Application Performance
The Excel 2010 results were extremely close for the most part, though the Asrock Z77 Extreme6 did squeak ahead with a time of just 4.39 seconds. The Intel DZ77GA-70K and Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H-WB followed at 4.46 and 4.49 seconds respectively, while the ECS Z77H2-AX settled at 4.52 seconds.
WinRAR's compression performance was extremely close, with the exception of the ECS Z77H2-AX, which was much slower than the other Z77 boards for whatever reason. While the DZ77GA-70K, Extreme6 and Z77X-UD5H-WB completed the 700MB compression test in 98 seconds, the Z77H2-AX took 108 seconds.
The ECS Z77H2-AX lagged behind again in Adobe Photoshop CS5, taking 28.4 seconds versus the ~20 seconds it took other Z77 boards. Gigabyte's offering was the fastest, followed by Asrock's and then Intel's.
The Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H-WB performed well in Fritz Chess 13 with a kilo node per second score of 13301, making it slightly faster than the Extreme6's 13289.