ASUS: P67 Sabertooth vs Maximus IV Gene Z

[jvroig]

Howdy mates.

I'm planning my next build, and the only component left is the motherboard.

It boils down to 2 ASUS boards:
-P67 Sabertooth
-Maximus IV Gene Z

The CPU will be a 2600K, overclocked to whatever it can give me with high-end cooling, and 16GB of regular DDR3 RAM.

The most glaring difference between the Sabertooth and the MIGZ is of course P67 vs Z68:
- I don't care about the GPU of sandy bridge, so P67 is just fine
- I do not really want any Z68 feature, except perhaps the SSD caching, since I have a spare 60GB SSD (plextor) lying around being useless.

As far is it goes now, I am pretty much sold on the Sabertooth, and it edged out the MIGZ simply by how it looks. From reading online, the Sabertooth is polarizing - some people hate the shroud, some love it, some say it looks much nicer in person. I like it.

The MIGZ being Z68 has that SSD caching ability, but I am not sure how important it is to me. Eventually, I might be getting an entire 120/160GB SSD anyway, but right now I'm purely mechanical HDDs.

This computer will be my "flagship", and so it will do more than just play games. In particular, since I will be using it for work-related purposes, it will be running the following:
-Fedora 14 as OS
-Oracle 11g R2
-TimesTen 11.2
-Ingres 10.1
-Vectorwise 1.6
-LAMP stack
-Eclipse w/ CDT/Python/PHP/Android SDK plugins

There are other apps of course (such as dual-booting into WinXP to run Steam), but they are just misc; those listed above are the main ones and are really important. I am not sure how SSD caching will affect them, or if it will even work reliably in a linux environment (does it need a software driver in windows that comes with the mobo? Because if it does, then no joy).

So, what say the motherboard gurus of Anandtech? Is it just a toss-up between these two (so I can go with what looks better to me), or is the Z68 a much better deal? (I do not care about the price difference; I believe the MIGZ is more expensive by a little bit)

Thanks in advance for any feedback you can give! :thumbsup:

 

[Zap]

Flip a coin. Do you want Z68 chipset stuff like Quick Sync and SSD cache? BTW you know that the Gene-Z is micro ATX, right?

 

[jvroig]

Yep, saw that the Gene-Z is Micro ATX. Fine with me. I also read that the first PCIe slot is pretty close to the CPU more than most micro ATX boards, and may end up having your vid card almost touch a big-ass heatsink, but since I only ever use 1 GPU, I can just use the second slot.

Quick Sync, definitely no use for it.

SSD Cache - well, I'm not sure if it will work in a Linux environment, and if it will actually benefit me in the stuff I run and work with the most:

-Fedora 14 as OS
-Oracle 11g R2
-TimesTen 11.2
-Ingres 10.1
-Vectorwise 1.6
-LAMP stack
-Eclipse w/ CDT/Python/PHP/Android SDK plugins

... so I'm not sure if it's a feature I must have.

If it comes down to flipping a coin, then I'm getting the Sabertooth for its looks

 

[jvroig]

My bad, I've been talking about how the Sabertooth looks sexayyy but did not even provide a link or pics to expedite the comparison.

The ASUS Maximus IV Gene Z:

It's the standard ASUS ROG color scheme, black with red, and it really doesn't look bad at all. But, for lack of a better term, it's really "normal" despite the ROG color scheme and heatsinks.


Now, the ASUS P67 Sabertooth:

I prefer how this looks MUCH more. It's a completely unique look (at least, for me; I don't know if some of you guys have seen mobos like this before). I like what they did there, and the black/dark-gray with yellow and brown trimmings is not bad at all. I love how it looks.

 

[TheAdvocate]

Yep, saw that the Gene-Z is Micro ATX. Fine with me. I also read that the first PCIe slot is pretty close to the CPU more than most micro ATX boards, and may end up having your vid card almost touch a big-ass heatsink, but since I only ever use 1 GPU, I can just use the second slot.

No. Not unless you want to limit your GPU to 8x. The first slot is 16x, the 2nd is 8x. It says so clearly in the manual. And yes, I own one, and yes, it is an extremely tight fit for a low profile cooler like the Big Scythe that I had to use in my HTPC.

Here are some photos from my rig of how close they are:

Not the best angle, but trust me when I say that it's about 0.5 to 1 millimeter of seperation between my heatpipes on my Scythe and the back of my GPU. That is my least favorite feature of this board. Other than that, it's great.

Wiith a regular (tall) cooler, in a normal case, I don't think you're going to have an issue. For instance, the stock Intel cooler left plenty of room.

 

[jvroig]

Whoa, nice heads-up, TheAdvocate. I had no idea it was 8x only for the second slot even if the first is unoccupied . My due diligence did not reach that far.

I'm not sure if the 16x vs 8x is a noticeable performance difference outside of benchmarks, but it certainly does not help the MIGZ's case here. Sabertooth is looking better and better.



Any Sabertooth owners out there? Relevant owner's feedback I should take into account before deciding on Sabertooth vs the MIGZ?

 

[TheAdvocate]

If you get the Gene-Z, just get a tall cooler instead of a wide one.

I don't have one, so I haven't tried it, but I am fairly sure that something like the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus would fit fine without crowding the PCIEx16 slot.

 

[jvroig]

I do have a Hyper 212+, but I bought a much larger cooler (Thermaltake Frio OCK) very recently in preparation for my new build. It is 130x130 (L x W), while your Scythe Big Shuriken seems to be 125x135. The 1st digit is the relevant one I think (from your pic, it is the 125mm dimension that brushes against the GPU, not the 135 dimension, at least from how I look at it), so it seems my preferred cooler will be an even worse fit for the 1st slot and I will certainly have to make do with the 2nd slot as I initially expected before learning about being stuck at 8x.

