MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC Motherboard Review

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by Rob Williams on November 12, 2014 in Motherboards

The last time we took a look at an MSI gaming motherboard, it was the company’s smallest current offering: Z97I Gaming AC. For this review, we’re looking to the top of the Z97 ladder, with the Z97 Gaming 9 AC. Priced at about $290, it’s easy to predict what this board might bring to the table, but all told, it still managed to impress us.

Page 3 – Performance Testing & Final Thoughts

From a performance perspective, we feel that motherboard benchmarking is useless. It’s the motherboard’s job to allow all of the installed hardware to operate at its full potential, so in theory, a $100 option shouldn’t be much (or any) slower than a $300 one. The differences in price instead comes down to the quality of the onboard components and other features.

So why do it at all? It’s because it’s important to make sure that the board we’re dealing with doesn’t lack in one particular area versus the rest. If board A performs 2% slower than board B in PCMark, for example, that’s of no concern to us – random benchmark variance is a fact of life. However, if one board consistently performs weaker than the rest, that’s worthy of note – it could suggest that weaker components have been used which do not allow the hardware to operate at its full potential.

Please bear this in mind when perusing our results. Just because a board under-performs in a single test, it doesn’t mean anything in regards to its quality as a whole. Our ultimate goal here is to make sure that each board we test performs as we’d expect across the gamut of scenarios we pit them against.

Techgage Intel Z97 Test OS
Our Intel Z97 Testing OS (Wallpaper Credit)

Note: In some cases, one motherboard will perform better than another because a boost is applied to the CPU in the default configuration. Sometimes, that boost is caused when one of the XMP profiles is selected; in that case, the vendor just assumes you’re fine with a CPU overclock. ASUS’ “Multi-Core Enhancement” is one setting that will boost things, and it happens to be on by default on the tested Z97I-PLUS. While MSI’s Z97I Gaming AC didn’t apply a boost anywhere – something evident in the results – I’d guess that the full-blown Gaming 9 AC did, as it matches ASUS’ output. Alas, it’s hard to do apples-to-apples comparisons with motherboards nowadays, but as mentioned above, the goal here is to make sure no board falls behind due to being built using poor components.

Intel LGA1150 Test System
Processor Intel Core i7-4770K – Quad-Core, 3.50GHz
Motherboard ASUS Z97I-PLUS (BIOS: ‘2103’ 07/03/2014)
MSI Z97I Gaming AC (BIOS: ‘1.2’ 06/30/2014)
MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC (BIOS: ‘1.5’ 07/29/2014)
Memory Kingston HyperX Beast 2x8GB – DDR3-2133 11-12-11-31
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti (GeForce 334.98 Driver)
Audio Onboard
Storage Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD
Power Supply Corsair HX850W
Chassis Corsair Obsidian 700D Full-Tower
Cooling Noctua NH-U14S Air Cooler
Et cetera Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Increasing the BCLK value is one way that vendors could sneak in some higher-than-stock performance numbers, so after letting the test bench sit idle for a couple of minutes, we look at the current BCLK value as according to CPU-Z.

BCLK Values Result
ASUS Z97I-PLUS 99.8 MHz
MSI Z97I Gaming AC 100.0 MHz
MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC 100.0 MHz

General System Performance

To take a look at the “overall” performance of our PC configuration, we rely on dual Futuremark suites: PCMark 8 and 3DMark (2013).

PCMark 8 Suite Scores Home Work Creative
ASUS Z97I-PLUS 4346 5255 3478
MSI Z97I Gaming AC 4214 5123 3343
MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC 4327 5185 3471
Higher results are better.
3DMark (2013) 3DMark Graphics Physics
ASUS Z97I-PLUS 3286 3464 11116
MSI Z97I Gaming AC 3273 3458 10604
MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC 3283 3457 11251
Fire Strike test. 3DMark results in points; higher is better.

MSI’s big boy board matches ASUS’ ITX, while MSI’s ITX falls a bit behind – possibly due to the fact that slower RAM had to be used in that build, thanks to build complications.

I/O Performance

To properly give the internal SATA 6Gbps a good workout, we turn to HD Tune and CrystalDiskMark.

