The ASUS Maximus VIII Extreme Review: The Other $500 Option
by Ian Cutress on April 7, 2016 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Gaming
- Asus
- ROG
- Skylake
- Z170
- Thunderbolt 3
CPU 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 leave the BIOS settings at default and memory at JEDEC (DDR4-2133 C15) for these tests, making it very easy to see which motherboards have MCT enabled by default.
Video Conversion – Handbrake v0.9.9: link
Handbrake is a media conversion tool that was initially designed to help DVD ISOs and Video CDs into more common video formats. For HandBrake, we take two videos (a 2h20 640x266 DVD rip and a 10min double UHD 3840x4320 animation short) and convert them to x264 format in an MP4 container. Results are given in terms of the frames per second processed, and HandBrake uses as many threads as possible.
Compression – WinRAR 5.0.1: 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.
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 wins 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.
Rendering – POV-Ray 3.7: 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 2-3 minutes on high end platforms.
Synthetic – 7-Zip 9.2: link
As an open source compression tool, 7-Zip is a popular tool for making sets of files easier to handle and transfer. The software offers up its own benchmark, to which we report the result.
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willis936 - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link
Well if you dump a grand on an extreme processor and not half a grand on a board you could get 8 cores that OC up to the same as the K series parts. Double the threaded performance but same single threaded performance.bill.rookard - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link
I would have to agree, unless you are a hardcore overclocker. For those interested in hugely powerful graphics setups, this doesn't really cut it (dual GPU SLI only). For those who want huge storage arrays, this doesn't cut it either (half dozen SATA ports). Those interested in liquid nitrogen overclocks and need those last few mhz would find a use for it though...Chaitanya - Friday, April 8, 2016 - link
Normally I would have agreed, spending more than 250$ on Z/P series chipsets is useless and its better to go to X platform. But in this case there seems to be a good value in terms of bundle. That 10G Nic is worth the extra. There are no X99 boards below $500 mark that come with 10G nics.romrunning - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link
"The cost of an i7-6700K plus a $500 motherboard comes in at $750 MSRP, "These prices seem really off. As of today, Amazon has the list price of the i7-6700k as $419.99. Simple math gets you to $919.99 with a $500 mobo, not $750.
Ian Cutress - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link
Box price for 6700K is $350 (we've been covering the ups and downs of the price of the Skylake parts, see the link on the first page, where from time to time it is hitting MSRP), making it more $850, so I'm $100 out :) Updated. It's sill a big jump between the two, for sure.romrunning - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link
So now I had to check Intel's "Recommended Customer Price" for the i7-5820k. Intel's site says box price is $396. So that + a $250 m/b would make the combo around $650, not $550. That would lower the different to more around $200. Still not insignificant, as that is the price of a decent m/b, but less than the previous cited difference.romrunning - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link
Also, thanks for adding in the pricing info. It helps to give a measure of worth to the end-user to know the premium they are paying & what essentially you are buying over a more standard board.ImSpartacus - Friday, April 8, 2016 - link
I think he meant a 6600K.BrokenCrayons - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link
Yes, $500 isn't exactly a princely sum, but I don't see value in spending that much on a single component of a computer. That's a week's play money for outings, shopping, and casual dining. Using it instead to buy a motherboard of all things only demonstrates to others in your social circles that you don't quite have your priorities sorted out. So thanks for the effort ASUS, but no thanks.Questor - Thursday, April 7, 2016 - link
Yes, blowing that much money on frivolous casual dining, outings and shopping is obviously a demonstration of financial brilliance! Priorities are as different among people as personal beliefs or political views. I won't pay the premium for this motherboard either, especially without dual M.2 slots to RAID NVMe SSDs. The OC Panel is unwanted bling to me as well, but I can see other people finding the M8E to be their "thing."