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  1. #1

    Default Thunderbolt comes to the Windows PC - ASUS P8Z77-V Premium and MSI Z77A-GD80 Review


    IntroductionSince its introduction early last year, Thunderbolt, co-developed by Apple and Intel, has experienced a relatively slow adoption rate, with the technology formerly known as "Light Peak" featuring exclusively in Apple's Mac products and prosumer-grade storage/display offerings. The reasons for the snafu were high implementation costs (i.e $59 for 0.5m cables made by Apple) and a very stringent certification process. Intel looks like it wants to cherry pick vendors and products, turning away small time device makers and forbidding self-validation efforts, rendering the Thunderbolt ecosystem into a snob club as opposed to commonplace standards like USB.With a choice of copper or optical fiber cabling now supplied by more vendors, and the new 'Cactus Ridge' host router bringing down costs and idle power usage, Intel is claiming more widespread availability of the technology in this year's Ultrabooks, and PC motherboard designs from the likes of ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI. We should also see more Thunderbolt enabled devices at the upcoming Computex Taipei.
    Thunderbolt offers data transfer speeds of up to 10 Gb/s full duplex per channel (much faster than USB 3.0's 5Gb/s) and uses a low profile connector that is almost identical to mini-DP (DisplayPort).
    The devices on the Thunderbolt tunnel can be daisy chained (up to six) and will be seen as a native PCIe device or DisplayPort monitor by the Operating System. A master clock on the host controller also keeps synchronization issues in check, which is useful for realtime applications like video editing.
    OEM/ODMs have the option of implementing the full speed DSL3510 (two DP connectors, four lane PCIe) or the more economical DSL3310 (one DP connector, two lane PCIe) controller.

  2. #2

    Default Re: Thunderbolt comes to the Windows PC - ASUS P8Z77-V Premium and MSI Z77A-GD80 Revi

    ASUS P8Z77-V Premium

    We first spotted the Premium in a 40-minute long video interview with ASUS America at Anandtech last month, which replaces the P8Z77-V Deluxe (our review) at the top of ASUS's range of Z77 motherboards.



    As we can see (P8Z77-V Premium on the left, and P8Z77-V Deluxe on the right), the P8Z77-V Premium is even more feature packed than the already crowded Deluxe. We will cover the new additions in the sections below.





    Accessories and Bundle of the P8Z77-V Premium - includes extended SLi bridges for 3-way or 4-way operation.





    The newcomer has less USB ports than the Deluxe but gains full HD 4000 triple-display support in the form of the Thunderbolt enabled mini-DP port. As expected from its "Premium" standing and considerable price tag, both Gigabit 802.3az Energy Efficient Ethernet qualified ports are powered by Intel chipsets and there is a Wi-Fi 802.11 AGBN + Bluetooth 4.0 (Broadcom based) module. Its a shame that the audio solution is still a muddy Realtek codec instead of something more audiophille.





    Intel's Cactus Ridge 2C (DSL3310) Thunderbolt chipset takes up two PCIe 2.0 lanes (8Gb/s effective throughput) somewhere, presumably tapping on the eight PCIe 2.0 lanes from the Z77 PCH.





    Most prominently, the P8Z77-V Premium is one of the two Z77 motherboards (the other being GIGABYTE's Sniper 3) that we have seen so far with four PCIe x16 slots. The x16+x16 or x8+x8+x8+x8 operation is achieved with the use of a PLX PEX8747 switch to distribute the sixteen PCIe 3.0 signals from the CPU, albeit with some unavoidable latency increases. Another PLX PEX 8608 takes care of eight lanes of PCIe 2.0 from the Z77 PCH for the numerous other SATA/USB 3.0/TB host controllers on the motherboard. Legacy PCI is fully depreciated and does not make an appearance here.











    On-board storage wise we get six SATA 3.0 ports (dark blue and white) and three SATA 2.0 ports (light blue). A 32GB mSATA SSD (Toshiba SLC NAND with Marvell controller) is provided for Intel SRT functionality, although we found it to a tad slow when we tested its performance.









    ASUS's innovative "T-Topology" DRAM memory traces and 22 Phase VRM design (16 for CPU + 4 for IGP + 2 for DRAM) is carried over from the P8Z77-V Deluxe, which are controlled by the much vaunted DIGI+ PWM controllers allowing for impressive subzero CPU and 2800MHz+ DRAM overclocks. One notable change is the switch from a flimsy LOTES socket on the Deluxe to a more rigid Foxconn piece on the Premium, which is helpful if you are swapping CPUs in and out frequently like we do.







