ASRock Fatal1ty Z77 Professional Review - IDE and Floppy on Z77
by Ian Cutress on May 20, 2012 1:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
- Fatal1ty
- Z77
Civilization V
Civilization V is a strategy video game that utilizes a significant number of the latest GPU features and software advances. Using the in-game benchmark, we run Civilization V at 2560x1440 with full graphical settings, similar to Ryan in his GPU testing functionality. Results reported by the benchmark are the total number of frames in sixty seconds, which we normalize to frames per second.
The only Civilzation test in which the ASRock board does well is in the single 7970 test, however all boards in that test are within statistical error. Otherwise the ASRock loses out due to the speed deficit over the ASUS and Gigabyte boards.
Dirt 3
Dirt 3 is a rallying video game and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters. Using the in game benchmark, Dirt 3 is run at 1920x1080 with full graphical settings. Results are reported as the average frame rate across four runs.
All boards perform similarly in the Dirt3 test.
Metro2033
Metro2033 is a DX11 benchmark that challenges every system that tries to run it at any high-end settings. Developed by 4A Games and released in March 2010, we use the inbuilt DirectX 11 Frontline benchmark to test the hardware at 1920x1080 with full graphical settings. Results are given as the average frame rate from 10 runs.
As Metro2033 is more dependent on CPU speed, the ASRock also seems to not be able to challenge the ASUS and Gigabyte boards at higher frame rates.
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Chaitanya - Sunday, May 20, 2012 - link
I am wondering how many people actually use floppy drive in this day and age when OS can install RAID drivers off a USB thumb drive and motherboards can flash bios even without having a CPU installed.shabby - Sunday, May 20, 2012 - link
How else will people make floppy music? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgfPYetWWJwNow wheres my printer port!
SlyNine - Sunday, May 20, 2012 - link
Thanks man, made my day!MonkeyPaw - Sunday, May 20, 2012 - link
That is awesome. Seems like something at the end of a Portal game.anirudhs - Sunday, May 20, 2012 - link
There used to be a time when booting into Linux was only possible using a floppy drive.CharonPDX - Thursday, May 24, 2012 - link
There used to be a time when booting into *ANY* OS was only possible using a floppy drive.Heck, Windows XP required a floppy drive to load storage drivers if you weren't using a supported storage controller. (Which could be worked around if you were really dedicated, but for the average home user...)
But since Windows Vista, we have no legitimate reason for the floppy drive to be internal as opposed to USB.
Many motherboard makers have a "legacy" motherboard available, that includes these things (plus serial and parallel ports,) for those customers that truly need them. But a gamer doesn't. I haven't *NEEDED* a floppy drive since at least 2006. Yes, I've *USED* one since, but a USB one works just fine for everything I've needed to use it for. Nearly the same for PATA. I can't think of any gamer that still has an PATA drive sitting around that they just *NEED* to use. Yeah, digging data off an old retired PATA drive is nice, but there are (SHOCK!) USB-to-PATA adapters that work just fine. (And since the absolute fastest PATA drives are barely equal to USB 2.0, the speed "hit" doesn't matter.)
I have a vintage computer collection, and use PATA, SCSI, even ESDI hard drives; along with 1.44 MB floppies, and even all the way back to 5.25" single-sided floppies, on a regular basis.
But I don't need support for any of them in my gaming PC. (Then again, I also bought the Abit AT7-MAX motherboard when it first came out, lacking PS/2, serial, and parallel ports when leaving them off was controversial. So maybe I'm just someone who is perfectly happy to ditch legacy on modern gear before others.)
It would be one thing if most boards still had them, but they don't. I don't even get the inclusion of the PS/2 port on many "gaming" boards these days. Does anyone still use a PS/2 keyboard or mouse on their modern "gaming" system? Haven't all gamers moved on to new fancy laser mice? (Or whatever the fad-of-the-minute is.)
DanNeely - Sunday, May 20, 2012 - link
when all the previous generation of boards yanked pata/floppy support there were enough people sending protest letters to convince most of the mobo makers to add it back for at least a few models.Personally I suspect they would've been better off jointly designing a pata/floppy pcie 1x card for the legacy device brigade.
Lazlo Panaflex - Monday, May 21, 2012 - link
Asrock has included IDE and floppy connectors in various boards since the Dual-VSTA days...this is nothing new. Plus, some people still have decent IDE stuff laying around (i.e. DVD burners). Some older versions of Ghost run off a floppy.SlyNine - Sunday, May 20, 2012 - link
The reason I bought the board was because AsRocks name is a much better commodity then it was back in the A64 days. I bought it because I AsRocks name had proven itself, and I needed a motherboard with a hella lot of HDD ports. This build has been on 24/7 and up for weeks at a time before rebooting for 6 months so I'm glad I got the motherboard afterall. All the Fatality 1 did was make me not want it. But again needed the 10 HDD ports.I don't care about the Fatality 1 on the board at all. Used to play a ton of FPS's and I'm very very good at them. To bad I moved to a place with crappy internet, and was forced to buy a LCD. Makes all the difference in the world!
AssBall - Monday, May 21, 2012 - link
So you moved somewhere with crappy internet and need 10 drives spinning all the time on an ATX board... because that's not pointless, inefficient, or unrealistic at all....