Reviewed: MSI Z97I Gaming AC & R9 270X Mini ITX

The following tests were all reproducible or scripted benchmarks as opposed to free form gameplay that can be more subjective.

3DMark 11

Unigine Heaven 

Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0 Basic is one of the programs that we run to temperature test the cards and we also do a benchmark run during the process. 

Tomb Raider 

For the in-game benchmarking utility, the following graphics settings were used

1920×1080, Motion Blur:On, Screen Effects:On, Quality: Ultimate,Texture Quality: Ultra,Texture Filter: Anisotropic 16X, Hair Quality: TRESSFX, Anti-Aliasing: FXAA Shadows: Normal, Shadow Resolution: High, Level of Detail: Ultra, Reflections: High, Depth of Field: Ultra, SSAO: Ultra, Post Processing: On, Tessellation: On, High Precision: On

Although TRESSFX is an AMD feature we had it enabled because gamers will want to enjoy it in this title and we have other benchmarks so it all evens out in the end.

Batman Arkham City 

The settings used for the Arkham City ingame benchmark were:
1920×1080, V-Sync: Off, Anti-Aliasing: FXAA (High), Directx 11 Features: MVSS and HBAO, Dx11 Tessellation: Normal, Detail Level: Very High Dynamic Shadows: Yes, Motion Blur: Yes, Distortion: Yes, Lens Flares: Yes, Light Shafts: Yes, Reflections: Yes, Ambient Occlusion: Yes, Hardware Accelerated PhysX: Normal

Hitman Absolution 

The following settings were used in the ingame benchmark:
1920×1080, MSAA:8x, Vsync: Off, Quality Setting: Ultra

Metro 2033

The benchmarking scripter for Metro 2033 was set using the following options

1920×1080, DX11, Quality: Very High, AA: MSAA 4X, Texture Filtering: AF 16X, Advanced PhysX: Disabled, Tessellation: Enabled, DOF: Enabled