HD Tune Pro 5 Minimum Average Maximum Latency
ASUS Z97I-PLUS 309.6 422.5 460.6 0.056ms
MSI Z97I Gaming AC 305.3 418.6 455.2 0.055ms
MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC 285.8 393.1 427.9 0.067ms
Min/Avg/Max results in MB/s; higher is better. Latency results in ms; lower is better.
CrystalDiskMark Read Seq. Read 4K Write Seq. Write 4K
ASUS Z97I-PLUS 523.1 41.87 317.8 161.1
MSI Z97I Gaming AC 494.5 40.83 309.8 153.4
MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC 489.5 37.11 307.8 112.4
All results in MB/s.
CrystalDiskMark USB 3.0 Read Seq. Read 4K Write Seq. Write 4K
ASUS Z97I-PLUS 273.5 29.20 271.2 70.72
MSI Z97I Gaming AC 270.6 28.65 262.9 67.45
MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC 271.4 29.01 268.4 69.13
All results in MB/s.

Interestingly, MSI’s ITX board outperformed the Gaming 9 AC in all of these tests, aside from the USB one. The differences are minimal, and are not going to be noticed in the real-world, but it’s noteworthy nonetheless.

Rendering & Image Manipulation

Writing files to disk or reading a website doesn’t do much to exercise our CPU, so for that, we turn to a few common scenarios – image editing, video rendering, music conversion, and 3D rendering.

Adobe Lightroom 5.5 Result
ASUS Z97I-PLUS 589 s
MSI Z97I Gaming AC 636 s
MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC 581s
Results in seconds; lower is better.
Autodesk 3ds Max 2015 Result
ASUS Z97I-PLUS 895 s
MSI Z97I Gaming AC 981 s
MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC 914 s
Results in seconds; lower is better.
Cinebench R15 OpenGL CPU
ASUS Z97I-PLUS 132.63 800
MSI Z97I Gaming AC 119.54 759
MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC 123.15 800
Higher results are better.
dBpoweramp R15 FLAC to MP3
ASUS Z97I-PLUS 829 s
MSI Z97I Gaming AC 874 s
MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC 833 s
500 FLAC to 320Kbps MP3.
HandBrake 0.99 Result
ASUS Z97I-PLUS 2187 s
MSI Z97I Gaming AC 2319 s
MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC 2200 s
Results in seconds; lower is better.

MSI’s Gaming 9 AC might have fallen a bit short in the SATA tests, but stands its ground in these performance tests. It doesn’t manage to keep head-to-head with ASUS’ board, but it doesn’t fall behind, either.

Sub-system Performance

For memory and CPU testing, we utilize SiSoftware’s Sandra 2013 (SP3a), and for Ethernet testing, we use iperf (or more appropriately, the Java-based jperf which utilizes it).

Sandra 2014 SP2 (Memory) Integer Float
ASUS Z97I-PLUS 27.472 GB/s 27.607 GB/s
MSI Z97I Gaming AC 21.604 GB/s * 21.673 GB/s *
MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC 26.228 GB/s 26.176 GB/s
Int/Float/Cache results in GB/s; higher is better.
* This board tested with DDR3-1866 (vs. 2133) sticks due to space limitations.
Sandra 2014 SP2 (Arithmetic) Dhrystone Whetstone
ASUS Z97I-PLUS 157.16 GIPS 86.22 GFLOPS
MSI Z97I Gaming AC 148.79 GIPS 83.01 GFLOPS
MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC 156.57 GIPS 86.88 GFLOPS
Higher is better.
Sandra 2014 SP2 (Multi-core) Bandwidth Latency
ASUS Z97I-PLUS 31.568 GB/s 36.5 ns
MSI Z97I Gaming AC 28.340 GB/s 36.9 ns
MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC 30.666 GB/s 36.8 ns
Bandwidth results; higher is better. Latency results; lower is better.

Once again, the Gaming 9 AC performs well overall, outperforming its ITX sibling, but coming a bit short to ASUS’ board – due possibly to the fact that ASUS is a little more aggressive with its clock boost.

