PERFORMANCE TESTING
Test Setup
Processor: Intel Core i7 4770K
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-Z87-D3HP
Memory: Kingston HyperX 10th Anniversary Edition DDR3-2400
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V300 120GB
PSU: Seasonic X-760W
Cooling: Phanteks PH-TC14PE
Case: HAF XB Open Bench
Monitor: LG E2350V
VGA: ZOTAC GeForce GTX 770 AMP Edition! 2GB
CPU PERFORMANCE
SiSoft’s SANDRA is a benchmarking, testing and system information application which provides plenty of options in gaining information regarding your system. For this test, we gauge the raw computational power of the CPU with the Processor Arithmetic benchmark based on the Whetstone and Dhrystone test. Both tests run completely within the processor so it gives a good picture of how a processor performs.
Maxon offers a nice benchmark tool called Cinebench which really stresses your entire system to render a very complex scene. The output score is completely unique to Cinebench but allows us to have a rough idea of how the CPU works with 3D rendering tasks.
wPrime is a multi-threaded benchmarking application designed to measure the raw computational power of a CPU. It can be configured to run on a custom number of threads to accomodate multi-core CPUs.
SuperPI is another benchmarking tool that utilizes the pure computational power of a CPU. This test however is purely single-threaded and shows us the performance of a single core which gives us a good picture of how a processor performs on similar tasks.
3D Mark06 is a benchmarking software designed to measure the performance of a system in DirectX9 applications. The test has long been updated with newer version of the software for more modern use but the CPU test is still relevant and still gives us a good image of system performance by loading the CPU with logic, path-finding and physics computation tasks.
3DMark Vantage is the successor to 3DMark 06 and is targeted for DirectX10 compliant devices. Similar to our 3DMark 06 test, we only take the CPU scores using the Performance preset.
At a glance: For an entry-level board, the Z87-D3HP from GIGABYTE shows some great numbers and actually manages to scale nicely when overclocked. The board manages to get some high  numbers in some benchmarks which should be no surprise as some of the boards leading here are those usually not packing that much beef.