System Overview & Testing Procedures
The Z87 Sabertooth was installed in our test bench, which we use to test all of our motherboards. All of the hardware besides the motherboard stays the same to keep things uniform.
Test System Specs
Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K
Video Card: EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680
Motherboard: ASUS Z87 Sabertooth
Memory: 16GB Crucial Ballistix
Storage: 120GB Kingston HyperX 3K
Power: Corsair AX860i
Cooling: Asetek 240mm watercooler
Case: HighSpeed PC Top Deck Tech Station
We will be testing the motherboard at the CPU’s stock speed of 3.5 GHz and again at our max stable overclock which is 4.6 GHz.
I have organized our benchmarks into the sections you see below.
CPU Testing
SiSoftware Sandra
– Processor Arithmetic
– Processor Multi-Media
CINEBENCH R11.5 64-bit
x264 HD Benchmark 5.0
Overall System Testing
PCMark 8
PCMark 7
PCMark Vantage
Gaming & Video
3DMark
3DMark 11
Battlefield 3
Alien vs Predator Benchmark
Now let’s get to testing!
In Japan this (pretty good) board (with over a dozen software updates online already [complicating things]) only gets a ONE YEAR Warranty; via the Official Amazon ASUS Retailer.
I bought one and went to register it in English (and to join the owners club for added content); but was refused as there is no registration code. ASUS will not supply us in Japan/Asia with a 5-year warranty on paper (there is NO WARRANTY CARD supplied with the board as you get in USA/Europe/Australia/New Zealand/Canada/Russia etc).
We are discriminated against as customers/consumers?
They wrote to me and indicated that `IF` there is an international problem with the boards that I might have the right to claim a replacement board during the five years; but that would be difficult to process.
We get a ONE Year LIMITED Warranty here.
The Official ASUS Amazon retailer actually only provides a ONE MONTH IMMEDIATE REPLACEMENT WARRANTY if the board fails.
After that we have to go to ASUS direct; and that is hard; due to customers getting NO WARRANTY CARD and NO REGISTRATION Number.
So; the MARKETING IS MISLEADING.
They blamed me for reading in English on an English site for any oversight (via e-mails).
If you can read chinese~Japanese KANJI they may have their claims on ASUS Japan; but I dont read the near impossible; especially anything technical that fluent Japanese mostly cannot understand in computing either.