Benchmarks

Cinebench 11.5 – CPU Score
x264 HD 4.0 – 1st and 2nd pass encoding
SiSoftware SANDRA 2012 – CPU & Memory benchmarks
AIDA64 – CPU benchmarks
3DMark 11 – DX11 3D Performance and Extreme preset
Games – DIRT 3, Skyrim and Battlefield 3

Other Software
Core Temp
LinX stress Test
CPU-Z

Overclocking

As previously mentioned in our Intel Core i5 Sandy Bridge Roundup – overclocking with Ivy Bridge is identical to Sandy Bridge. It is achieved by altering the multiplier rather than the BCLK. So the BCLK stays at 100MHz and the multiplier is modified. So if we have 100MHz on the BCLK and 40 for the multiplier this will obviously output 4GHz.

For this section of the review the maximum overclock was achieved by using the Intel Core i5 3750K and monolith CPU cooler – Alpenfohn K2 with 2x 120mm and 1x 140mm fans. Safety features were disabled in the BIOS and the multiplier for Core i5-3570K was nudged up to 45 (a frequency to which all current motherboards handled with ease) and the vcore was set to 1.38v to provide enough voltage and headroom to increase the frequency. The system booted into windows but within 5 minutes of stress testing with LinX the process halted and failed. So I then began working backwards, maintaining a high(er) vcore and decreasing the multiplier in BIOS and entering windows to test this. Each time it failed under stress until I eventually got to 39 (3.9GHz) and again this failed during stress. I even tried increasing the voltage to 1.4v modifying to different ranges but nothing would allow for a stable overclock. (Latest BIOS was used and PLL overvoltage was enabled).

This is rather disappointing as this motherboard is touted to be designed for the overclocker, I had hoped for some impressive results.



UPDATE - The problems with overclocking were due to one of the memory modules being pushed out slightly. After changing to low profile memory and testing an overclock the problem was resolved. Following on from this I pushed the vcore to over 1.4v and set the frequency to 48 (4.8GHz) and found instability so I worked backwards from this until reaching 46 (4.6GHz) which was stable. See screenshot below!

NOTE: Test system memory Corsair Vengeance has no compatibility problems with K2 CPU cooler on other motherboards only BIOSTAR. Memory slots/CPU socket are closer.



Due to overclock only being attainable by using different memory compared to other motherboards we have tested - the overclock results will not be benchmarked for this motherboard review.