Other MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC Features & Final Thoughts

As I did on the last page, I’m borrowing some of the text from my Z97I Gaming AC board review to use here as it still applies. Overall, the feature set of these boards is almost identical – it’s the size, additional accessories, and extra expansion slots / ports that sets the Gaming 9 AC apart from its ITX little brother. So, let’s wrap this up.

Features I haven’t talked too much about up to this point are those related to the audio and networking, so let’s fix that.

For networking, MSI’s chosen to go with the gamer-targeted Killer Ethernet E2200 series card (2205 to be exact). While I can’t discredit that this solution is great for gaming, past experiences with it have left me not liking it much at all. The biggest issue I have with it might not affect many who buy this board, but it bugs me nonetheless: There’s no official Linux driver. That could be remedied via a wrapper or another driver for a similar chipset, but don’t expect a distro to take care of it for you.

Personally, I’d much rather the board include an Intel NIC and custom software that replicates the same gaming enhancements, like ASUS does with its motherboards (even the non-gaming ones). Nonetheless, as long as you know that Linux support is appalling for this chipset, and you might experience the odd niggle (I still have the driver crash on my personal board from time to time), the card does come with a boat load of features tailored to gaming.

To me, the highlight of this board isn’t the NIC (obviously), but the audio. I’m no audiophile, so I can’t properly review this solution, but my experiences with it overall are good. With Audio Boost 2, MSI helps “boost” the audio with Creative’s Sound Blaster Cinema 2, and I admit, I prefer listening to audio like this. Even with my Xonar card on my regular desktop, I enable “Dolby Headphone” because I like the much boomier sound (see, I’m not an audiophile).

MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC Motherboard and Box

That’s not all that makes the audio solution interesting. On the board itself, the card is isolated to keep the signal away from other components, and improving things further, an EMI shield is found near the top of the board. Other perks include dual headphone amplifiers (supporting headphones up to 600ohms), Nichicon capacitors specifically for the audio, and, while I’m not sure of its actual benefit, gold audio connectors at the back.

For the final audio-related enhancement, MSI really pulled no punches. “USB Audio Power” ensures that all USB ports get a “strong 5V” power signal at all times – potentially useful for those who use external DACs, or perhaps even USB-based headsets.

Looking beyond networking and audio, the Gaming 9 AC offers a serious amount of features. While I kind of would have liked to have seen 10 SATA ports, I admit that most people wouldn’t take advantage of so many – and this is a board that caters to gamers, not the general enthusiast. What is quite nice, though, is the ability to install an M.2 SSD. I am still unsure if I’d do this with my next build, but it is kind of tempting.

On the software side, the fact that this board supports SteamOS out-of-the-box is great, although I’m not too sure that many people would have those sorts of plans for a board like this. It’s also kind of nice that MSI bundles in a six-month subscription to XSplit Gamecaster, but with so many other completely free game recording / streaming tools available, the software might be a hard sell beyond those six months.

MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC - Angled

Ultimately, this board has a bit of everything for everyone. It’s a gaming-focused board, but it has a number of niceties to cater to the regular enthusiast, and even the overclocker. On the OCing side, it’s nice to have the option to make use of onboard voltage points, and the power / reset buttons at the top (these are far from being uncommon, but they’re still great to have). I also appreciate the fact that the board includes an LED BIOS readout – something that gets highlighted to me everytime I troubleshoot a board that doesn’t have one.

Given all that the Z97 Gaming 9 AC offers, is it worth its cost-of-entry (~$290)? I’d say for the serious gamer, or anyone wanting a well-rounded high-end board, it definitely is. Admittedly, the Z97I Gaming AC, while a great board, left me a little flustered due to some of the build complications I had (which admittedly, were entirely my fault). Moving over to this board felt like a breath of fresh air – I simply loved it. It’s hard not to when a board offers so many good features and other perks.

Overall, a seriously good board. If there’s only one thing it makes me want even more, it might be the X99S Gaming 9 AC. Hot damn.

MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC - Techgage Editor's Choice
MSI Z97 Gaming 9 AC

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Rob Williams

Rob founded Techgage in 2005 to be an 'Advocate of the consumer', focusing on fair reviews and keeping people apprised of news in the tech world. Catering to both enthusiasts and businesses alike; from desktop gaming to professional workstations, and all the supporting software.

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