GIGABYTE Z97X-Gaming G1 WiFi-BK Intel Z97 Motherboard Review
Intel Z97 Overclocking
Overclocking greatly varies due to what hardware is being used and who is doing the overclocking. Always remember that no two pieces of hardware will perform the same, so our results will differ from what you might be able to get.
The Intel Core i7 4770K runs at a non-turbo speed of 3.5GHz and turbo will ramp the processor up to as high as 3.9GHz under a lightly threaded load as we can see above. Since we are using a K series processor which has an unlocked multiplier we will be able to increase the default x35 multiplier to achieve our overclock today. This is the easiest way to overclock K series processors and should provide us with some great speeds.
The Legit Reviews test system takes advantage of some pretty solid hardware. The Intel Core i7-4770K is quite a capable overclocker and we have plenty of cooling with the Corsair H100i water cooler. I decided not to waste time with the lower settings of the GIGABYTE Performance upgrade, I decided to go for broke and give the 100% Upgrade a shot and see how it would turn out.
Once I selected the 100% upgrade, I saved the settings and rebooted the system, within moments I was sitting in Windows 8.1 without an issue. Opening up CPU-Z to see where the Intel Core i7-4770K was sitting, and found it sitting pretty at 4.7GHz! The only aspect of this overclock that has me worried is the CPU VCore, its sitting at 1.42Volts. The Intel Core i7-4700K ES I use doesnt require that high of a voltage to overclock typically.
I had noticed that the 100% upgrade option on the GIGABYTE Z97X-Gaming G1 WiFi-BK increased the CPU vCore to 1.42 Volts. That is a little to high for this particular Intel Core i7-4770K, and within seconds of running the stability test in AIDA64 the CPU was throttling down due to the heat created.
With only a couple of tweaks in the GIGABYTE Z97X-Gaming G1 WiFi-BK BIOS I was able to bring the system to 4.8GHz at 1.3 Volts.
I fired up the AIDA64 system stability test and ran it without any issues or the processor needing to throttle back due to heat.
The overall score in FutureMark 3DMark Firestrike didn’t increase dramatically, but the Physics score jumped from 11258 up to 13721! A jump of nearly 22%!