ASRock X79 Extreme4-M and X79 Extreme4 Review – Sandy Bridge-E meets mATX
by Ian Cutress on December 9, 2011 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
- X79
3D Movement Algorithm Test
The algorithms in 3DPM employ both uniform random number generation or normal distribution random number generation, and vary in various amounts of trigonometric operations, conditional statements, generation and rejection, fused operations, etc. The benchmark runs through six algorithms for a specified number of particles and steps, and calculates the speed of each algorithm, then sums them all for a final score. This is an example of a real world situation that a computational scientist may find themselves in, rather than a pure synthetic benchmark. The benchmark is also parallel between particles simulated, and we test the single thread performance as well as the multi-threaded performance.
The extra speed of the i7-3960X shows in both tests, and the ASRock boards are well within 1% of the other X79.
WinRAR x64 3.93 - link
With 64-bit WinRAR, we compress the set of files used in the USB speed tests. WinRAR x64 3.93 attempts to use multithreading when possible.
WinRAR shows better performance under the X79 platform, however neither of the boards was quicker than the ASUS P9X79 Pro.
FastStone Image Viewer 4.2 - link
FastStone Image Viewer is a free piece of software I have been using for quite a few years now. It allows quick viewing of flat images, as well as resizing, changing color depth, adding simple text or simple filters. It also has a bulk image conversion tool, which we use here. The software currently operates only in single-thread mode, which should change in later versions of the software. For this test, we convert a series of 170 files, of various resolutions, dimensions and types (of a total size of 163MB), all to the .gif format of 640x480 dimensions.
Sorenson Squeeze 6.0 - link
Sorenson Squeeze is a professional video encoder, complete with a vast array of options. For this test, we convert 32 HD videos, each a minute long and approximately 42 MB in size, to WMV 512KBps format. Squeeze can encode multiple videos at once, one for each thread.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
54 Comments
View All Comments
DanNeely - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
A lot more of them do have reasons to be migrated than you'd think. Even 5 years ago I started seeing L shaped cards at the low end ( a tiny strip of PCB along the bracked, and a second for the PCI plug); chopping the 2nd half of the L cuts manufacturing costs by an amount that more than pays for the engineering over larger production runs.Devices that need larger PCBs but which have minimal bandwidth needs are an ever shrinking segment of the market. Even when total bandwidth isn't an issue the fact that PCIe bandwidth is dedicated instead of being shared means you no longer need to put as much hardware into buffering to avoid latency bursts when something else is using the bus more heavily.
Finally, once legacy PCI starts disappearing on a non-trivial fraction of boards total collapse from mainstream devices is inevitable. Once supporting PCIe becomes mandatory it's only a matter of time until redesigning the core chip on the card to be native PCIe instead of PCI and using a PCI-PCIe bridge chip becomes the cheaper option (probably with the next scheduled redesign). While they might initially maintain back compatability with a bridge chip going the other direction; however being doublely niche parts AGP gfx cards from 3 or 4 generations ago is probably a good comparison example. nVidia didn't make any at all, and the handful of ATI 3xxx/4xxx cards went at significant price premiums.
Eventually it'll end up like ISA; if you're willing to pay a large enough price premium (eg because the industrial/lab equiptment you're controlling costs thousands or millions of dollars to replace) there will be a handful of companies willing to sell you semi-custom boards at a large price premium and technology lag. The last time I looked I couldn't find ISA on anything newer than LGA775, until after intel finally pulls the plug on the last 775. That probably won't be for a while; if you look at their CPU database intel hasn't discontinued its embedded p4's yet, and probably won't file a while. IIRC they typically have contractual agreements to keep embedded parts in stock for a decade.
darckhart - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
nope. still useful for pci graphics cards for troubleshooting video probs.Blibbax - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
The differences in load power consumption might just demonstrate the margin of error on that test. Worth keeping in mind for other comparisons.The other possibilities are that the 5850s use a lot more power when they're a little bit hotter, and that the power circuitry on the M-ATX board is just awful under high load.
Concillian - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
I was reading through the article and thought I had hit back instead of forward since I had read the page I was reading before.After finding all my marbles, I noticed that the article has two sets of Page 2 & 3. page order is 1, 2, 3, 2, 3, 4, 5...
hal74 - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
I am always disappointed to find an article written by Ian. I know that I'll get an article written by someone who fails at plural vs singular when talking about a company and who doesn't come up with interesting comparison charts. Ian chose to throw in an E350 into the mix and didn't even add any comparisons with an x58, or any other core i7. Also, whats with fascination with older video cards in SLI?Is this seriously what people want in an article from Anandtech?
Spivonious - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Usually, I'll let grammar mistakes slide, but when I find multiple mistakes on a single page it really starts distracting me from the material.Can we get editors for the articles written by non-native English speakers?
Spivonious - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
And "tenacity" is used incorrectly."...given ASRock’s previous tenacity when it comes to box bundling."
Does this make sense?
"...given ASRock's previous stubbornness when it comes to box bundling."
JonnyDough - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Yes. It does. Maybe your reading comprehension is lacking. The sentence means that ASRock will not budge when it comes to box bundling.Can we get some editors for the comments written by non-literate English readers?
Spivonious - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
"3.2 GiB limit of 32-bit"*scratches head*
I thought 2^32-1 was 4GiB...
Aisalem - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
using 32-bit you are able to address 4GB but unfortunately you will not be able to use whole 4GB in most of the 32-bit Windows installations, that also depend on the additional hardware you have.Now you shouldn't *scratches head*.