Benchmarks - discrete and IGP gaming
Moving on to gaming and keeping the GTX 680 in the system, both Core i7-2700K-equipped boards break the 9,000-mark barrier in the default 3DMark 11 test. Compare this with the 8,484 marks obtained when using a Core i5-2500K. We can't run the Intel HD Graphics in this test because they don't support DX11.
But they do run 3DMark Vantage. The GeForce GTX 680 crashes through the 30,000-mark barrier while the integrated graphics just about muster 2,000 marks. What's of more relevance here is that the Z77 and Z68 boards perform at near-identical levels.
We can run the GTX 680 and the IGP in Just Cause 2 at the same settings used in our graphics reviews, too. Yup, 1080p high quality is obviously way too much for the HD 3000 Graphics to handle.
So we dropped it down to a 720p resolution along with significantly lower settings. The game is just about playable but you're left with wanting more. Perhaps more for giggles than real-world use, we ran the GTX 680 at these settings and it managed an average 258.7fps.
The last game, Batman: Arkham City, also benchmarked with our high-end graphics settings, shows little bias for either platform.
