The GIGABYTE B550I Aorus Pro AX Motherboard Review: All The Small Things
by Gavin Bonshor on December 7, 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 B550 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 1909 update.
Rendering - Blender 2.79b: 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.
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mkarwin - Tuesday, December 15, 2020 - link
It might have inferior codec setup, but allows better flexibility and connectability using the rear panel I/O audio ports...Questor - Wednesday, December 9, 2020 - link
Unfortunately for Gigabyte, the lack of a front USB-C header is a deal breaker. I had the same thought you did, hoping and holding out for a V2.Gigaplex - Wednesday, December 9, 2020 - link
How much of a dealbreaker? You can get USB3 to USB-C header adapters.Questor - Thursday, December 10, 2020 - link
Hm. I didn't think about that. Amazing how we miss things right in front of us. Not so much of a deal breaker me thinks. As long as the USB connection is reachable, since it wasn't placed as a front panel header.OliveGray - Sunday, December 13, 2020 - link
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Hopefully, it isn't as buggy as their X570 motherboards, that drop dead randomly and require removing the CMOS battery to be able to start it again - an issue that Gigabyte, in more than a year, never solved or even tried to solve.meacupla - Monday, December 7, 2020 - link
That seems to be a common issue on any Gigabyte motherboard.It's like their EEPROM chips have a 50% failure rate within 3yrs and 90% in 5yrs
Deicidium369 - Monday, December 7, 2020 - link
I have dozens in service - some going back to Conroe and never once have had a EEPROM die - maybe you should look at your power delivery system.Samus - Monday, December 7, 2020 - link
I’ve seen EEPROM failure on a few gigabyte boards going back to socket 939 it’s widely known to be an issue and Gigabyte seemingly knows it because they were making the first (only behind ABIT and DFI) to advocate ‘DualBIOS’ which they naturally did away with awhile back because it is expensive.star-affinity - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
:-OIs that why my (or my sister's nowadays) 11 year old Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 behaves like this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/f0bgoxfquiu7mky/GA-EX58-...
I've done all I know of, switching around RAM modules, remove the CMOS battery, press reset CMOS on the back. Got it to start BIOS recovery from the ”DualBIOS” once, but even during that process it turned itself off.
Could be the power supply perhaps, but I've seen other videos online of Gigabyte motherboards doing the same.