory tuning we would decrease the memory frequency to 2133MHz and even lower to just 1600MHz However we would experience the same failure to POST at

settings that were previously rock solid At this point we would have to clear the CMOS and start over again loading the profile and lo and behold it would work A subsequent reboot would be fine only for it to fail on the third attempt This was very frustrating as there was no way of knowing what it was exactly that was causing the issue Wersquove not had this issue with any other motherboard and it is certainly an isolated case with this XPOWER Perhaps it is just our perfect combination of hardware but whatever it was it marred what was otherwise an incredible experience

That aside MSI has really gone to town with the features and package MSI has all the necessary switches and buttons you expect They are not as numerous as what yoursquod find on the Z97X-SOC Force for example but they more than cover all the basics and a bit more For $380 USD one does expect to have every option available and in this

regard the XPOWER gets it right We would appreciate having a ldquoMem OKrdquo like feature as on the numerous ASUS motherboards and it would be great if there werenrsquot a limited number of ground points for V-check There are three points which is an improvement over the older boards however you can check more than three voltages at any given time so why there arenrsquot any more ground points is anybodyrsquos guess

Much like the UEFI options

the package that MSI has put together with the XPOWER is incredible including a CPU core guard for those adventurous souls who have taken it upon themselves to remove the heat spreader on the CPU The core is very delicate and the Delid Guard will make sure your CPU pot does not crush the core or apply uneven pressure which is likely to destroy the CPU

To further assist those cooling with LN2 therersquos a fan bracket which you may use to

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 25

Summary

Would you buy it

MSIrsquos steady improvements in motherboard and BIOS design have finally paid off with the Z97 generation There are so many features on the board and BIOS that MSI can probably claim to have as many and perhaps even more tuning options than any other vendor on the market Itrsquos incredible to see just how refined a product the Z97 XPOWER AC is

At a maringally lower price

mount any standard fan for extracting or directing LN2 fumes away from the POT and surrounding areas This is a small convenience that is an added bonus to an already impressive package The focus with which MSI has designed the XPOWER is commendable to say the least All the bases have been covered and MSI has gone the extra mile to deliver what overclockers had asked of MSI for years

Does it justify the retail price Well you have to determine that yourself Given that it automatically makes you legible for MOA qualification but costs about as much as an of the other high end Z79 motherboards then itrsquos certainly worth the investment The XPOWER does many things right but has a few kinks that prevent

it from being a definitive board for the chipset Wersquod not however say that therersquos an outright superior boardon the market as that would not be true Ultimately it will come down to what you are willing to pay for and what you may sacrifice We do suspect that these motherboards will end up in many high end gaming machines as well and even in that context the XPOWER does deliver the goods As MSIrsquos most high end Z79 offering the XPOWER is probably more than we could have ever expected it to be and it does leave us with a very positive and lasting impression If you have the cash and are not moved by any one of the other motherboards at the very high end do give serious thought to the MSI Z97 XPOWER itrsquos the best one yet

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 3DMark Sky Diver Catzilla 720P

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC (Tuned)

124474 41104 42133 39878 16279 30950 29755Graphics 17858 Graphics 43190 Hardware 28749

Physics 13117 Physics 13463

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 30708 29851Graphics 17841 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190 Physics 13215

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

126295 27555 33523 29876 15963 30689 29803Graphics 17870 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28828

Physics 12047 Physics 13012

Neo
Typewritten Text
We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower 13as MSI has brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard yet
Neo
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26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
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at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
Neo
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Neo
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
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Neo
Typewritten Text
GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
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Neo
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Neo
Typewritten Text

2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 20: TheOverclocker Issue 31

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 25

Summary

Would you buy it

MSIrsquos steady improvements in motherboard and BIOS design have finally paid off with the Z97 generation There are so many features on the board and BIOS that MSI can probably claim to have as many and perhaps even more tuning options than any other vendor on the market Itrsquos incredible to see just how refined a product the Z97 XPOWER AC is

At a maringally lower price

mount any standard fan for extracting or directing LN2 fumes away from the POT and surrounding areas This is a small convenience that is an added bonus to an already impressive package The focus with which MSI has designed the XPOWER is commendable to say the least All the bases have been covered and MSI has gone the extra mile to deliver what overclockers had asked of MSI for years

Does it justify the retail price Well you have to determine that yourself Given that it automatically makes you legible for MOA qualification but costs about as much as an of the other high end Z79 motherboards then itrsquos certainly worth the investment The XPOWER does many things right but has a few kinks that prevent

it from being a definitive board for the chipset Wersquod not however say that therersquos an outright superior boardon the market as that would not be true Ultimately it will come down to what you are willing to pay for and what you may sacrifice We do suspect that these motherboards will end up in many high end gaming machines as well and even in that context the XPOWER does deliver the goods As MSIrsquos most high end Z79 offering the XPOWER is probably more than we could have ever expected it to be and it does leave us with a very positive and lasting impression If you have the cash and are not moved by any one of the other motherboards at the very high end do give serious thought to the MSI Z97 XPOWER itrsquos the best one yet

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 3DMark Sky Diver Catzilla 720P

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC (Tuned)

124474 41104 42133 39878 16279 30950 29755Graphics 17858 Graphics 43190 Hardware 28749

Physics 13117 Physics 13463

Reference Z87 Board

125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 30708 29851Graphics 17841 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190 Physics 13215

MSI Z97 XPOWER AC

126295 27555 33523 29876 15963 30689 29803Graphics 17870 Graphics 43237 Hardware 28828

Physics 12047 Physics 13012

Neo
Typewritten Text
We can only praise all involved in the design of the XPower 13as MSI has brought forth with the Z79 chipset their best motherboard yet
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26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
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at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
Neo
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Neo
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
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Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 21: TheOverclocker Issue 31

26 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In 2012 out of nowhere apparentlyASRock turned the overclocking world on its

head with the Z77 OC Formula Prior to this board ASRock had been none existent to competitive overclockers and in fact we can attest to this because we never gave ASRock much thought when it came to overclocking

As you can imagine the

performance and overclocking

ASRock Z97 OC FormulaRRP $21999 | Website wwwasrockcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

potential of that motherboard instantly shot ASRockrsquos profile to the limelight and once yoursquore in the spotlight the expectations are higher than before This is perhaps where the Z87 OC Formula may have set a foot wrong a little In the landscape that had the Maximus VI Extreme at the highest price point and the Z87X-SOC at the other end the Z87 OC Formula found itself in no manrsquos land Not competing with either board in pricing (performance was still second to none) it didnrsquot garner the same overwhelming response as its predecessor

With the Z97 this time we have a throwback to the original Z77 incarnation It may not have the water block on the PWM but just about everything else is the

same save for the additional features this chipset brings with it To that end we have a motherboard that is not only cheaper than the Z87 OC Formula but is in our opinion an even better motherboard It is simple but refined in a way no other ASRock board has been in the past All the features work exactly as they should and this is the only motherboard wersquove ever used where all the pre-set profiles function with all the memory modules we have Itrsquos in the small things where the OC Formula earned our respect and praise

Before we go further into that it is worth addressing an issue which is unavoidable as it takes place in a public space For those who are not aware of it there

OC Hero Award

Value Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
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at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
Neo
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Neo
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text

34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
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Neo
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Neo
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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
Neo
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 27

was a recent back and forth on a social network site (wersquore being purposefully vague here) where ASRock either as a whole or representative parties took to casting doubt on a competitors recent achievements How all this unfolded was rather distracting and disappointing because this particular motherboard can stand on its own merits There really isnrsquot a need for that kind of thing In this competitive environment we do believe any opportunity that arises to present any one particular product in a positive light should be taken advantage of as opposed to the deliberate attack on a competing product This board really doesnrsquot need any of that because it is an impressive piece of engineering and wersquore

confident in fact that it is the finest ever from ASRock

With that said our experience with the Z97 OC Formula was probably the smoothest wersquove had with any motherboard This is not to take anything away from any other competing product but as stated earlier it just simply worked with no troubleshooting at all Stability was not ever an issue and it was with this board that we attempted feats with memory tuning wersquod not have tried with others

There were no intermittent issues at all If the motherboard passed our Hyper Pi 32M run it meant the board was stable from cold boot to warm restarts Tuning

28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
Typewritten Text
at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text

30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
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Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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28 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

our various memory including Samsung PSC and Hynix memory was entertaining to say the least Just as we were convinced that the memory timings couldnrsquot get any tighter at our chosen voltage limit (175V which is low in context of our testing kits) the motherboard would surprise us and allow us even lower latencies and higher scores

Unlike the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 which we were comparing this board to at some point the OC Formula actually had lower performance when it wasnrsquot tuned That is if you simply load the XMP profile on both motherboards and everything else is equal the OC Formula is slower than the Extreme 6 Puzzling at first but therersquos sense in this if indeed it was intentional (which we doubt) With the Extreme 6 and the target demographic therersquos not likely to be any kind of

tuning that takes place by the end user At the very least it will not go past applying the XMP settings and configuring basic CPU frequencies It is unlikely to go into advanced timingRTLIOL tuning which is well where all the fun is Thus to ensure said users get the best performance out the box without having to do any manually tuning the Extreme 6 may be tighter by default As such do not be too concerned about the mediocre results in the normal run they do not represent what this motherboard is capable off For that you should look to the tuned results where the Z97 OC Formula delivered our second best Super Pi 8M result of all motherboards

