The functionality and features of this mainboard could have been fit for a flagship board of the past, but today it is just enough to place this product in the very mainstream segment, making it the junior model from Asus on Intel Z77 Express chipset. And it is probably the first time that we see wireless support implemented in a far not the top mainboard model like that.
Today we are going to talk about the fastest mass production GeForce GTX TITAN graphics accelerator with air cooling as well as the results of a pair of TITAN cards in a 2-way SLI configuration.
New Asus graphics accelerator can be called a true apogee of the Radeon HD 7970 evolution. It is hard to believe that there could ever be any faster or more advanced graphics accelerators before the HD 7000-series epoch comes to its logical end.
This is a very volatile time for Intel. In an ARM-less vacuum, Intel’s Haswell architecture would likely be the most amazing thing to happen to the tech industry in years. In mobile Haswell is slated to bring about the single largest improvement in battery life in Intel history. In graphics, Haswell completely redefines the expectations for processor graphics. There are even some versions that come with an on-package 128MB L4 cache. And on the desktop, Haswell is the epitome of polish and evolution of the Core microprocessor architecture. Everything is better, faster and more efficient.
There’s very little to complain about with Haswell. Sure, the days of insane overclocks without touching voltage knobs are long gone. With any mobile-first, power optimized architecture, any excess frequency at default voltages is viewed as wasted power. So Haswell won’t overclock any better than Ivy Bridge, at least without exotic cooling.
You could also complain that, for a tock, the CPU performance gains aren’t large enough. Intel promised 5 - 15% gains over Ivy Bridge at the same frequencies, and most of my tests agree with that. It’s still forward progress, without substantial increases in power consumption, but it’s not revolutionary. We compare the rest of the industry to Intel’s excellent single threaded performance and generally come away disappointed. The downside to being on the top is that virtually all improvements appear incremental.
The fact of the matter is that the most exciting implementations of Haswell exist outside of the desktop parts. Big gains in battery life, power consumption and even a broadening of the types of form factors the Core family of processors will fit into all apply elsewhere. Over the coming weeks and months we’ll be seeing lots of that, but today, at least in this article, the focus is on the desktop.
After a very long and anxious wait we can finally take a close look at one of the fourth generation Core processors for desktops, which is based on the new Haswell microarchitecture. Significantly higher performance, better energy-efficiency, excellent overclocking – all this isn’t the case. What happened?
As many as seven heatpipes, dual-array heatsink, two fans – will the new GELID cooler become a super-cooler today? Let’s find out.