Our mainboard during the test suite is the Gigabyte Z97X SOC Force. We flashed the latest F6 bios which is fully Pentium compatible; earlier versions did not allow multiplier, nor ring bus speeds adjustments. To keep things aligned we are still using the dual channel Corsair Dominator 1600MHz C8-8-8-24 kit. Even though the Pentium Anniversary edition is only certified for 1333MHz memory speeds we opted to test all the processors at equal ram clocks of 1600MHz.

TEST SETUP :

• Intel Core i3-4130, i5-3750K/3770K, i5-4440, i5-4460, i5-4590; i5 4690, i5-4670K/4770K & i7-4790
• Gigabyte Z97X SOC Force
• AMD A10 7850K, 1090T, FX-8150 & FX-8350
• Gigabyte FM2 G1 Sniper & ASUS Crosshair V Formula-Z
• EK WB L240 kit
• Gigabyte Z97X SOC Force (F6 bios)
• 4GB Corsair Dominator PC12800C8
• AMD ASUS 7970HD
• Western Digital 1TB Green Caviar
• Corsair AX 1200 PSU
• Microcool Banchetto 101 test setup
• Windows 7 Professional 64Bit SP1 fully patched.

For our tests we use single as multi-threaded benchmarks to discover the performance of the tested processors. For the 3D tests we are using a 7970HD discrete graphics card, which is still a solid mainstream card.

2D tests used:

• Superpi32m (single threaded)
• Wprime 32 & 1024 (single and multi-threaded)
• Cinebench R10 (single and multi-threaded)
• Cinebench R11.5 (single and multi-threaded)
• Fritz Chess benchmark (multi-threaded)

3D synthetic tests used:

• Futuremark 3DMark 11
• Resident Evil 6 Benchmark
• Catzilla v1.2 720P and 1440P setting

3D Gaming test (resolution 1920 x 1080) used:

• Bioshock Infinite at High and Ultra preset
• Tomb Raider at High and Ultra preset
• Sleeping Dogs at High and Ultra preset