    As usual, ASUS did not disappoint with its polished UEFI BIOS and Windows software suite, providing a functional and clean layout for quick adjustments to various system parameters. One feature that ASUS engineers should consider is the inclusion of OC memory profiles (like on ROG boards) for the different memory chipsets.




  3. #3

    Default Re: Thunderbolt comes to the Windows PC - ASUS P8Z77-V Premium and MSI Z77A-GD80 Revi

    MSI Z77A-GD80

    MSI first showed a glimpse of Z77A-GD80 to the public at CES 2012, but it was not quite the finished product then (lacked the final heatsink design and Thunderbolt IC). Then at CeBIT, we saw the completed motherboard, which is in our hands today.





    Apart from Thunderbolt support and a few more DrMOS units at the CPU area, the Z77A-GD80 (right) is uncannily similar to the Z77A-GD65 (left), the latter being a motherboard we rate highly because it had been one of the least troublesome Z77 motherboards that we've encountered (review for that coming soon).



    Accessories and Documentation - MSI is keen to emphasize that their product is "Military Class", even including a faux certificate of compliance.





    Unlike the ASUS board, the MSI Z77A-GD80 goes for a minimalist I/O back panel and does not employ any additional 3rd party host controller (less CPU interrupts, good for low latency setups and performance squeezing). The Z77 PCH drives six USB ports (only two USB 3.0) and there is a solidary Intel Gigabit LAN port for networking. The inclusion of a D-sub analog VGA among the three display connectors is a puzzling one, granted that hardly anyone uses it with HD monitors nowadays. Finally, like most motherboards out there, an unremarkable Realtek codec takes care of audio functions.



    Here we have the Intel Cactus Ridge 2C Thunderbolt controller, which like the ASUS board taps on two PCIe 2.0 lanes (8Gb/s effective) from the Z77 PCH.





    The Z77A-GD80 uses a regular three PCIe 3.0 x16 slot arrangement (electricically x8+x8 or x8+x4+x4) augmented by four other PCIe 2.0 x1 slots for other peripherals.







    The right angled internal USB 3.0 connector here is a plus for cable management, and the eight SATA ports (four of them SATA 6Gb/s) should be enough for most users as well.



    Over at the RAM slot area we get a set of voltage probe points (not on the ASUS board), Power/Reset buttons and another "OC Genie" button to activate auto overclocking.





    A uP1618A 6+2 phase buck controller drives the space saving Renasas DrMOS units, which is supposed to have faster switching frequencies and higher efficiencies than regular designs.







    We feel that MSI's cluttered UEFI bios layout could use a bit of reorganization, as the actual important options menu in the middle takes up less than half of the entire screen. Other than asthetics, overclocking our Ivy Bridge 3770K to 4.8GHz was achievable and we could use our G.Skill TridentX 2400MHz XMP 1.3 profiles without incident. Some of the Z77 motherboards that we have in our labs struggle to work even with these entry level settings so kudos to MSI for getting it right like ASUS.





    MSI's Control Center Windows utility has a much leaner disk and memory footprint than ASUS's bloaty AI Suite, but most settings required an operating system reboot for changes to take effect, which is annoying.


  4. #4

    Default Re: Thunderbolt comes to the Windows PC - ASUS P8Z77-V Premium and MSI Z77A-GD80 Revi

    LaCie Little Big Disk (Thunderbolt)

    For Thunderbolt testing we used a LaCie Little Big Disk dual 2.5-inch SATA enclosure, which is one of the few affordable Thunderbolt external drives out there.





    A rather short 0.5 metre Sumitomo Electric Thunderbolt cable was bundled with the kit.





    Dual Thunderbolt DP ports for daisy chaining devices. The contraption also needs an external power source.





    The 240GB SSD option (US$849) comes with two Intel SSD 320 MLC 120GB drives pre-installed. Although the Intel drives have proven to be quite stable firmware-wise relative to their Sandforce brethrens, they are hardly the fastest drives available out there (SATA 3Gb/s interface, not enough to saturate the Thunderbolt bus even in pairs).





    The LaCie Little Big Disk uses a Light Ridge Thunderbolt chipset and a Marvell 88SE9182 SATA 6 Gbit/s controller to interface with the two SSDs.









    To ensure that the Intel SSDs were not the cause of any bottlenecks, we swapped them out for a pair of screaming fast Corsair Force GT 120GB which features an advertised sequential read speed of 555MB/s each.





    Since there is no hardware-level RAID option provided by the LaCie enclosure, we had to use Windows 7's Disk Management utility to create a RAID-0 striped volume so that performance is aggregated. If you are looking for redundency you can go for RAID-1 as well.