More than just the result itrsquos the ease in which we achieved it that made the greatest impression A long time after we had finished testing this motherboard

we continued to tune it even further guided by the many prolific overclockers online which were showing incredible results on this motherboard In fact at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula A single result alone does not make a motherboard impressive but it is indicative of what you may achieve with it given that CPU frequency is not a factor True enough the quality of the silicon within the CPU will determine how tight your timings are and how fast you can operate the memory but to see so many ASRock OC-Formula boards (Z87 and Z97) litter the top spots speaks volumes in itself Thus therersquos no question here about how capable this motherboard is Itrsquos once again second to none in efficiency and at this price itrsquos hard to think of reasons not to like it

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
Typewritten Text
at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
Neo
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Neo
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

  • TOC31_001
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  • TOC31_006-008
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  • TOC31_040b
  • TOC31_041
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Page 24: TheOverclocker Issue 31

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 29

Summary

Would you buy it

The OC Formula series of motherboards only span three chipsets (barring X99) and in that time the motherboards have never been as impressive as the Z97 iteration Itrsquos a throwback to the original board and that is probably the greatest complement we can give to the Z97 OC Formula You canrsquot go wrong with this one and itrsquos worth every dollar Itrsquos an incredible motherboard

Without hesitation

This brings us to its value proposition You can buy an even cheaper overclocking centered motherboard in the Z97 SOC Force and it will have several features via the motherboard buttons and switches which are not available on this board Therersquos no getting around that but you do receive M2 support and the Purity Audio 2 which is for the most part better than what is on the SOC Force You also get the conformal coating which adds to the cost so itrsquos not a direct comparison which one can make between the two in terms of value If itrsquos worth paying the additional $20 for the OC Formula will be up to you to decide In the perfect world we would own both motherboards (and perhaps another one) For the commanding price we canrsquot really find anything wrong at all with the Z97 OC Formula It delivers the goods in every

discipline and it overclocks like a bat out of hell Wersquod be hard pressed to advocate for any other motherboard in ASRockrsquos overclocking lineup Gone is the fancy POST LED as seen on the Z87 iteration and therersquos no water cooling the PWM here but we donrsquot imagine anyone being too upset about this

Itrsquos getting increasingly hard to find something to dislike about overclocking motherboards these days and the OC-Formula is yet another motherboard that further makes it so

For this kind of money you canrsquot go wrong Be it yoursquore a fan or not yoursquod be doing yourself a disservice by not at least trying out the Z97 OC Formula Itrsquos a lot better than you could imagine and it certainly gets our vote of confidence

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 OC Formula (Tuned) 124302 41207 42171 40012 16288 1222 29871

Graphics 17829 Hardware 28838

Physics 13263

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838

Physics 12190

ASRock Z97 OC Formula 125488 27902 41651 32956 16143 1156 29543

Graphics 17795 Hardware 28547

Physics 12808

Neo
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at the time of writing the 5GHz Super Pi 32M Haswell challenge on HWBOT had Splave in first place using the Z97 OC Formula
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30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 25: TheOverclocker Issue 31

30 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Herersquos a motherboard that we had very low expectations of Itrsquos

not because EVGA has never produced a good board before but because their focus has always been on the bigger platforms X79 was a troublesome chipset for the company and every other vendor but because of this bias towards the very high end It was for

EVGA Z97 ClassifiedRRP $35999 | Website wwwevgacom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

the longest time looking as if EVGA just didnrsquot have an easy to tune competent overclockers motherboard We fully acknowledge that EVGA serves gamers and high end gamers at that first before overclockers However this is the very same special interest group which if you receive their blessing will make sure your product is more than welcomed by every other demographic In other words nobody is as likely to find bugs on any piece of hardware as a competitive overclocker

With the Z79 Classified there was little to no hype around the board In fact we were surprised that EVGA had a board out that early in the chipsets life cycle Granted it wasnrsquot too

different from Z87 it remains astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time Not only did it show up on time but in a mastered state With few to none of the issues we had experienced with the X79 Classified and that motherboard had a very long gestation period

At $360 odd it is surrounded by the most high end competitor products

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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Typewritten Text

2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 26: TheOverclocker Issue 31

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 31

on the market Its direct competition is several of the motherboards we have in this issue as well Since EVGA has rarely if ever played the price game (where bottom dollar is king) the Z79 Classified finds itself in some really tough competition against the likes of the ASUS Maximus VII Formula the MSI Z79 XPower AC and GIGABYTErsquos G1 Gaming WiFi Black Edition These are all premium motherboards and thriving in that landscape is always going to be tough Fortunately EVGA ticks plenty of boxes with this offering

Surprisingly EVGA has turned to what we believe to be the best

audio processor on the market at present barring the Creative C20K2 chip Much like GIGABYTE EVGA has gone with that chiprsquos successor in the SoundCore3D IC Donrsquot get this confused this is an expensive IC and easily accounts for a sizeable fraction of the retail price With that you also receive ldquospecialrdquo audio grade Japanese capacitors much like every other competitor has been doing recently Therersquos no PCB noise isolation here and no op-amp to speak of The solution is more than good enough for gaming and it does sound impressive More could have been done with it with the

surrounding components but it is impressive and itrsquos a pity that EVGA doesnrsquot do much to sell it on their website or anywhere else for that matter

Another reason for the high price is support for 4-way SLI through the PLX switching chip All PCI-Express slots can be enabled or disabled and while we do appreciate 4-Way support On this platform it isnrsquot necessary For this kind of price though it is understandable This along with dual INTEL NICs tells us that EVGA was intentionally going for the high end gamer rather than the overclocker How useful having dual LAN is will

32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
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Neo
Typewritten Text

34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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32 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

depend on the individual but again wersquod rather see it on this board than not at all at this price

Aesthetically we canrsquot complain the colour scheme is simple while elegant It isnrsquot as flashy as all other gaming boards but it does have the distinguished honor of being the only board that hasnrsquot taken to black and some form of red Herersquos hoping that EVGA continues in this direction as they remain the only option for customers who are not moved by the red and black colour scheme It wonrsquot bowl you over visually but it does look the part for the price As usual only the best components are used which these days is nothing less than what we would expect from any and all vendors at this level

Finally we get to the UEFI and performance This is where it got even more interesting You see EVGA

has carried over their UEFI from the X79 Classified (the later updates) and as much as we were impressed then we remain so today Itrsquos simple butter smooth and works like a charm Therersquos really nothing too confusing here and everything is exactly where you would expect to find it Itrsquos functional and isnrsquot taxing on your visual senses It works and we can find nothing to dislike about it The competition does have fancier options and they do provide more visually appealing interfaces but as far as functionality and layout is concerned we are more than happy with what EVGA has

Options wise there are a few or rather strange entires For some reason the engineers at EVGA have taken to labelling all the tertiary memory timings in an unfamiliar way that is completely different to what every other vendor has For instance yoursquoll find

that ldquotRDRDrdquo is ldquotRRSRrdquo ldquotRDWRrdquo is labelled as ldquotRWSRrdquo and so forth Thus tuning this board can tend to take much longer than it should This is not going to matter for gamers but to the enthusiasts and competitive overclockers trying to get the most out of their systems it just adds an unnecessary step You have to translate all the settings yoursquore used to having into what EVGA has The memory utilities from other vendors work just fine with this board such as ASRocks Timing Configurator ASUS MemTweakIT and GIGABYTErsquos MemoryTweaker This is important as well because EVGA does not have such a utility for this board or any other for that matter in their recent products EVGA E-Leet is great in what it allows you to do from within the operating system but it does lack the ability to let you read out all the memory timings that you would be concerned with

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
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Neo
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Neo
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Neo
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Neo
Typewritten Text

34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
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Neo
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Neo
Typewritten Text

2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 28: TheOverclocker Issue 31

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 33

Summary

Would you buy it

Without much hype and fanfare EVGA has delivered possibly their best motherboard in years Itrsquos not flashy itrsquos even lacking in a few places but it sure delivers a solid offering out the door With the Z97 Classified EVGA hit the ground running and it would be a shame to overlook it be it yoursquore a gamer or an aspiring competitive overclocker do give it seroius thought

At a slightly lower price most certainly

when optimizing system performance

Speaking of which performance on the EVGA board was as good as can be expected (that is roughly in line with our reference motherboard) except where memory latency as measured by AIDA 64 was concerned For some reason at the default XMP settings the motherboard had the highest memory latency wersquove ever recorded at 48ns This isnrsquot going to affect any gaming performance or any 3D benchmark at all but it might affect your Super Pi 32M adversely We witnessed this in our own tuning results where the Super Pi 8M time was slower than it should have been even with the system tuned as much as possible without exceeding the 175V DRAM voltage we limit all our DRAM tuning to Again this is not a train smash and certainly not anything that should deter you from the board if yoursquore a

gamer but it is worth noting Without the memory tuning the motherboard delivers average to slightly less than average performance but if you take the time out to go through the tuning options available for the memory the Classified can be made to for a lack of a better word ldquosingrdquo

Overall this is a solid motherboard from EVGA actually itrsquos their best since the days of the 1366 platform Barring what they may deliver with X99 this is EVGArsquos most prolific motherboard wersquove ever come across Value wise it could stand to be a little cheaper as it doesnrsquot provide anything that you canrsquot get from any other vendor at a lower price however EVGA does have a loyal following and its fans will likely not be swayed by the high price to any other vendorrsquos offering If this board is anything in one word wersquod have to go with capable perhaps even impressive

