On The Wings of an Eagle: GIGABYTE's X570 I Aorus Pro WIFI Motherboard Tested
by Gavin Bonshor on March 19, 2020 10:00 AM ESTCPU Performance, Short Form
For our motherboard reviews, we use our short form testing method. These tests usually focus on if a motherboard is using MultiCore Turbo (the feature used to have maximum turbo on at all times, giving a frequency advantage), or if there are slight gains to be had from tweaking the firmware. We put the memory settings at the CPU manufacturers suggested frequency, making it very easy to see which motherboards have MCT enabled by default.
For X570 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 1903 update as per our Ryzen 3000 CPU review.
Rendering - Blender 2.7b: 3D Creation Suite - link
A high profile rendering tool, Blender is open-source allowing for massive amounts of configurability, and is used by a number of high-profile animation studios worldwide. The organization recently released a Blender benchmark package, a couple of weeks after we had narrowed our Blender test for our new suite, however their test can take over an hour. For our results, we run one of the sub-tests in that suite through the command line - a standard ‘bmw27’ scene in CPU only mode, and measure the time to complete the render.
Streaming and Archival Video Transcoding - Handbrake 1.1.0
A popular open source tool, Handbrake is the anything-to-anything video conversion software that a number of people use as a reference point. The danger is always on version numbers and optimization, for example the latest versions of the software can take advantage of AVX-512 and OpenCL to accelerate certain types of transcoding and algorithms. The version we use here is a pure CPU play, with common transcoding variations.
We have split Handbrake up into several tests, using a Logitech C920 1080p60 native webcam recording (essentially a streamer recording), and convert them into two types of streaming formats and one for archival. The output settings used are:
- 720p60 at 6000 kbps constant bit rate, fast setting, high profile
- 1080p60 at 3500 kbps constant bit rate, faster setting, main profile
- 1080p60 HEVC at 3500 kbps variable bit rate, fast setting, main profile
Rendering – POV-Ray 3.7.1: Ray Tracing - link
The Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer, or POV-Ray, is a freeware package for as the name suggests, ray tracing. It is a pure renderer, rather than modeling software, but the latest beta version contains a handy benchmark for stressing all processing threads on a platform. We have been using this test in motherboard reviews to test memory stability at various CPU speeds to good effect – if it passes the test, the IMC in the CPU is stable for a given CPU speed. As a CPU test, it runs for approximately 1-2 minutes on high-end platforms.
Compression – WinRAR 5.60b3: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30-second 720p videos.
Synthetic – 7-Zip v1805: link
Out of our compression/decompression tool tests, 7-zip is the most requested and comes with a built-in benchmark. For our test suite, we’ve pulled the latest version of the software and we run the benchmark from the command line, reporting the compression, decompression, and a combined score.
It is noted in this benchmark that the latest multi-die processors have very bi-modal performance between compression and decompression, performing well in one and badly in the other. There are also discussions around how the Windows Scheduler is implementing every thread. As we get more results, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test: link
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz, and IPC win in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores. For a brief explanation of the platform agnostic coding behind this benchmark, see my forum post here.
Neuron Simulation - DigiCortex v1.20: link
The newest benchmark in our suite is DigiCortex, a simulation of biologically plausible neural network circuits, and simulates activity of neurons and synapses. DigiCortex relies heavily on a mix of DRAM speed and computational throughput, indicating that systems which apply memory profiles properly should benefit and those that play fast and loose with overclocking settings might get some extra speed up. Results are taken during the steady-state period in a 32k neuron simulation and represented as a function of the ability to simulate in real time (1.000x equals real-time).
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eek2121 - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link
Umm, speaking of misinformation. The B450 has 4 PCIE 3.0 lanes in addition to the 20 PCIE 3.0 lanes provided by the chipset. Yes, boards may provide a slot that is PCIE 2.0 only, but the majority of the connections, including the GPU, are 3.0.a5cent - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link
No! You are thoroughly confused and you are the one spreading misinformation.Yes, the lanes going to the GPU are PCIe 3.0 lanes, as well as four going to an M.2 slot, but those lanes come off the CPU, not the CHIPSET. The CHIPSET and the CPU are two different things. We're talking about the chipset here.
The CHIPSET is officially PCIe 2.0. It has ZERO PCIe 3.0 lanes. You can look this up in any official documentation. On B550 those lanes will be PCIe 3.0, not PCIe 2.0.
At least understand the technology before commenting on it.
InTheMidstOfTheInBeforeCrowd - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link
The 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes of the B450 are not usable for the user of the motherboard, because their only and exclusive purpose is to link the B450 hub itself to the CPU.You can't use them for anything else, because without the B450 hub being tied to the CPU through those PCIe 3.0 lanes, the B450 and the motherboard as a whole would be a dead fish in the water.
nerd1 - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link
The fan is right on the main m.2 drive heatsink, and PCIE 4.0 drive makes A LOT of heat.evernessince - Saturday, March 21, 2020 - link
Which is really irrelevant since the fan on X570 motherboards are either inaudible or run is passive mode 99% of the time.wr3zzz - Thursday, March 19, 2020 - link
Sigh, the fan... Want to go Team Red this time but will have to wait for B550.MDD1963 - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link
Yes, by all means, compare a mainboard's gaming performance at 1440P HIgh using a 4-5 year old GPU....MDD1963 - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link
(Beginning next year, the newest 10900K and R94900 will do battle in gaming, each equipped, of course, with an Nvidia GT710InTheMidstOfTheInBeforeCrowd - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link
Nah, to really show how powerful those new-fangled, revolutionary next-gen CPU will show, reviews will forego using any GPU and employ software rendering.close - Friday, March 20, 2020 - link
Actually... https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd/threadripper-3990x-cr...