  5. #5

    Default Re: Thunderbolt comes to the Windows PC - ASUS P8Z77-V Premium and MSI Z77A-GD80 Revi

    Thunderbolt Tweaks

    For starters, these are the Thunderbolt BIOS dialog menus from both motherboards:





    ASUS's implementation has considerably more tweaking options for memory space reservation which comes into play when resolving daisy chain hot plug detection issues. Intel engineers say a good BIOS should assist Windows 7 with PCIe hot-plug by pre-allocating requited resources at boot stage, or else subsequent hot plugged devices will be unusable and marked with a “yellow bang” error code of 12 (lack of resources) in the Device Manager until next complete re-enumeration (i.e reboot).

    And oh, you can't boot an operating system off a Thunderbolt drive (for now).



    Thunderbolt Speed Tests (conducted on the ASUS P8Z77-V Premium)

    Like the folks at Anandtech, we experienced intermitent stability and performance issues with Thunderbolt on the MSI Z77A-GD80, which we curiously did not encounter on the ASUS board. Since drivers and firmware are still undergoing certification we will reserve judgement on the former until its final shipping iteration.

    First up, a timely reminder on why ordinary USB 3.0 is inadequate for high performance transfers (test conducted with a single Corsair Force GT):



    After protocol overheads, USB 3.0 can only theoretically achieve a throughput of 4Gbit/s (500MB/s), which is inferior to SATA 3.0's 4.8 GBit/s (600MB/s) and Thunderbolt's 8GBit/s (1000MB/s).



    Anvil's Storage Utilities (Corsair Force GT in RAID-0)





    Blackmagic Disk Speed Test (Corsair Force GT in RAID-0)





    ATTO (Corsair Force GT in RAID-0)





    For some reason, our RAID-0 Thunderbolt test results above were hugely disappointing, for reasons we suspect is attributed to the LaCie's Marvell 88SE9182 controller or the beta bios/drivers still in its infancy. We did check that the drives were running at SATA/600 transfer mode (as you can see from the screenshot below).


  6. #6

    Default Re: Thunderbolt comes to the Windows PC - ASUS P8Z77-V Premium and MSI Z77A-GD80 Revi

    3DMark 11 CPU and Graphics Test

    CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K 'Ivy Bridge' @ 4.8GHz 1.28V

    Memory: 2 x 8GB G.Skill TridentX 2400MHz 10-12-12-31 2T

    GPU: 2 x AMD Radeon HD 7970



    ASUS P8Z77-V Premium (Graphics Score: 5120, Physics: 11664)





    MSI Z77A-GD80 (Graphics Score: 5130, Physics: 11952)



    With both motherboards on identical overclocks and a fresh O/S install (only drivers), the MSI board edged out slightly in Graphics efficiency (no PCIe switching) and was 2.5% better than the ASUS board in the CPU bound physics test, probably due to less interrupts that the CPU has to handle (the ASUS board has a lot more 3rd party host controllers to juggle with).



    OCCT Linpack Testing

    Loadline calibration is the mitigation of voltage drops, which affects stability during overclocking.



    ASUS P8Z77-V Premium (High LLC setting)





    MSI Z77A-GD80 (100% LLC setting)





    Both of their CPU voltages did not overshoot or undershoot drastically during the torturous Linpack test, but we can clearly see that the ASUS's solution is slightly more stable electrically.

  7. #7

    Default Re: Thunderbolt comes to the Windows PC - ASUS P8Z77-V Premium and MSI Z77A-GD80 Revi

    Conclusion / Award







    ASUS P8Z77 Premium

    SRP: (definitely a price tag north of the Deluxe's US$274.99 (NewEgg) / SGD$419)

    Pros
    • 4-way SLi/CrossFireX capable
    • Nice and effective VRM heatsinks
    • Stable DIGI+ Digital PWMs
    • Polished UEFI BIOS
    • Dual INTEL Gigabit LAN
    • Bluetooth 4.0 + Wifi module
    • 32GB mSATA SSD Cache
    • Triple IGP display outputs



    Cons
    • EXPENSIVE!
    • Realtek Audio on a Premium board?!!










    MSI Z77A-GD80

    SRP: (GD65 goes for USD$189.99)

    Pros
    • Relatively cheap price tag
    • Good PCB layout/design
    • Voltage Check points
    • Stripped down for overclocking (no extra host controllers, less CPU interrupts)
    • Right angle internal USB 3.0 connector
    • "Military Class" assurances



    Cons
    • Cluttered BIOS layout
    • Barren feature set for a flagship model
    • Realtek audio



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