[ The Overclocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

MOTHERBOARD Super Pi 8M

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU

Catzilla 720P

Z97 Classified (Tuned) 124833 41080 42061 39804 16381 1213 29779

Graphics 17870 Hardware 28747Physics 13356

EVGA Z97 Classified 125722 33091 41716 35654 16023 1173 29847

Graphics 17862 Hardware 28849Physics 12357

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851

Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

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its astonishing that such a competent motherboard was delivered in a short space of time
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34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
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Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
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Neo
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Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text

2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 29: TheOverclocker Issue 31

34 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Wersquove looked at a number of Z97 boards previously and have

found that the differences between competing vendor offerings is increasingly diminished with each successive chipset Understandable because there isnrsquot much difference between the Z87 and Z97 chipset Thus there is very little for vendors to do to try and make these newer

GIGABYTE Z97X Gaming G1 WiFi BKRRP $34999 | Website wwwgigabytecom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull EVGA GTX 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition

bull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

boards more attractive That doesnrsquot mean however that we should accept that all boards will be the same and offer little to no advances To the contrary itrsquos a great opportunity for all the engineering teams involved in motherboard design to think of new and exciting ways to distinguish their products from the each other Add value where there previously wasnrsquot any A great example that was capitalized on is the audio component of motherboards Every vendor has some sort of headphone amplifier and makes use of contextually expensive audio capacitors around their audio solution As you maysuspect GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek

codecs This is but one area where they managed to set themselves apart This decision has paid dividends by offering the best overall audio solution on the market only eclipsed by their previous efforts (controller side) with the original G1 boards that featured the C20K2 audio processor This is not to be undermined because it just may still be the most important reason for choosing the GIGABTYTE gaming models over the competition

With future motherboards

perhaps there may be a little more thatrsquos needed because

Hardware Award

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text

2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 30: TheOverclocker Issue 31

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 35

itrsquos an advantage that can be matched thus equalizing the playing field One of the features we would have liked to see on the Gaming G1 is M2 support We understand that support for this could have been omitted due to space constraints (the board is full as it is) or perhaps the limitations imposed by supporting 4-way SLI but we still wish we had that as an option Talking about 4-Way SLI this brings us to another point which is the GPU support on the G1 Therersquos only one other competing motherboard we know of that has 4-way SLI support on a gaming board (Z97 Classified) and oddly enough that board shares a common feature set with the Gaming G1 but costs more That motherboard however does have M2 support as

well Perhaps GIGABYTE could have forgone the PCI-Express 1X slots and used those for M2 instead After all one is unlikely to resort to a dedicated sound card on such a motherboard given how impressive the on-board solution is

As the most expensive and premium Z97 gaming motherboard in their line-up we are glad to have Wi-Fi (ac support) and Bluetooth on this model So therersquos no board that can claim to offer more in that regard Instead we look to the Ultra Durable range and notice that there is native thunderbolt support on the UD7 TH Granted that this connection also relies on PCI-Express of which there are very limited lanes on the Z97 chipset Perhaps a sacrifice could be made

where there is only 3-Way SLI support but therersquos M2 and a single Thunderbolt connector That way we recieve every feature available or possible on the Z97 platform making it truly the ultimate and most high end gaming board from GIGABYTE

Finally we must speak of the single graphics card performance of this board It relies on the PLX switching chip for 4-Way SLI support (thus providing all connected cards with 8X of bandwidth) but as we all know that chip robs you of single GPU performance slightly Most vendors have a way around this by either wiring a specific slot directly to the CPU and providing a dedicated slot or routing traces on the board in a way to negate the

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text

2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 31: TheOverclocker Issue 31

36 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

slight performance penalty incurred in single GPU mode Therersquos no such solution on this motherboard thus yoursquore going to have to deal with the small reduction in performance as made evident in our performance data Itrsquos not going to be the difference between a title that is playable and one that isnrsquot However it is a performance discrepancy that one should be aware of before deciding to purchase

If these seem like criticisms they are not but rather suggestions because we are properly impressed with this board and our expectations are forever higher They are more advances we would like to see given just how similar the Z87 model was to this

one That which allows any motherboard to be called a gaming motherboard is still present So GIGABYTE has you covered there Should you decide to build a powerful Z97 gaming machine this will serve you well and yoursquoll not want for anything For $350 itrsquos not an easy board to beat in features It really doestick all the right boxes and makes a valid case for itself

With the position that GIGABYTE finds itself in expectations from their products are forever going to increase Trading blows with the industry number one (at some point being number one) necessitates that the innovation and features offered take place at an accelerated pace

Being better than everyone else is not good enough but pioneering some features is necessary GIGABYTE made tremendous strides in their UEFI and ridding themselves of the 3D BIOS The next step needed is implementing more options on these gaming boards Right now the magic in the entire range is brought about by the mechanical aspect and component quality which remains impeccable It is however not matched by the BIOSsoftware feature set The Board is still more than capable of powering any high end machine but therersquos some distance that needs to be covered before therersquos a real threat to the likes of the ASUS Maximus range for instance For example we would like to see some of the features on the SOC board make it on

Neo
Typewritten Text

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
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Neo
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Neo
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Neo
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Neo
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GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
Neo
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2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 32: TheOverclocker Issue 31

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 37

Summary

Would you buy it

The Z97X Gaming G1 is not too different to what we saw before with the Z87 iteration A few improvements here and there including the addition of SATA-Express make this a viable alternative to the other gaming orientated boards on the market For $350 itrsquos fairly priced and in line with the rest of the competition delivering where it counts

Yes

to the Gaming range Not the BClk adjustments or anything of the sort but simple features such as Memory Safe button Given just how advanced the audio part of this motherboard is The ability to pass audio through the motherboard even when the system is off in a fashion similar to what the MAXIMUS VI Impact allows would be a great addition as well These and many more are possible avenues that remain untapped by the G1 series which could propel the range even further ahead than it is

All that however is what can be done to improve an already great motherboard As it stands with all that GIGABYTE offers and the asking price this is a decent motherboard that is well worth your attention

The red and black scheme has grown on us and wersquove gotten used to it For those who seek an aesthetically pleasing motherboard for their windowed cases this one wonrsquot disappoint This is especially with the all the lights on when the board when is powered

For everyone else you may consider then Ultra Durable range if you have to have M2 support but then yoursquoll lose out on the audio portion Itrsquoll be up to you to weigh those options but if yoursquore remotely interested in gaming then we would still stick with the Gaming G1 WIFI Itrsquos a board that despite making few changes to its predecessor remains a very strong contender in this highly contested market

[ The OverClocker ]

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Motherboard Super Pi 8M AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

3DMark11 INTEL XTU Catzilla 720P

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi (Tuned)

124194 41141 42140 39913 16140 1220 29564Graphics 17449 Hardware 28548Physics 13442

Z97 G1 Gaming WiFi 124973 32440 41885 34878 15938 1172 29558Graphics 17440 Hardware 28563Physics 12952

Reference Z87 Board 125425 32408 41882 35118 16057 1159 29851Graphics 17841 Hardware 28838Physics 12190

Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
Typewritten Text
GIGABYTE chose to follow in their tradition of providing Creative Labs audio processors instead of relying solely on Realtek codecs
Neo
Typewritten Text
Neo
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Neo
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Neo
Typewritten Text

2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 33: TheOverclocker Issue 31

2

In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame OC League Rankings A lot has changed in the past months not in the least due to the Haswell-E release The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are OCUKPro 8 Pack BarboneNet Poparamiro Doug2507 and Spider220075

A view from the community

RANKINGS

Extreme

1 BarboneNet 17706 pts

2 zzolio 17649 pts

3 Moose83 15783 pts

4 Hideo 15647 pts

5 mtech 15236 pts

6 michel90 14156 pts

7 Amateurs 13488 pts

8 Mikecdm 13369 pts

9 T0lsty 13369 pts

10 _12_ 12626 pts

Pro OC

1 OCUKPro 451 pts

2 Team Pro OC EU 443 pts

3 KPC PRO OC 2 392 pts

4 KRONOS PRO OC 359 pts

5 HardwareInfo Pro OC 302 pts

6 NP2Korea Pro OC 301 pts

7 United Overclockers 235 pts

8 Ph_Team Hungary 165 pts

9 Overclockers Pro OC 165 pts

10 JagatReviewcom 163 pts

(standings as of September 11 2014)

Novice

1 Doug2507 6756 pts

2 Yurikal 6084 pts

3 NATA 58 5570 pts

4 Natybaby2013 4180 pts

5 nvidiaforever2 3984 pts

6 jpmboy 3965 pts

7 PSYB3R 3727 pts

8 Matsglobetrotter 3419 pts

9 NeCrOmAnCiN 3170 pts

10 spraymanws 3119 pts

Rookie

1 spider220075 3308 pts

2 zwitterion93 3251 pts

3 Soorena 3142 pts

4 S4ch4Z 2365 pts

5 manurap46 2003 pts

6 georgekokovinis 1992 pts

7 diablo1313 1932 pts

8 ToDay 1595 pts

9 JunkDogg 1380 pts

10 williamtakeshita 1251 pts

Elite

1 8 Pack 26093 pts

2 TeamAU 24174 pts

3 Vivi 22593 pts

4 Wizerty 22593 pts

5 sofos1990 20313 pts

6 Xtreme Addict 18207 pts

7 Gunslinger 17601 pts

8 Smoke 16402 pts

9 der8auer 16300 pts

10 AndreYang 16201 pts

Enthusiasts

1 poparamiro 9245 pts

2 sergiiua 8109 pts

3 vadimua 7626 pts

4 Punk Sods 7209 pts

5 zupernico 7053 pts

6 Menthol 7023 pts

7 helkis 6520 pts

8 ACIDSYS 6475 pts

9 Berchorange 6325 pts

10 alexmx 6231 pts

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 34: TheOverclocker Issue 31

