ASRock Fatal1ty Z77 Professional Review - IDE and Floppy on Z77
by Ian Cutress on May 20, 2012 1:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
- Fatal1ty
- Z77
The effect of 'Fatal1ty' on a motherboard gives ASRock few marketing tools and several, perhaps beneficial, features for users. Our mate Wendel is not only selling his brand, but also a consultant for design on the products – as a result, we get features such as IDE ports, Floppy Ports, improved mouse sensitivity ports, and a push to be more gamer friendly. While most people can list features, it is left to ASRock on the motherboards to provide the implementation, which users hope will be top notch.
Given the Z77 space, and the willingness of other manufacturers to introduce mild overclocking enhancements at default, the Z77 Professional as shipped does not perform perhaps as well as it should when it comes to computation or throughput – and is mildly disappointing when it also doesn’t reach the upper echelons in our gaming suite either due to this fact.
For I/O, the USB 2.0 speeds on ASRock boards seem to be a distinct margin slower than other products, but USB 3.0 is very normal. ASRock rely on their XFast USB software, which applies new protocols to the USB drivers, to power through any USB test with ease and better-than-standard results.
The main selling point for ASRock on the Fatal1ty Z77 Professional is the array of extra ‘gaming level’ features on board. If the title of the review did not give it away, we have access to a Floppy port and an IDE port on board. Legacy features such as these do not come around that often on modern level, ‘high end’ chipsets, so there will be a market here for them. But I struggle to see the benefit to gamers – I once heard that the IDE port is so gamers can use old hard drives. Given that it has been a good while since SATA took hold I would be surprised if anyone wanted to carry over an IDE drive in a Z77 build (even my father who updates every 6+ years is now fully on the SATA bandwagon). The addition of the floppy drive confuses me as well.
Other gaming features I would expect on the board, such as improved audio, goes only as far as the Realtek ALC898, and the improved USB polling functionality would be limited by VSync (unless Virtu MVP + Virtual VSync is used). Certain gamers prefer a PS/2 keyboard, so at least that is here. Software wise we have the XFast LAN to prioritize gaming applications, as well as XFast RAM to provide quick swap file storage.
There are some other nice features on the board – 10 SATA ports being the main obvious one, but also dual Broadcom NICs which can be teamed for improved network throughput. ASRock continue with their ‘Combined Cooler Option’, allowing both socket 775 and socket 1155 coolers to be used.
The final point to mention is the phase count. While not really ever an issue on modern power delivery systems, it has been my observation over the past year that more phases means more power usage under lightly loaded scenarios due to multiple phase loading (depending on how they are multiplexed). In that regard, the 16+8 phase solution on the Z77 Professional storms our power usage test during 1080p HD video in at 150W, 48W more than the Z77 Extreme4 (note almost 90%+ efficiency from power supply here).
Overall, the board has some features I would love to see elsewhere – SATA ports and Combined Cooler Option are preferred. But the Z77 Professional lacks a lot of what differentiates a good board from a great gaming board – performance, intelligent layout and true gaming audio. If ASRock want to promote a board with legacy components, it may be more beneficial to have a legacy SKU rather than pile on the features on a gaming class system.
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Matt355 - Monday, May 21, 2012 - link
I hear you, I have a full size ATX case but have started buying Micro ATX Motherboards to avoid junk I don't want. If your running a SSD and a 3TB drive drive as a gamer your not looking for 10 SATA ports, your not running your video card off PCI slot or your hard drives off IDE. you probably don't even need an optical drive so why would you want a Floppy drive.fausto412 - Sunday, May 20, 2012 - link
I met the guy last year at an event, he was there to support ASRock. To start off a review of a product by being a hater is just sad. I have own Fatal!ty branded sound cards and Headsets. Never once did it bother me. Fatal!ty was the guy living the dream, no different than playing basketball...you still wish you was MJ for just a second. Don't hate congratulate!madmanjasper - Sunday, May 20, 2012 - link
In fairness he seemed to be using his experience to draw a comparison between marketing in different regions. Not blind hate.shin0bi272 - Sunday, May 20, 2012 - link
he's living the dream of dropping out of college and living in his parents basement and being one of the only people to win prize money while they were still paying people to compete. When they tried to make competitive video game playing a "sport" no one wanted to watch and it floundered.Please also note all the games he played (after practicing 8-12hrs a day mind you) had no recoil in the weapons. Games like pain killer and UT3 which are fun but have relatively low skill involved in racking up kills... you just spray and pray... and for a short time in the early to mid 2000's youd get paid.
Now he spends his entire day running around getting companies to put his face on their hardware and add useless features (anyone remember the 64mb of audio ram on his version of the first x-fi?) to them and jack up the price so he can make millions. And you compare him to MJ? Not to mention the horrible use of the english language in doing so. A kid who sits on their butt playing video games is not an athlete they are an occupy wall street member.
atticus14 - Monday, May 21, 2012 - link
lol @ games that lack recoil involve less skillso i suppose you would be a complete boss at a game like Q3 then since its so easy with no recoil. I guess you fail to realize that games like UT and Q3 faded from the spotlight because they were too damn hard for the majority of people as veterans constantly wiped the floor with them as noobs barely managed to put a point on the bored if not go into the negatives (UT was not AS harsh but you failed to mention Q3 which made Fat's name). They made it a hair easier with Quake Live's matchmaking but being "too hard" is still the reason why it has a small community; feel free to try, just dont get over confident in the noob tier quakelive.com
Lord 666 - Sunday, May 20, 2012 - link
Just like the Fatl1ty name was an albatross for Abit, ASRock has lost touch its roots and more importantly relevant features.shin0bi272 - Sunday, May 20, 2012 - link
When are people going to stop giving this dbag money to put his ugly face and retarded gamer tag on their hardware? No one gives a damn about this guy and yet people keep paying him to put his name on their stuff and overcharging us for it.kevith - Monday, May 21, 2012 - link
Not his biggest fan, are you?prophet001 - Monday, May 21, 2012 - link
^^ Creepers gonna creepjabber - Monday, May 21, 2012 - link
....was take a full featured ATX board and then they put a custom heatsink on it and some custom decals.Job done.
Should have taken maybe two weeks to sort out. No real product plans went into this product.
What's the non Wendelised SKU for this board?