Do motherboards affect performance?

[ahkenatan]

I've been looking at motherboards lately and on these forums I've seen a lot of people say that motherboards do NOT affect performance. However, in this review by Overclock3D, Tom Logan shows that the MSI Z97S SLI Krait Edition board gets much lower performance (FPS) in games. I wanted to get the MSI Z97S SLI Krait for my black and white build, but now I'm not so sure. So, do motherboards really affect performance?

[SirBobson]

Very very slightly I wouldn't worry about it.

Edit: Well that is in my experience. The results on that review are quite surprising to me.

[DarkEnergy]

Just make sure the board can handle the CPU's power consumption and then some. (Mainly for the FX line of AMD)

 

Other than that, there won't be a difference between boards much in terms of performance.

[Kyuubixchidori]

I think something is wrong with that test, because motherboards have no impact on perfomance. its all margin of error usually when testing 

[Zeke]

Well... that review shows the performance overall doesn't differ a lot, except for that Hitman Absolution but that looks like a fluke to me.

[vSyNd1c4t3]

I've been looking at motherboards lately and on these forums I've seen a lot of people say that motherboards do NOT affect performance. However, in this review by Overclock3D, Tom Logan shows that the MSI Z97S SLI Krait Edition board gets much lower performance (FPS) in games. I wanted to get the MSI Z97S SLI Krait for my black and white build, but now I'm not so sure. So, do motherboards really affect performance?

 

Check around for more Reviews and how that board works. I bet the guy testing it messed something up. That post is 6-7 months old also, new BIOS updates can fix a lot of things.

 

Pigs can grow wings and fly. (Because it's on the internet and there are equations it must be true!)

 

Like I said, find other opinions and truths.

[ThE_MarD]

Heyyo,

Barely yeah... The only thing that matters is how many PCI-E slots, RAM slots and ability to overclock (if you need it).

There is other ad-dons like Killer network cards and soundcards like Creative Sound Core3D and such (both have spotty support in Linux btw so don't get boards with these if you are interested in Linux) but they won't make the motherboard insanely better... so only bother with those if their price is similar to boards without them.

[ahkenatan]

Okay, thanks guys. Gaming is the machine's main focus so CPU will be 4690k and GPU a 970. I didn't want to have the motherboard affect that performance.

[LogicalDrm]

Most performance difference comes from how mobo handles power. That will have slight effect on normal performance and possible huge when overclocking.

[noneterry]

in this review by Overclock3D, Tom Logan shows that the MSI Z97S SLI Krait Edition board gets much lower performance (FPS) in games.

 

Take a look on this review: http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/mainboard/81373-msi-z97s-sli-krait-edition/. It looks more credible than Overclock3D.

The guy from Overclock3D obviously did something wrong and put the blame on the motherboard....

[ApolloX75]

It's not that farfetched really, these kinds of differences were very common when there were more chipset makes and models on the field. Like say a Via KT series vs an SiS model.

I would say that since all Z97 boards are obviously built very similar now then this kind of performance discrepancy is less prevalent. That doesn't mean it can't happen though as quality of the components used and traces in the pcb could be a factor too.

Need a larger sample base to be sure.

[SteveGrabowski0]

I've been looking at motherboards lately and on these forums I've seen a lot of people say that motherboards do NOT affect performance. However, in this review by Overclock3D, Tom Logan shows that the MSI Z97S SLI Krait Edition board gets much lower performance (FPS) in games. I wanted to get the MSI Z97S SLI Krait for my black and white build, but now I'm not so sure. So, do motherboards really affect performance?

 

I have the Z97S Krait myself and I was freaking out about that review that I found right after I had sent in my UPC for a rebate so that the board wasn't returnable. Thankfully my Z97S Krait has been awesome, I'm not getting the low synthetic scores and gaming performance their review found. I even tested my GTX 970 at 1440p to see if I could coax out the bad scores they got with their 780 Ti at 1440p and I never saw the problems they found. I would imagine maybe their board got damaged in shipping or perhaps the first revision of the BIOS on the Z97S Krait sucked, as they reviewed it right when it came out. I thought it was pretty chickenshit that Tiny Tom spent half an hour in his lame review video talking about the color scheme and how great a price to performance board it was without ever amending the video to show their performance results.

 

But Hexxus.net did a review of the Z97S Krait a few months later with a newer BIOS and their results were that it was pretty much the same as a couple of other more expensive Z97 boards they compared against. The Hexxus.net review seems more in line with my experience running the Krait.

 

Tiny Tom's reviews suck, 20-30 minutes of rambling instead of a concise to the point review with the same amount of information like Linus or Dmitri from HardwareCanucks put out.

[Nena Trinity]

None to maybe 0.5 frames? (unless overclock count?)