2

MSI MOA 2014 Class A AM Qualifier1 Rbuass 75 pts

2 Mikecdm 54 pts

3 nacho_arroyo 47 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A APAC Qualifier1 rhodie 56 pts

2 oc_windforce 55 pts

3 DFORDOG 50 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class A EMEA Qualifier1 Vivi 59 pts

2 Xtreme Addict 57 pts

3 zzolio 54 pts

MSI MOA 2014 Class B WW Qualifier1 Psyins 123 pts

2 Zmn668 106 pts

3 magavk 94 pts

RANKINGS- MSI Master OverClocking Arena 2014 -

OC League Rankings The summer months of the northern hemisphere were quite intensive for the competitive overclockers this year Below you can find an overview of all competitions and their winners

- HyperX OC Takeover -

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 LATAM Qualifiers1 acschenck 57 pts

2 nacho_arroyo 56 pts

3 pxhx 52 pts

HyperX OC Takeover 2014 Far East Qualifiers1 TeamAU 65 pts

2 DFORDOG 52 pts

3 r0yal_flush 42 pts

- Rookie Rumble -

Rookie Rumble 61 Soorena 130 pts

2 2ShEp 108 pts

3 electron libre 97 pts

Rookie Rumble 71 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 Soorena 108 pts

3 electron libre 105 pts

Rookie Rumble 81 nvidiaforever2 150 pts

2 zwitterion93 114 pts

3 KaRtA 86 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 31 imreloadin 126 pts

2 M3TAl 110 pts

3 ptraswn 101 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 41 JunkDogg 119 pts

2 S-mars7078 114 pts

3 northsys 103 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD 51 JunkDogg 118 pts

2 harrynowl 116 pts

3 Galaor 114 pts

- Other competitions -

GIGABYTE Z97 Catzilla OC Challenge1 Dancop 41 pts

2 TeamAU 34 pts

3 WebTourist 25 pts

ROG OC Showdown | Z971 TeamAU 55 pts

2 DFORDOG 51 pts

3 Chi-Kui Lam 50 pts

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 35: TheOverclocker Issue 31

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

In This Episode

In the fifth episode of the show we go over the latest competition news with Der8auer We discuss EOC 2014 MSI MOA 2014 qualifiers HyperX OC Takeover qualifiers and the AOOC 2014 tournament We also cover the HWBOT activities at Gamescom and have a look at the plans for future HWBOT events

The OC Show Concept

As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform Neo

(editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine The response from OCTV was very positive and quickly the idea rose to do a bi- monthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics

In each episode Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community This includes upcoming events new hardware releases interesting overclocking records benchmark discussions and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip This is long overdue says Tim but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both

located in Taiwan setting up this kind of initiative is much easier

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership

Why TheOverclocker

TheOverclocker is todays main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts says Tim it makes sense to share our content to the TOC readers first Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel and can be shared and embedded by everyone

Discuss this episode

urlhwbotorgtosdiscuss

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 36: TheOverclocker Issue 31

42 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

In a perfect world or at least a perfect enthusiast and gamerrsquos world everyone

would have a GTX 780 or better graphics card and wersquod all be gaming at 120Hz on UHD G-sync enabled monitors That would be gaming nirvana indeed but unfortunately we arenrsquot quite there yet Certainly not for the displays but for GPUs wersquore getting there This is not saying that the GTX 760 offers anywhere near the performance of a GTX 780 but consider that right now the standard GTX

ASUS ROG STRIKER RRP $30999 | Website

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull CORSAIR Dominator

Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10

bull GIGABYTE Z97X SOC-Forcebull CORSAIR AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

760 is half the price of a 780 It offers more than half the performance though and this is what we are concerned with ultimately

For just over $300 this is

not the cheapest GTX 760 on the market as these can be had for as little $239 However those are the 2GB models which are unlikely to be desirable for anyone given just about every triple Atitle is using HD textures As such a more honest comparison would be between the 4GB models where the ASUS ROG STRIKER fairs much better as itrsquos in line with other 4GB offerings from other vendors

What ASUS is hoping to do here is give you a little bit extra to sway you into buying their GTX 760 over the MSI or EVGA card for instance which coincidentally

retail for a similar price The clock speeds are identical for all three cards but the ASUS model goes the little bit farther in providing you with the most aesthetically pleasing design of them all Indeed aesthetics are subjective but there can be no denying that the plastic shroud in the standard ROG red and black scheme does look striking Aiding in the visuals department is the glowing ROG logo atop the card that can be customized using GeForce Experience LED Visualizer If yoursquore not too concerned with that you can let the load on the graphics card determine the colour Itrsquos not going to make this a resounding winner over the competing cards but it does add that little bit extra which goes a long way into justifying the cost to the end user

Build quality as you would

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 37: TheOverclocker Issue 31

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 43

isnrsquot going to be blow your socks off performance for overclocking For that yoursquoll need much more exotic cooling methods but what ASUS has put together with the Direct CU II is respectable to say the least Itrsquos not as elaborate a cooling solution as wersquove seen from other vendors and the heat pipes certainly get very warm to the touch but it does do the job by keeping the GPU well under the 80rsquoC mark ASUS claims that their cooling solution allows the card to remain at 65rsquoC We couldnrsquot match this in our testing environment but we only fell short by a mere 3rsquoC which is truly impressive given that we were running a very stressful benchmark on the system

looping it for hours on end in what we assume is a much warmer environment

Temperatures alone wonrsquot be the deciding factor for many of you but operating fan noise as well This is where the card really did live up to the claims as it was very quiet and actually bearable even with the fans set to maximum rotation Itrsquos not something everyone could live with but we certainly couldnrsquot hear it over the whirl of the other system components You may think itrsquos not an important thing to consider at first but nothing becomes more annoying than fan noise after hours of gaming especially when yoursquore not using headphones

We canrsquot be sure where but at some point in the marketing material 4K or UHD gaming rather was mentioned Obviously this is for justifying the 4GB of memory over the standard 2GB Sound in theory but not so much in practice We did performance measurements on a number of games but also recorded how much of the memory on the graphics card we were utilizing It turns out that even with 8XMSAA at 3840x2160 the most we ever used was just over 3GB of memory Thatrsquos a lot and more than what any GTX 780Ti has Thus 4GB does make sense but do consider that the game in question (Hitman Absolution) isnrsquot playable on a GTX 780Ti at those settings Not because of the lack of memory exclusively but because the processing power just isnrsquot there to provide a play experience that is above 30fps (Ideally wersquod want above 40fps) For the GTX 760 then therersquos all but no hope of accomplishing this That is an extreme case though and wersquove no reason to believe that 8xMSAA is necessary at that resolution on any reasonably sized screen (30rdquo and smaller) Thus the ASUS ROG Striker or any other GTX 760 for that matter isnrsquot for gaming at UHD resolutions but WQHD works perfectly

expect is impeccable with ASUS choosing an 8-Phase VRM which is unusual for a mid-range graphics card Consider that the NVIDIA reference GTX TITAN Black uses a 6-phase VRM and thatrsquos powering a NVIDIArsquos highest end single GPU solution As usual this graphics card allows you to adjust voltages via software You may choose to use the ASUS GPU Tweak or Inspector tool or any other utility you prefer How far yoursquoll fair with your overclock will obviously be dictated by the particular sample and your operating temperatures but itrsquos worth noting that the sample we had performed admirably Once again this

44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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44 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 45

Would you buy itFor the price there isnrsquot a better GTX 760 thus we would certainly buy this one

even in Metro Last Light we were able to record above 32 fps using the highest graphics fidelity options available save for SSAA That is admirable given that this is a taxing game for a great many graphics cards even those costing three times as much as the ROG STRIKER (wersquore looking at you TITAN Black Edition)

In other games we recorded frame rates in the 40s which is certainly more than playable Another claim we had to take a look at was that the ROG STRIKER was 10 faster than the standard GTX 760 10 in the context of frame rates doesnrsquot mean much unless you know the actual value but we found that we on average recorded 5 better performance in the real world It was only when we overclocked the card that we achieved 10 better performance and sometimes more (near 20 in some games) The overclock

In closing ASUS has put together a neat little card here with the ROG STRIKER We do wish that there was more in the package something like a bundled game or something else other than just the bare essentials to make it stand out a little more After all you are buying a ROG product and one that is supposedly platinum as well That aside as far as GTX 760 cards are concerned there isnrsquot a faster GTX 760 on the market and certainly not one that can claim to look better This one gets our recommendation and gaming gear award

[ The Overclocker ]

we employed as stable was at the edge but not where the system would crash or be unable to complete our entire test suit It was artifact free and more importantly didnrsquot require voltage adjustments Actually the reason for that was we found voltage adjustment didnrsquot add much to the stability of the set GPU clock What we needed was better cooling (water block for instance) to truly benefit from it Merely increasing the GPU voltage yielded very little gains for a significant rise in operating temperatures For the more adventurous individuals and those who are chasing Hardware points on HWBOT there is plenty of fun to be had here with the ROG STRIKER In a gaming context and environment itrsquos almost over engineered but wersquove no doubt that it will be a worthwhile piece of overclocking gear in the right hands with much better cooling

