MSI Z68A-GD80 (G3) Motherboard Review - PAGE 5

7-Zip:

7-Zip is a compression program, much like WinRAR. It features a built-in test, which gives a score for compression and decompression.

When testing motherboards with similar specifications, you'll want to see if the board is performing at least at the same level as its competitors, and exactly what impact overclocking has on the overall performance. In the case of the Z68A-GD80, the first benchmark demonstrates that it is indeed capable of performing at the same level as competing motherboards from ASUS and Gigabyte, as it fell behind just one board prior to overclocking.

Once overclocked, the MSI Z68A-GD80 showcased excellent scaling, and in the testing labs the extra clock speeds yielded an impressive performance increase of nearly 25%.

Handbrake:

HandBrake is an application that converts sound and video files to other formats. It makes use the many available threads so it can exploit the processor to its full potential.

During Handbrake benchmarking the Z68A-GD80 managed to keep pace with the other motherboards, shaving a whole two seconds off the total format time. Even while two seconds is not necessarily going to be noticeable in real-world use, the overclocking results increased the total performance by nearly 26%.