The ASUS X99-E-10G WS Motherboard Review: 10GBase-T Networking with Intel’s X550-AT2
by Ian Cutress on November 7, 2016 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- Asus
- 10G Ethernet
- X99
- 10GBase-T
- X99-E-10G WS
- X550
- X550-AT2
Single GTX 980 Gaming Performance
Alien: Isolation
If first person survival mixed with horror is your sort of thing, then Alien: Isolation, based off of the Alien franchise, should be an interesting title. Developed by The Creative Assembly and released in October 2014, Alien: Isolation has won numerous awards from Game Of The Year to several top 10s/25s and Best Horror titles, ratcheting up over a million sales by February 2015. Alien: Isolation uses a custom built engine which includes dynamic sound effects and should be fully multi-core enabled.
For low-end graphics, we test at 720p with Ultra settings, whereas for mid and high range graphics we bump this up to 1080p, taking the average frame rate as our marker with a scripted version of the built-in benchmark.
Grand Theft Auto V
The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise finally hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA in tow to help optimize the title. GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.
For our test we have scripted a version of the in-game benchmark, relying only on the final part which combines a flight scene along with an in-city drive-by followed by a tanker explosion. For low end systems we test at 720p on the lowest settings, whereas mid and high end graphics play at 1080p with very high settings across the board. We record both the average frame rate and the percentage of frames under 60 FPS (16.6ms).
GRID: Autosport
No graphics tests are complete without some input from Codemasters and the EGO engine, which means for this round of testing we point towards GRID: Autosport, the next iteration in the GRID and racing genre. As with our previous racing testing, each update to the engine aims to add in effects, reflections, detail and realism, with Codemasters making ‘authenticity’ a main focal point for this version.
GRID’s benchmark mode is very flexible, and as a result we created a test race using a shortened version of the Red Bull Ring with twelve cars doing two laps. The car is focus starts last and is quite fast, but usually finishes second or third. For low end graphics we test at 1080p medium settings, whereas mid and high end graphics get the full 1080p maximum. Both the average and minimum frame rates are recorded.
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor
The final title in our testing is another battle of system performance with the open world action-adventure title, Shadow of Mordor. Produced by Monolith using the LithTech Jupiter EX engine and numerous detail add-ons, SoM goes for detail and complexity to a large extent, despite having to be cut down from the original plans. The main story itself was written by the same writer as Red Dead Redemption, and it received Zero Punctuation’s Game of The Year in 2014.
For testing purposes, SoM gives a dynamic screen resolution setting, allowing us to render at high resolutions that are then scaled down to the monitor. As a result, we get several tests using the in-game benchmark. For low end graphics we examine at 720p with low settings, whereas mid and high end graphics get 1080p Ultra. The top graphics test is also redone at 3840x2160, also with Ultra settings, and we also test two cards at 4K where possible.
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Notmyusualid - Friday, December 2, 2016 - link
TB3 IS great! - but not for the use case you describe, I think.r3loaded - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
So why exactly IS 10G so expensive? Is there some inherent technical reason, or is it just Intel doing what Intel does best with a captive market over which they have a near monopoly?jhh - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
Volume. There is a certain amount of engineering involved in making the NIC, and if you expect to sell 100,000, you recoup that engineering expense differently than if you expect to sell 10,000,000. I'm sure the volume is somewhere between those two targets. Volume will be limited if for no other reason that most devices connect via WiFi, and that until WiFi routers come with something other than a 1G port, it's hard to drive the market for 10G. The server environment is different, but fewer servers are sold than laptop/tablet/phone. No one is selling > 1G Internet to the residential market, so even that option isn't driving the market. One is then limited to people with the need to transfer at more than 1G speeds within a residence, and that market is small. Servers tend to use fiber, as the signal processing to support 10G over copper was historically adding significant latency compared to fiber. Fiber is also more forward compatible to 25G than copper, as every speed transition has always required different cables. Unless you are installing Cat 7a wire and proprietary connectors, but they aren't directly compatible with 1G wiring.Communism - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
http://ark.intel.com/products/84329/Intel-Ethernet...The price per thousand is down to 80 USD for the controller (Which provides 2x 10G base-t ports), meaning one could theoretically integrate it into an x99 (or the boards coming out for Skylake-E/X) for around that much if you could get enough traction to be able to put them in a board with a significant portion of sales.
This sounds entirely feasible, unfortunately, they seem to be stuck on boards that are made purely for manufacturer advertising with hilarious prices like 700 USD.
Integrating such a controller is simple, as it's just a PCIe 3.0 x4 device.
Hopefully at least 1 of the major board manufacturers starts making reasonable integrations with the X550-AT2 controller in the Skylake-E/X generation boards.
bronan - Friday, November 11, 2016 - link
Intel sold their 10G cards for under 100 dollar each, when companies jumped onto them they slowly upped the prices to the max. These cards can be sold for under 50 dollar each but the hunger for huge profits will not allow thatBillR - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link
Terrific answer. 1G is everywhere and cost for those ports shows the power of huge volumes on prices. However, 10G is mostly limited to servers and there is a lot of competition for server connections (25G, 40G, 50G, 100G, Infiniband, etc.). Unfortunately fragmentation means higher prices.Ranger1065 - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link
zzzZZzzz.....bronan - Friday, November 11, 2016 - link
These chips cost really nothing for the gaints, the real prices of these chips are absolute below 10 dollar each. Again intel sold full fledged pci cards if i remember well around 77 dollar thats consumer price. See what happened after the companies started adopted them. I can't believe everbody makes it look like it so expenssive to make chips.... They cost them a few bucks to make thats it not 50 dollar+ my company makes chips for certain installations they costs 0.04 cents each and are sold to companies for 11 cents each ... talking about making profit. Thats the real prices you as consumer pay for that same 11 cents .... 10 dollar+ yes thats how the market works these days enormous profit is all what countsnirsever - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link
In fact, the footprint of the Tehuti Networks based solutions with PHYs from either Marvell or Aquantia are way smaller than the Intel X550 and since they don't require a heat sink, consuming ~5W max (for both MAC and PHY), they are much easier to integrate. The Tehuti Networks solutions are already supporting 2.5G and 5G in addition to standard 10GBase-T. You can find Tehuti Networks based 5-speed NIC cards already selling today for ~$200 while this figure is expected to drop significantly once new Marvell 802.3bz PHYs will start shipping in volumes early next yearnirsever - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link
Please take a look at what you can expect from Tehuti Networks and Marvell new PHY:http://www.tehutinetworks.net/?t=LV&L1=3&L...