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 40: TheOverclocker Issue 31

46 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

There rumour mill has been rife with the much anticipated release of the

next generation of graphics cards from both AMD and NVIDIA Thus itrsquos perfectly fitting that many users may want to put off buying high end graphics card at present As sensible as that may be however mid-range to high end graphics cards have very long life spans Especially when we are talking about graphics cards costing $500 or more such as this one This card from SAPPHIRE represents their most high end Radeon 290X SKU thus it

SAPPHIRE VAPOR- X R9 290X RRP $64588 | Website wwwsapphiretechcom

Test Machine

bull INTEL Core i7 4790Kbull ASRock Z97 OC Formula

(V11)bull CORSAIR Dominator 2666

C10bull INTEL 730 480GB SSD Corsair AX1500i PSUbull Windows 7 64-bit SP1

(Catalyst 147 RC1)

is fitted with not only their best cooling technology (barring some LCS units we have seen in previous generations) along with the highest GPU clock speed of any retail 290X The only other matching card is the MSI Radeon Lightning 290X Throughout this review wersquoll be making constant comparisons with that card if only because both clock in at 1080MHz and are the closest in pricing

With this 290X Sapphire has - as can be expected - dumped the reference cooler and PCB Instead all the engineering efforts have been put towards providing the best showing for the 290X GPU possible Does all of this additional effort mean anything Yes it does It may not be in outright maximum clock speed but the mere fact that this card will run 1080MHz out the box and even 1180MHz is testament to this Clock speed alone however is not enough as

it must be looked at within the context of operating temperatures To this end we recorded a maximum temperature of 73rsquoC which is very good and it further highlights just how woeful the original AMD issued cooler was which was regularly allowing the GPU to reach 95rsquoC The Vapor-X runs 22rsquoC cooler and to date is the lowest load temperature we have recorded on any 290X Cooling of their high end parts is an area that SAPPHIRE possibly takes far more seriously than their competitors Itrsquos a tough market and seeking out even the smallest advantage can prove near fruitful Fortunately for SAPPHIRE they have one up on the competition via their ldquoPCB Component heat spreaderrdquo Briefly stated its an exposed copper layer of

Hardware Award

GAMING GEARAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 47

the PCB that has a heatsink attached to it This cools the PCB directly further reducing temperatures even on the GPU The degree to which it helps is unknown to us but it is one of the features or technologies if you prefer that help make this the coolest 290X wersquove tested to date

Noise levels are always hard to measure but in the environment we tested in the Vapor-X was quiet enough apart from when we had the fan speed set to 80 or higher It is only then we considered the fans loud In comparison to the standard cooler that AMD provides however making use of the same fan profile this is far more tolerable So make of that what you may but from where we stand noise is not an issue or concern here at all

Well what of the performance This is arguably where this 290X shines brightest because out the box performance is

fantastic Therersquos no valid reason to fiddle with the clock speed unless yoursquore going for some serious overclocking achievements If yoursquore squarely focused on gaming and nothing else yoursquoll never need to use any overclocking utility as therersquos not a single game available today that you cannot enjoy at the highest graphics settings possible (Barring a few erroneous settings in games like Metro ndash Last Lightrsquos SSAA) at least at 1080p Should you want to take part in the numerous overclocking competitions on forums or in the amateur leagues on the BOT yoursquoll be happy to know that this graphics has some considerable headroom This sample topped out at 1180MHz which is a respectable 100MHz higher than the shipping clocks In comparison to the reference 290X thatrsquos a healthy 180MHz higher Memory clocks faired equally well as we managed 6300MHz (1550MHz SDR) which is 12GHz higher than the reference card frequency and 660MHz over SAPPHIRErsquos shipping clock Since the Radeon 290X has a very wide memory bus and subsequently plenty of

bandwidth Memory clocking will have less of an impact on performance than increasing core clocks With that said it was still good fun finding the limits of this card and the frequencies we settled at were more than sufficient

For all that this card does right though not all was perfect There were some issues we wish would not persist one generation upon another This is to do with AMD primarily and not SAPPHIRE but it is a caveat that is worth noting When you initially install an AMD powered graphics card yoursquore going to have to fiddle with the over scanunder scanning options in the control panel The display size for some reason never fills up the whole screen and this is something you must fix manually Therersquos absolutely no reason for this to be happening and itrsquos just an annoying step that for one reason or another has not been patched for years on end Directly related to that is the creation of custom display profiles and timings Most users who use NVIDIA

48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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48 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows 64-bit These are our results yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 49

Summary

Would you buy it

SAPPHIRE has in our opinion produced the best Radeon 290X any gamer can hope to buy It may not be ready out the box for extreme overclocking but this isnrsquot what this product is about It is squarely aimed at high end gamers and enthusiasts and it delivers to this demographic in spades At this price there are few if any other competing Radeon 290X cards you should be considering

Without a doubt

powered GPUs take this for granted but there is no such option in the Catalyst Control Centre You may use a third party tool for this but itrsquos something that is unnecessary and theres an opportunity for AMDrsquos partners to integrate this functionality into their own tools

The last aspect of this graphics card wersquod like to look at is the value proposition This is dicey because we have to admit that SAPPHIRE has put plenty into this card a lot more than what pictures can show The build quality is exceptional and it performs and looks like a $650 graphics card There can be no denying that but it does face some competition from the ASUS ROG MATRIX R9290X and as mentioned before the MSI Radeon 290X Lightning The former is priced below the SAPPHIRE card while the latter is more expensive at $69999 The lightning card as mentioned earlier matches the SAPPHIRE card in clock speed while the ROG card clock is 30MHz off We have not tested either of these cards so itrsquos difficult to say in relation to them where the SAPPHIRE offering would be in regards to

value for money What we can say for sure is that the other two are more ready for extreme or competitive overclocking using more exotic cooling than this card can hanlde Itrsquos the small things such a voltage measuring points and dedicated LN2 BIOS switch which makes these two resonate with the competitive overclockers

For gamers this is close to as good as it gets There just arenrsquot many alternatives The PowerColor LCS AXR9 which features a full water block costs $45 less but it alienates every user without a DIY liquid cooling loop thus it cannot be compared directly The closest card we can find to this one happens to be from SAPPHIRE actually which is the regular VAPOR-X edition Its GPU clock is 50MHz lower and the memory clock is 5300MHz as opposed to 5640MHz on this model With that though you do get to save $65 which is more than what a single ldquotriple Ardquo title will cost you Itrsquoll be up to you which one you go with and what yoursquore willing to pay for this added performance

Here we stand impressed

with the ldquoSAPPHIRE Vapor-X R9 290X Tri-X OCrdquo (This is a very long name) and most certainly think it the best R9 290X wersquove come across Itrsquos a mighty impressive card that you should seriously look into

[ The Overclocker ]

50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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50 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 51

THE LAST OF US REMASTEREDGENRE Third-person action adventure | DEVELOPER Naughty DogPUBLISHER Sony Computer Entertainment | WEBSITE httpthelastofuscomWEBSITE $4999

Like many people who didnrsquot own a PlayStation 3 during its time as Sonyrsquos flagship console I

didnrsquot have the opportunity to play The Last of Us when it was originally released last year Obviously there was no way of steering clear of the flurry of praise that was levelled at it and itrsquos one of those games I knew Irsquod regret not having played years down the line Clearly I was being overly dramatic and I shouldrsquove known that Sony wouldnrsquot let this formerly PS3-exclusive gem live solely on last-generation hardware not with the throng of HD remakes and enhanced editions that older games are constantly treated to these days

Enter The Last of Us Remastered

the definitive way to play Naughty Dogrsquos post-apocalyptic opus For your money yoursquore getting enhanced visuals (running natively at 1080p and a smooth 60 frames

per second ndash although you can lock it to 30fps if you prefer) improved audio options director commentary and more Yoursquore also getting all the post-launch DLC that The Last of Us received consisting of some multiplayer stuff and the Left Behind single-player DLC If you already played the game on PS3 tore through its DLC and experienced all that it has to offer itrsquos difficult to recommend getting the Remastered edition unless you traded in your PS3 for a PS4 and absolutely must have the game in your collection ndash which given how incredible this game is wouldnrsquot surprise us at all

Anyway on to the game and why anyone who hasnrsquot played it should make every effort to do so right now The Last of Us elevates itself above its third-person action peers by virtue of its poignant narrative Its story follows two unlikely companions journeying across the United States But this is no sedate road trip where the most dangerous obstacle is screaming children in the backseat or the sudden need for a restroom when therersquos no reprieve in sight This is a deadly trek through a nightmarish future Itrsquos set 20 years after the world is brought to its knees by an outbreak of a mutated strain of the Cordyceps fungus which infects the majority of the population and turns them into flesh-hungry monsters

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 46: TheOverclocker Issue 31

52 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

The start of the game introduces us to player character Joel a smuggler and hired gun in this miserable new world of ration cards and basic survival Joelrsquos tragic past has left him a hollow shell oblivious to any hope or beauty that may still exist in the world That changes when he meets Ellie a 14 year-old girl who never knew the world before it went to hell In Ellie Joel finds a shot at redemption ndash a chance to regain his humanity In Joel Ellie finds far more than just a seasoned bodyguard shielding her from the horrors surrounding them

Therersquos no overstating this The Last of Us boasts one of the strongest stories ever told by a video game Itrsquos utterly captivating and full of moments of charming tenderness ndash in stark contrast with the brutal environment enveloping them The relationship between Joel and Ellie gradually evolves into one of the most striking companionships in all of gaming As yoursquod expect therersquos no way to really get into the meat of the story without spoiling it so yoursquoll have to take my word for it when I say that itrsquos a deeply personal affectingly human tale one that you really shouldnrsquot miss

