ASUS P8Z77-V vs Pro: Worth it for OCing?

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CHAoS_NiNJA

[H]ard|Gawd
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Title says it. Is it worth the extra money to get the 16-phase over the 12-phase? I'm going to be overclocking an i5 3570k with a Corsair H60, and I am SO tempted, but could use the extra 35 to pick up other things in my order. What kind of OCing difference would I see? Anything noticeable?
 
Doubt there will be any difference, especially in moderate IV overclocks on air/closed loop water. Put the $35 into a faster GPU if you are a gamer.
 
grambo said:
Doubt there will be any difference, especially in moderate IV overclocks on air/closed loop water. Put the $35 into a faster GPU if you are a gamer.
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Unless you're going to push past the IB heatwall (which generally has little or no bennies outside of benchmarks) the extra phases above that of even the V-LX matter little (Intel itself recommends 12-phase); it should be the OTHER features of the -V or higher that would be a proper deciding factor (in my case, it's the WiFi-GO feature along with MicroCenter bundle pricing, that rung in "Vinnie" in the first place; surprisingly, the Intel PHY, despite the peace of mind factor, is not an advantage in and of itself). I plan on remaining below the heatwall, therefore technically the extra phases the -V offers over the V-LX or BIOSTAR TZ77XE4 are overkill.
 
SigmaOrionis said:
According to all the reviews I've read they say all the boards from the V up overclock the same. There is a good video on youtube that talks about the differences.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jjenf0z8bo

Hope this Helps
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I've reviewed a significant portion of the P8Z77 series. They do all overclock pretty much the same with about a 200MHz variance from top to bottom. In other words, on the same CPU I've seen anywhere from about 4.7GHz to 4.9GHz clock speeds. They do not all have the same overclocking features in UEFI though. Some boards like the P8Z77-I Deluxe and P8ZZ-M Pro may lack CPU PLL voltage adjustments beyond 1.9v. However I've rarely needed more than that to find the max overclock for these boards.

In fact the settings that tend to work on one of these boards works on all of them. Things aren't really any different in the ASUS product line until you get to the Republic of Gamer's boards.
 
Dan_D said:
I've reviewed a significant portion of the P8Z77 series. They do all overclock pretty much the same with about a 200MHz variance from top to bottom. In other words, on the same CPU I've seen anywhere from about 4.7GHz to 4.9GHz clock speeds. They do not all have the same overclocking features in UEFI though. Some boards like the P8Z77-I Deluxe and P8ZZ-M Pro may lack CPU PLL voltage adjustments beyond 1.9v. However I've rarely needed more than that to find the max overclock for these boards.

In fact the settings that tend to work on one of these boards works on all of them. Things aren't really any different in the ASUS product line until you get to the Republic of Gamer's boards.
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Thank you, Dan!

Your reviews, in fact, were part of what made my case.

Since I had already decided to stay under the IB heatwall (lack of benefit) it becomes other features that decide which Z77 motherboard to adopt (the same thinking would apply to Sandy Bridge - even had I stuck with i5-2500K, I would have still gone with Z77 as it costs no more than Z68).

Hence my rather nasty dilemma with ASUS P8Z77-V vs. BIOSTAR TZ77XE4: which feature is more important (extra USB 3.0 ports - either front or back, which the XE4 offers via included front or rear backets, vs. WiFi-GO offered by the P8Z77-V and the Intel PHY).

Curses.
 
PGHammer said:
Thank you, Dan!

Your reviews, in fact, were part of what made my case.

Since I had already decided to stay under the IB heatwall (lack of benefit) it becomes other features that decide which Z77 motherboard to adopt (the same thinking would apply to Sandy Bridge - even had I stuck with i5-2500K, I would have still gone with Z77 as it costs no more than Z68).

Hence my rather nasty dilemma with ASUS P8Z77-V vs. BIOSTAR TZ77XE4: which feature is more important (extra USB 3.0 ports - either front or back, which the XE4 offers via included front or rear backets, vs. WiFi-GO offered by the P8Z77-V and the Intel PHY).

Curses.
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I don't know about the BioStar, but many of the other motherboards besides ASUS use VIA VL810 hubs and multiplex your Intel USB 3.0 ports. In essence they are all shared and if they were all populated, you could potentially bottleneck them. ASUS gives you a controller for each set of ports. ASUS also supports turbo mode (essentially a form of SCSI over USB) on the Intel ports and ASMedia controller ports, and UASP over the ASMedia 1042 ports. This amounts to substantial increases in performance over the older BOT protocol that is used by default. ASRock does this too, but their implementation is different, but I don't have the specifics.

Personally I'd take ports that aren't hubbed and the Intel PHY and decent Wi-Fi GO! card over the BioStar offering.
 
Dan_D said:
I don't know about the BioStar, but many of the other motherboards besides ASUS use VIA VL810 hubs and multiplex your Intel USB 3.0 ports. In essence they are all shared and if they were all populated, you could potentially bottleneck them. ASUS gives you a controller for each set of ports. ASUS also supports turbo mode (essentially a form of SCSI over USB) on the Intel ports and ASMedia controller ports, and UASP over the ASMedia 1042 ports. This amounts to substantial increases in performance over the older BOT protocol that is used by default. ASRock does this too, but their implementation is different, but I don't have the specifics.

Personally I'd take ports that aren't hubbed and the Intel PHY and decent Wi-Fi GO! card over the BioStar offering.
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ASUS also requires an extra-cost front bay for the front USB 3.0 ports - BIOSTAR's advantage (with the TZ77XE4) is that they include the bay. As much as I like Intel PHYs (I've had them before), the advantage has to be worth it *to me* - given that I haven't had any issues with Realtek gigabit PHYs (and the stated advantages of this *particular* Intel gigabit PHY are negated by a router) why pay the extra cost for something of little to no benefit? That leaves Wi-Fi-GO. Useful - but $50 more useful? (By the by, BIOSTAR's ports aren't hubbed, either - in fact, they use the same controller layout ASUS does.)
 
PGHammer said:
ASUS also requires an extra-cost front bay for the front USB 3.0 ports - BIOSTAR's advantage (with the TZ77XE4) is that they include the bay. As much as I like Intel PHYs (I've had them before), the advantage has to be worth it *to me* - given that I haven't had any issues with Realtek gigabit PHYs (and the stated advantages of this *particular* Intel gigabit PHY are negated by a router) why pay the extra cost for something of little to no benefit? That leaves Wi-Fi-GO. Useful - but $50 more useful? (By the by, BIOSTAR's ports aren't hubbed, either - in fact, they use the same controller layout ASUS does.)
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I didn't say that the Biostar board hubbed their ports. I'm not familiar with that board. What I said was that many manufacturers use hubs instead of dedicated controllers for USB 3.0. Gigabyte and Intel both do that.
 
I'm trying to build a similar rig here, and curious as well...is the PRO that much better than the non "pro"?

I'm also only looking to moderately OC my CPU with the same Corsair H60. If I can save money on the mobo, I'd like to get a lot of good RAM. I currently only have 4gb is on an aging x3350 rig.
 
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