 

[Wuzup101]

I do have a sabertooth... haven't had any issues with it. It has / had all the features that I wanted when I purchase it (as soon as B3 rev versions came back to market). The layout is solid - no issues there. Seems to overclock well...

I really couldn't see myself being upset by any new Asus board though.

 

[jvroig]

Thanks, Wuzup101!

I've read it looks much better in person (query: was the Sabertooth's looks a factor in your buying decision?), you wouldn't happen to have pictures of it as you were assembling it or how it looks after the entire build was completed, would you?

By the way, nice rig :thumbsup:

 

[Idontcare]

Hi JV

I went with the MIVEZ myself. It seemed a little backwards to be spending more on my mobo than I was spending on the itself though.

Obviously you have the "Z vs P" internal debate going on. I don't use any of the Z68 features, I turned off the iGPU from within the BIOS and I don't do the SSD caching thing.

Why no SSD cache for me? Its actually tied into the same reason I went with the MIVEZ in the first place. I've lost more than enough data over time being a beta-user (i.e. early adopter) with these funky hybrid-cache style setups in the past (raid cards, software raid, etc) and now I stick with KISS when it comes to my drives.

So no SSD cache for me. But why MIVEZ then? Because I also did not want to be caught with a mobo that was taking second-priority to ASUS bios engineering resources while the issues with sandforce were being hammered out.

If you look into the "reality on the ground" of bios revs and SSD issues/fixes you'll come to the realization that the P67 owners (for ASUS at least) were typically waiting around an extra month or so for their BIOS updates to fix the same things that were fixed in BIOS updates made available to the MIVEZ and MIVGZ owners.

This distinction may no longer merit consideration now that we are almost to October, but back in late July/early Aug it was a big issue if you owned a sandforce SSD (OCZ V3 240GB here).

That said, the second reason I went with MIVEZ was the robustness of the OC'ing features and their implementation. The BIOS is so slick, the AI Suite works like a champ, and ROG Connect for OC'ing is really nice too.

(I'm assuming MIVGZ shares this in common with the MIVEZ, no idea if the Sabertooth has them)

I do like the look of that sabertooth though. It wins the aesthetics race

So - in summary, for me I would have gone P67 instead of Z68 if it weren't for the fact that Z68 was getting the support priorities within Asus at the time and for the fact that the ROG MIVE/MIVG series are beasts when it comes to features for tweaking and optimizing the OC. None of that may be material at this stage in the game though.

 

[jvroig]

Thanks, IDC. I'm so sleepy already, I can't quite wrap my head around whether I will actually need the priority TLC that ASUS gives its Z68 and ROG line, or not.

As far as overclocking potential goes, though, you reckon there's a significant difference? I scoured the reviews, but I don't trust any of them. Bit-tech, Overclockers, Guru3D, etc... they all pump WAY too much voltage into their 2500K/2600K chips for me to take their results seriously (1.45 - 1.48V seems the norm for them; WTH is that, a Thuban chip? Geezus). Their results seem to only indicate a non-existing or 100MHz difference (in favor of the Gene-Z), but with that much voltage pumped into the chips, I'm not sure that kind of result reflects real-life, practical usage when voltage is kept under a reasonable limit (far as I can gather, this is 1.4V and under).

 

[compman25]

I have a Sabertooth also, no problems with it at all. Also like the looks of it.

 

[Idontcare]

Thanks, IDC. I'm so sleepy already, I can't quite wrap my head around whether I will actually need the priority TLC that ASUS gives its Z68 and ROG line, or not.

As far as overclocking potential goes, though, you reckon there's a significant difference? I scoured the reviews, but I don't trust any of them. Bit-tech, Overclockers, Guru3D, etc... they all pump WAY too much voltage into their 2500K/2600K chips for me to take their results seriously (1.45 - 1.48V seems the norm for them; WTH is that, a Thuban chip? Geezus). Their results seem to only indicate a non-existing or 100MHz difference (in favor of the Gene-Z), but with that much voltage pumped into the chips, I'm not sure that kind of result reflects real-life, practical usage when voltage is kept under a reasonable limit (far as I can gather, this is 1.4V and under).

There are a bunch of utilities available on the ROG boards for controlling the VRMs (frequencies, etc) that enable you to really go after the fine tuning if you are intent to keep Vcc under a specific number but you want to get that last 100MHz under your belt and so on.

Whether or not the ability to finesse your OC is worth the extra cash is a question to be asked. I suspect the answer is "no, no its not worth it".

I like playing around with my rig, I use it more as a lab tool than a working computer, and as such I wanted to have as many tweakable options as possible. That won't be everyone else's preference, but if you are the kind of geek that likes to tweak things just to see what happens then you'll probably be more satisfied with the options on a MIVGZ versus the Sabertooth.

For 99% of the market though I bet these options go unused.

 

[Zap]

Whoa, nice heads-up, TheAdvocate. I had no idea it was 8x only for the second slot even if the first is unoccupied . My due diligence did not reach that far.

Yes it did. You posted your query here, right? :thumbsup:

I do like the look of that sabertooth though. It wins the aesthetics race

Yeah, I almost bought one for myself due to how it looked before settling on a P8P67 Pro for $30 less.

As far as overclocking potential goes, though, you reckon there's a significant difference?

No. If a board has most of the overclocking features (and they work) then different boards will probably be within 100MHz or so of each other.