To be completely honest sometimes I actually felt as though the ldquogamerdquo bits in The Last of Us are far too reliant on traditional mechanics and appealing to the masses when the narrative is so far ahead of the curve Thatrsquos not to say therersquos anything wrong with it ndash everything the game does it does unrelentingly well and is polished to absolute perfection Itrsquos a mix of quiet exploration tense stealth segments and hard-hitting action The game presents a mix of human and post-human enemies (and there are some frightening ones among them) and a number of ways to dispose of them Stealth is always a key component because ammo for firearms is scarce and going in guns blazing is a sure-fire way to alert more foes to your presence and get your face promptly chewed off So stealth attacks and subtle sneak-ery is the way to go throwing objects to create distractions and dispatching enemies with silent kills

When things get out of hand and yoursquore faced with a seemingly endless stream of enemies therersquos a nifty contextual cover mechanic

that isnrsquot really a cover mechanic at all but feels organic and useful anyway Between the guns and the melee combat skirmishes in The Last of Us are visceral and bloody really hammering home a sense of how ruthlessly brutal the world has become Or how ruthlessly brutal it already is except now therersquos also a horrible fungus involved The enemy AI is often worryingly intelligent which makes battles even tenser You can use melee weapons like steel pipes to dish out more melee damage but theyrsquoll eventually break so yoursquove got to use them sparingly Ellie will help out in combat by throwing objects at enemies or calling out their position

Therersquos also a crafting system in the game Finding components hidden in the game world lets you craft items like shivs (for quicker quieter silent kills) health kits and Molotov cocktails Fiddling with your inventory is a stressful affair because itrsquos all done in real time ndash the game doesnrsquot pause when you need to dig around in your

backpack leaving you feeling very vulnerable if you suddenly need to grab another weapon from your pack during combat Along the way yoursquoll also find various collectables used for upgrading Joelrsquos stats like his maximum health and his crafting speed

The stealth and action bits are plenty exciting but itrsquos the moments of quiet in between when yoursquore traversing the world with Ellie and interacting with her that are the most memorable There are so many remarkable moments in this game that Irsquom sure will stay with me forever and Irsquom grateful for having experienced them It all ties back into that incredible narrative The well-written masterfully directed script and the expertly delivered voice acting The stark beauty that exists between the cracks in this dark future The reminders that even in a future dominated by bloodthirsty fungus-fuelled mutants other human beings are always your greatest threat And yes it helps that the technology

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 47: TheOverclocker Issue 31

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 53

Would you buy it

The Score

9610

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

driving everything is incredible with stunning visuals powering the desolate look and feel of the carefully crafted environments alongside brilliantly realistic animations and expressions that successfully breathe life into the characters

The Last of Us is outstanding The Last of Us Remastered is even better You should play it

[ Dane Remendes ]

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

  • TOC31_001
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  • TOC31_040b
  • TOC31_041
  • TOC31_042-045
  • TOC31_046-049
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Page 48: TheOverclocker Issue 31

wwwsplicedmagazinecomsplicedmagSplicedMagazine

TECH GADGETS MOVIES LIFESTYLE ALL IN ONE MAGAZINE

Read it here

In this issue we dedicate our pages to al lthings zombies including a survival guide as well as the

topn ten zombies in pop culture

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

  • TOC31_001
  • TOC31_002
  • TOC31_003
  • TOC31_004
  • TOC31_005
  • TOC31_006-008
  • TOC31_009
  • TOC31_010
  • TOC31_011
  • TOC31_012-016
  • TOC31_017
  • TOC31_018-021
  • TOC31_022-025
  • TOC31_026-029
  • TOC31_030-033
  • TOC31_034-037
  • TOC31_038-039
  • TOC31_040b
  • TOC31_041
  • TOC31_042-045
  • TOC31_046-049
  • TOC31_050-053
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  • TOC31_056-062
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Page 49: TheOverclocker Issue 31

56 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 50: TheOverclocker Issue 31

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 57

F I V E O F T H E B E S TTherersquos probably not a single

person who takes themselves seriously as a fan of PC gaming

who hasnrsquot picked up by now that gaming is huge In fact PC gaming has gained so much momentum in recent years itrsquos invalidating many large publishers statements about PC gaming not being a viable source of revenue We have always maintained that despite the rampant piracy on the platform there are still copious amounts of revenue streams left to be exploited due to the very nature of being an open platform

Thus we have the equivalent of every Tom Dick and Harry manufacturing gaming peripherals There are literally hundreds if not thousands of peripherals to pick from From vendors who have no business even attempting such markets to ones that are veterans of the business all of them vying for our money and doing whatever they can to oust each other in the minds of gamers

To that end I gathered five gaming mice and pit them against each other to see which one would reign supreme Mice roundups are always going to

be subjective No two people have the exact same preference and hand shape or grip Itrsquos just not possible to design a mouse that is comfortable for everyone but there can be a general consensus on what is useable and what isnrsquot

With that said this was my experience with the various gaming mice and how they stacked up against each other Once again mouse performance is entirely subjective but hopefully my experiences resonate with many of you and it will help you figure out which mouse best suits your needs and gaming habits

GAMING ARSENAL

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 51: TheOverclocker Issue 31

58 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

COUGAR 700M

PRICE $8399

WEBSITE wwwcougar-worldcom

SENSOR ADNS-9800

WEIGHT 130g (weight management)

SIZE 127 x 83 x 38mm (palm adjustable)

BUTTONS 8

When I initially looked at the 700M it reminded me of the numerous MAD CATZ mice

particularly the RAT series of mice However as i became familiar with the mouse I realized that these two had very little in common despite a similar design Cougar states that the 700M is built around a single folded aluminium structure which results in one of the strongest and most certainly the lightest aluminum mouse on the market Thatrsquos great in theory and perhaps even in practice but how that affects game play is anybodyrsquos guess It certainly didnrsquot feel any sturdier than the other mice even though it was the second lightest after the Kone Pure

Where structural strength goes Irsquoll have to take Cougarrsquos word for it but for game play and comfort we may differ from the marketing material This is in particular when it comes to comfort and how the mouse is designed ergonomically Itrsquos supposed to fit both claw and palm grip style users but I found it near

impossible to use if you didnrsquot claw it Itrsquos not that the mouse is small but a large part of what would support your palm is missing at the rear of the mouse With the wider standard palm rest the base of my hand was constantly dragging on the mouse mat and even more so with the ldquoSport moderdquo rest This design makes sense if you donrsquot drive the mouse from the base or back of your hand but rely on your fingers If you drive from the wrist outwards a lot of the support that yoursquod have with a traditional mouse is missing thus it led to premature fatigue as Irsquod not developed the muscles to support the sides of my palm which essentially hovered over the mouse Irsquove no doubt you could get used to gaming this way but my question would be why yoursquod choose such a specifically designed mouse if there are others on the market which would be a more natural fit for you

That aside the 700M has some great software that not only works as yoursquod expect but presents all the basic features in a way that makes

programming it childrsquos play With a vast array of features I thought it would be rather tricky to navigate but it turns out to be the second most intuitive software package just behind what Logitech offers with the G502

I liked the fact that the weights are located in a central shaft of the mouse just behind the DPI switch This means the mouse is center weighted and thus it doesnrsquot have a tendency to move better in any one direction over another The weights are easy enough to remove and they do change how the mouse behaves dramatically I tended to use only a couple of the weights and that helped relieve some of the fatigue my hand was enduring due to the lack of full palm support This is the only mouse here that is tailored to a very specific demographic Despite what Cougar claims itrsquos really meant for claw grip users with small to medium sized hands For those users this could possibly be the most comfortable mouse of the lot For my money though Irsquom still a 200M advocate even though the 700M is superior on paper

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

  • TOC31_001
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Page 52: TheOverclocker Issue 31

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 59

EVGA TORQ X10 CARBON

PRICE $9999

WEBSITE WWWEVGACOM

SENSOR AVAGO-9800

WEIGHT 121G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 1143 X 5715 X 381MM (HEIGHT ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 9

EVGArsquos first entry into this highly saturated peripherals market is a commendable

one Not only did EVGA manage to make the second most comfortable mouse in the roundup they did it with software that is complete and virtually free of bugs Therersquos nothing overtly wrong with this mouse that would suggest to you that this is a first time effort Good considering that it is the most expensive mouse out of the lot Of all possible concerns price is what it may come down to because in this peripherals race where therersquos a hierarchy itrsquoll be hard to convince buyers to ditch their well-known and trusted brands for a new comer The reputation that EVGA has in their other business ventures may be noteworthy but in the gaming world they are yet unproven with no prolific team sponsor to speak of or the heritage which other competitors have Still do not overlook this mouse based purely on that because it is in contention for being the most comfortable mouse in this entire

roundup Ambidextrous mice are not usually going to satisfy any user group entirely but surprisingly so this perfectly symmetrical design does the job better than most mice dedicated to right hand users Itrsquos perfectly balanced for a user like me with a relatively small palm but long fingers The height adjustment mechanism uses a torque screwdriver (hence the name we suspect) thatrsquos bundled with the mouse At maximum height the palm rest is where I found the most comfort and gaming for hours on end was a pleasure and I suffered no fatigue

