"Both BIOSTAR Hi-Fi Z87X 3D and ASRock Z77 OC Formula motherboards have the audio solution based on the Realtek ALC898 8 Channel Blu-ray Audio CODEC but thanks to the extra filtration capabilities of the BIOSTAR board, we can clearly see a difference in the RMAA tests, so this is not just simple marketing. We would have preferred though to see a newer implementation of the audio CODEC like the ALC1150 version, which is available on some high-end Z87 boards already.
In the performed benchmarks, the BIOSTAR board has obtained good results; you may ask yourselves why we did re-bench the board at 3.8GHz too; well, this is because the ASRock board is clocking the Ivy Bridge CPU at the maximum Turbo frequency (3.8GHz), while the BIOSTAR Hi-Fi Z87X 3D board remains within Intel specifications and clocks the board to only 3.6GHz when all cores are active and this would have given it an unfair advance, hence the lower scores we have obtained in the first run."