The buttons on the side deserve special mention because they are likely to become polarizing They have some travel despite the early button press actuation You may either press them into the mouse or flick them upwards both methods work in registering a key press I found that because of their location which is just slightly higher than where any other mouse side buttons would be I tended to flick upwards to use them (knifing or reloading) and this

worked surprisingly well Irsquom not sure if this was a conscious decision by EVGA to go this route but it does work The only downside I can think of is for those clinical players who at the highest levels need to be able to repeatedly press these side buttons as quickly as possible They may have an issue with this implementation as it just wonrsquot allow you to be as lightning fast as you could be using a more traditional buttons

An anomaly and perhaps the greatest shortcoming to an otherwise excellent mouse is the profile switch button which is located underneath the mouse Irsquove no idea how this came to be but for some reason EVGA decided to place the profile switch button in the most inconvenient and most inaccessible place possible Thus yoursquoll have to rely on the DPI buttons to quickly adjust your settings as needed

Other than that this is a sublime offering that costs a little too much in the context of its competition but nonetheless offers incredible comfort and a good gaming experience

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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Page 53: TheOverclocker Issue 31

60 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

GAMDIAS Zeus eSport Edition

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMDIASCOM

SENSOR AVAGO 9800

WEIGHT 154G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 12714 X 8446 X 432MM (SIZE ADJUSTABLE)

BUTTONS 11

I had previously not heard of GAMDIAS prior to COMUTEX 2014 however I was drawn to their booth

simply because it was perhaps one of the most stimulating booths that any peripheral vendor had Little did I know that this sense of loftier presentation would echo through in their products such as the Zeus Be advised that this is the eSport Edition and not the regular version As far as I can tell there really isnrsquot any mechanical difference between the two and all discrepancies are cosmetic Regardless this is my personal favorite out of every mouse that I received for this round up Perhaps I was wooed by the presentation which is by far superior to all other efforts here Mind you Irsquom not saying the others didnrsquot try but it was the packaging right down to the customizability of the mouse that impressed me It is just a mouse but in as far as making you feel that your $80 is well spent the Zeus is peerless and stands far ahead of every offering Irsquove ever come across

That aside the build quality of this mouse is impeccable Itrsquos a large mouse and the heaviest here so that may have a lot to do with the perception of quality It has a weight management system which I must admit may not be to everyonersquos liking The weights are placed in parallel at the rear of the mouse so it may cause the rear to act as an anchor point unintentionally I did not have this problem and found the weight distribution to be perfect for my needs

Comfort levels for this mouse were unprecedented as it fit my hands like a glove Using a palm grip is best for this kind of mouse as it is fairly large but being able to rest my entire hand on it without too much arching or excessive overshoot placed it at the top of my list As far as digit placement the Zeus again stands out allowing you to adjust the position of your thumb ring and pinky finger independently If you prefer a wider grip like I do this is perfect as I could easily prevent my ring finger from resting on its neighbor which is always

the case with other mice There are three rubber side pieces which fit between these adjustable panels on the body allowing further tuning for comfort

The downside of this mouse sadly is the Hera suit which - much like the website - is far too busy and just unappealing This is a subjective matter of course but there is far too much going on which can make figuring out what yoursquore doing unnecessarily challenging It has all the customization features yoursquod expect but itrsquos all presented with an interface or skin that confuses the entire process If there was anything to complain about with the Zeus it would be this part as itrsquos the weakest link in this entire chain and is in desperate need of some work

That aside this still remains my mouse of choice and the one I ended up settling with Legitimately priced with supreme comfort I am a convert of the Zeus and would recommend this mouse emphatically

EDITORrsquoS CHOICEAWARD

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

  • TOC31_001
  • TOC31_002
  • TOC31_003
  • TOC31_004
  • TOC31_005
  • TOC31_006-008
  • TOC31_009
  • TOC31_010
  • TOC31_011
  • TOC31_012-016
  • TOC31_017
  • TOC31_018-021
  • TOC31_022-025
  • TOC31_026-029
  • TOC31_030-033
  • TOC31_034-037
  • TOC31_038-039
  • TOC31_040b
  • TOC31_041
  • TOC31_042-045
  • TOC31_046-049
  • TOC31_050-053
  • TOC31_054-054
  • TOC31_056-062
  • TOC31_063
  • TOC31_064-065
  • TOC31_066
Page 54: TheOverclocker Issue 31

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 61

LOGITECH G502

PRICE $7999

WEBSITE WWWGAMINGLOGITECHCOM

SENSOR PROTEUS CORE 12000 DPI

WEIGHT 130G (WEIGHT MANAGEMENT)

SIZE 127 X 83 X 38MM

BUTTONS 11

Expectations of Logitechrsquos gaming mice are always going to be high perhaps even unfairly so As the

oldest gaming mouse vendor here every mouse is looked at with more scrutiny than any other mouse would be Thus it was important to not set unrealistic goals for the G502 but at the same time not be too forgiving of any shortcomings it may have had

Fortunately for Logitech the G502 does more right than it does wrong in fact there was only one aspect of the mouse I found issue with and that was the scroll wheel This kind of scroll wheel is going to be polarizing and understandably so because it is a drastic departure from what most users are accustomed to There are two modes to the wheel a familiar notched setting and then therersquos the free spinning mode For the former the individual cogs are very pronounced and do take effort to engage The upside is that yoursquore unlikely to select the wrong inventory item or scroll past a desired weapon or in-game item The alternate more

controversial mode is the ldquohyper-fast scrollingrdquo This free spinning mode is not notched at all thus you have to be precise when using the wheel It is interesting to say the least because I found that it works great for navigating documents and web pages but was unusable when gaming How severe this is will depend on the game obviously but in UT3 I preferred the more traditional setting

More about the wheel it has a tendency to rattle leading you to suspect that therersquos a defect with the mouse but it turns out that itrsquos not a design flaw rather a design decision So be advised that this play of the wheel is not a factory defect at all

One of the major features that Logitech promotes with the G502 is the ability to tailor it for different surfaces The mouse supposedly tracks motion differently depending on the profile you select Logitech has a few that are pre-configured that match several of their mouse mats however you can create your own profiles that best fit your gaming surface I tested all the

mice on the same surface but when I selected the different profiles there wasnrsquot a noticeable difference I can imagine this would make a difference for those armed with the various mouse mats from Logitech or other vendors however

As for the 12000 dpi sensitivity therersquos not much I can say about that as anything above 4000 DPI is unusable for me let alone 12000 Itrsquos a great tick box feature but ultimately not one that represents any real advantage unless you happen to have a very high resolution display(s) It is worth noting that as a showing of the detail the sensor can resolve - itrsquos remarkable

Overall this was mouse was very much what I expect from Logitech The software is second to none and is peerless amongst all in this roundup If the mouse doesnrsquot communicate this refinement and years of experience the software does Itrsquos well presented and intuitive easily the simplest and most appealing out of the lot This is a commendable mouse and everything one would expect from a Logitech device

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

  • TOC31_001
  • TOC31_002
  • TOC31_003
  • TOC31_004
  • TOC31_005
  • TOC31_006-008
  • TOC31_009
  • TOC31_010
  • TOC31_011
  • TOC31_012-016
  • TOC31_017
  • TOC31_018-021
  • TOC31_022-025
  • TOC31_026-029
  • TOC31_030-033
  • TOC31_034-037
  • TOC31_038-039
  • TOC31_040b
  • TOC31_041
  • TOC31_042-045
  • TOC31_046-049
  • TOC31_050-053
  • TOC31_054-054
  • TOC31_056-062
  • TOC31_063
  • TOC31_064-065
  • TOC31_066
Page 55: TheOverclocker Issue 31

62 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

Roccat Kone Pure

PRICE $6999

WEBSITE WWWROCCATORG

SENSOR PRO-AIM LASER SENSOR R3

WEIGHT 121G

SIZE 132 X 75 X 40 MM

BUTTONS 7

Herersquos a mouse that I had previously reviewed in issue 28 of the magazine In all that

time I stand by what I had said about it and believe it still to be one of the best mice around especially for those with smaller hands In the context of all these other mice though I do feel the competition has stiffened and the sheer variety of mice available on the market necessitate that ROCCAT come out with a better version of the Kone Pure (Tyon may be the one ndashEd)

Ergonomically the Kone isnrsquot molded in such a way as to alienate any user regardless of your grip Granted for the palm users itrsquoll be a little difficult given that the mouse is rather small thus the base of your palm may drag on the mouse mat along with having your digits do the same Still if your hands are small enough that shouldnrsquot be an issue

For FPS I found this mouse to be about as simple in button layout as they come This is actually a good thing as you arenrsquot battling with a tremendous amount of buttons The Shift+ feature essentially allows you

to double up on the number of buttons available Having said that using the shift key for a secondary feature is always going to incur a time penalty and this is where mice with perhaps two more buttons would win over the Kone Pure

Given that every other mouse here had a weight management system I do feel that 90g is a little on the light side and even 20g would have gone a long way into making this mouse feel just right It is by no means an average mouse by any stretch of the imagination It is a gaming mouse through and through but for the more casual gamer it could perhaps do with being a little heavier and a tad larger The build quality is second to none and as simple as it is you do feel that yoursquore dealing with a quality product Most of the power or usability of this mouse is actually in the software that ships with it ROCCAT has put so much into it that without downloading the software yoursquore using less than half the features of the mouse This is perhaps also where ROCCAT

could make some improvements The software had tremendous lag where changing a single setting and saving The software would become unresponsive very often It turns out that this is due to anti-virus software which has some compatibility issues with the driver At the time of writing this review there was no update but one is sure to come in due time What is great about the software though is that it gives you statistics about your mouse use including distance travelled total number of clicks and how many times you used the Shift+ function ROCCAT even gives you achievements by reaching specific milestones in using your mouse (Think Steam achievements)

Overall this is still one fine mouse that is worthy of your attention It doesnrsquot excel at any one thing enough to make it a stand out offering but at the same time it doesnrsquot do anything overtly wrong to warrant your dismissal It is a worthy mouse and if anything has proved itself at the highest levels of competitive gaming with a very attractive price

Value Award

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

  • TOC31_001
  • TOC31_002
  • TOC31_003
  • TOC31_004
  • TOC31_005
  • TOC31_006-008
  • TOC31_009
  • TOC31_010
  • TOC31_011
  • TOC31_012-016
  • TOC31_017
  • TOC31_018-021
  • TOC31_022-025
  • TOC31_026-029
  • TOC31_030-033
  • TOC31_034-037
  • TOC31_038-039
  • TOC31_040b
  • TOC31_041
  • TOC31_042-045
  • TOC31_046-049
  • TOC31_050-053
  • TOC31_054-054
  • TOC31_056-062
  • TOC31_063
  • TOC31_064-065
  • TOC31_066
Page 56: TheOverclocker Issue 31

Worlds Best 600W Air Cooling System

GV-NTITANBLKGHZ-6GD-B6144MB 384 bit GDDR5

NEW WINDFORCE 3X 600W cooling systemPowered by NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK GPUBASE 1006MHz BOOST1111 MHz

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

  • TOC31_001
  • TOC31_002
  • TOC31_003
  • TOC31_004
  • TOC31_005
  • TOC31_006-008
  • TOC31_009
  • TOC31_010
  • TOC31_011
  • TOC31_012-016
  • TOC31_017
  • TOC31_018-021
  • TOC31_022-025
  • TOC31_026-029
  • TOC31_030-033
  • TOC31_034-037
  • TOC31_038-039
  • TOC31_040b
  • TOC31_041
  • TOC31_042-045
  • TOC31_046-049
  • TOC31_050-053
  • TOC31_054-054
  • TOC31_056-062
  • TOC31_063
  • TOC31_064-065
  • TOC31_066
Page 57: TheOverclocker Issue 31

64 The OverClocker Issue 31 | 2014

MSI GT72 DominatorRRP $2899 | Website wwwmsicom

I was tasked again this issue with reviewing another MSI gaming notebook This time a powerful or rather the most powerful gaming notebook MSI has ever

built It doesnrsquot take a genius to figure that out if you look at the benchmark results Sure itrsquos not going to match a mid-range desktop machine but that doesnrsquot matter You shouldnrsquot be expecting any notebook to do that

What the GT72 does do however is make some generational improvements over the previous GT70 Gone is the bright red edition of many moons ago along with the generic rounded look of the previous model In its stead we have angular lines that are reminiscent of the ASUS GX notebooks or better yet the AORUS X7 The GT72 treads between these two design types and delivers something that is subdued but unmistakably gaming It doesnrsquot shout its intended use nor should it instead it looks like a road warrior perhaps even a mobile workstation If you pull this out in front of anybody they will know you mean serious business Itrsquos either yoursquore in need of an upgrade from your early to mid-90s laptop (in

size) or yoursquore there to present a real-time 3D rendering of a future real estate investment or some such thing Itrsquos not pretty by any stretch of the imagination and the GS60 is light years ahead in aesthetics However unsightly it is far from Itrsquos just business all around with a hint of excitement

In previous reviews I expressed concern with what

vendors sell as key features for their offerings This was usually RAID arrays with promises of ridiculous sequential data throughput This hasnrsquot changed with the GT72 but the use of four 128GB M2 drives in a RADI0 array has to be respected As usual I was not able to match the claimed 16GBs read speed but I did record over 12GBs which is more than enough More meaningful was the 4K read and write speed which was impressive delivering well over 600MBs respectively Irsquom inclined to think this is the reason boot up times are insanely quick Actually this is the fastest notebook Irsquove ever used and makes my older gaming notebook seem truly archaic by comparison

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

  • TOC31_001
  • TOC31_002
  • TOC31_003
  • TOC31_004
  • TOC31_005
  • TOC31_006-008
  • TOC31_009
  • TOC31_010
  • TOC31_011
  • TOC31_012-016
  • TOC31_017
  • TOC31_018-021
  • TOC31_022-025
  • TOC31_026-029
  • TOC31_030-033
  • TOC31_034-037
  • TOC31_038-039
  • TOC31_040b
  • TOC31_041
  • TOC31_042-045
  • TOC31_046-049
  • TOC31_050-053
  • TOC31_054-054
  • TOC31_056-062
  • TOC31_063
  • TOC31_064-065
  • TOC31_066
Page 58: TheOverclocker Issue 31

Issue 31 | 2014 The OverClocker 65

Gaming on this notebook is of utmost importance as one doesnrsquot buy an this kind of machine for any reason but playing games (or at least this should be the primary reason) Powered by the GTX 880M and the 4710HQ it was always going to handle all games splendidly on the 1080P display The truth is that as much as Irsquom impressed by the wonderful 173 FHD TN display I was hoping that with the GT72 MSI would surprise us all and deliver a QHD panel where all the processing and GPU power would get a chance to shine As it is a GTX 870M is pretty much able to play most modern games at 1080P What the 880M allows you to do is add MSAA to that which is great but not as impressive as what a higher resolution would yield on such a screen

Playing FPS games on the GT72 was more than splendid as you can expect The only issue I had concerned the notebooks height off any given surface as it meant that the mouse was noticeably lower To alleviate this I had to stack several magazines and place a mouse mat over them This isnrsquot something MSI can do anything about but it is worth being aware off as it can get annoying gaming on uneven surfaces

Another noteworthy change from the GT70 is that on the GT72 the keyboard is mounted on a separate or independent frame from the notebook casing with only the keys peeking through As such no matter how hard you may press the keys (within reason of course) there will be no flexing at all This also causes the keys to have an extremely shallow travel and they are a little less meaty to hit than on other MSI notebooks This is great for gaming but it isnrsquot ideal for typing as I was prone to more mistakes being used to more travel Assuming yoursquoll want to do some typing be mindful of this as it will take some time to get used to

Along the keyboard to the left is a set of short cut keys including one for instantly starting your game streaming switching to an enhancedhigh performance fan profile force enabling the discreet GPU (Supposedly some programs do not automatically switch to the discreet GPU therefor this

button would allow you to set this manually) and cycling through various illumination schemes This is perhaps one of the more frustrating things with the notebook as it is pretty difficult to get a single solid white backlight without jumping through hoops The SteelSeries software allows all manner of light effects across all layers (There are three layers of LED lighting on this notebook) but selecting a simple one colour option is anything but intuitive That goes hand in hand with the inability to reduce or increase brightness via the software You have to do that via a two button key press on the opposite end of the keyboard With this key

combo you can cycle through a few brightness levels including turning the backlight on and off but for the different colour configurations you need to use the separate ldquoshortcutrdquo key The enitre experience is not well executed and it complicates what should be an otherwise simple and straightforward process

As with all other notebooks in the family MSI makes use of Dynaudio speakers These are slightly larger than what

was on the GT70 and are more powerful on paper but in practice just arenrsquot as loud I do suppose MSI was not going for volume here but quality and in that regard they have succeeded The audio is much deeper with far more depth and clarity especially in the mid-range It is however not as loud as before in fact I would dare say this speaker system is a touch is too soft even with the volume cranked all the way up It is best then to bring your gaming headset with you as once again this will be the best way to experience audio

In closing such notebooks are always going to feature the best of the best in hardware The challenge for vendors is how they bring all that power into a package that is not only accessible but appealing The MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in almost every way imaginable but there is still some distance to be covered before it becomes a highly sought-after notebook like the GS60 Ghost in its niche For this price yoursquore not going to do much better at present If you have the money to spend do give the GT72 some consideration

[ Iron-Synapse ]

BENCHMARKSCatzilla 13 1080p 7691

3DMark Firestrike 5160

PCMark 8 Creativity Suit 4699

Battery test (PCMark8) 65min44sec

ldquoThe MSI GT72 Dominator is incredibly powerful alright and it is better than its predecessor in

almost every way imaginablerdquo

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

  • TOC31_001
  • TOC31_002
  • TOC31_003
  • TOC31_004
  • TOC31_005
  • TOC31_006-008
  • TOC31_009
  • TOC31_010
  • TOC31_011
  • TOC31_012-016
  • TOC31_017
  • TOC31_018-021
  • TOC31_022-025
  • TOC31_026-029
  • TOC31_030-033
  • TOC31_034-037
  • TOC31_038-039
  • TOC31_040b
  • TOC31_041
  • TOC31_042-045
  • TOC31_046-049
  • TOC31_050-053
  • TOC31_054-054
  • TOC31_056-062
  • TOC31_063
  • TOC31_064-065
  • TOC31_066
Page 59: TheOverclocker Issue 31

The ldquoInfinite Kingsrdquo logo and branding are registered trademarks

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  • TOC31_017
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  • TOC31_022-025
  • TOC31_026-029
  • TOC31_030-033
  • TOC31_034-037
  • TOC31_038-039
  • TOC31_040b
  • TOC31_041
  • TOC31_042-045
  • TOC31_046-049
  • TOC31_050-053
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  • TOC31_066