ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Champion and X79 Professional Review: From a Gamer to Gamers
by Ian Cutress on February 9, 2013 10:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
- Fatal1ty
- X79
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our test bed:
Thank you to OCZ for providing us with the 1250W Gold Power Supply and USB testing SSD.
Thank you to Micron for providing us with the SATA testing SSD.
Thank you to G.Skill for providing us with the memory kits.
Thank you to ASUS for providing us with the AMD GPUs and some IO Testing kit.
Thank you to ECS for providing us with the NVIDIA GPUs.
Additionally, many thanks to Corsair for providing us with the Corsair H80i CLC, as this is the first time we are using this unit in motherboard testing. The H80i is the Corsair Link enabled and updated version of the H80, the closed-loop liquid cooling system with a 120mm double width radiator. Dustin reviewed the unit at the beginning of the year, and is currently available for $95.
Test Setup
| Test Setup | |
| Processor |
Intel Core i7-3960X 6 Cores, 12 Threads, 3.3 GHz (3.9 GHz Turbo) |
| Motherboards |
ASRock X79 Professional ASRock X79 Champion |
| Cooling | Corsair H80i CLC |
| Power Supply | OCZ 1250W Gold ZX Series |
| Memory | GSkill RipjawsZ 4x4 GB DDR3-2400 10-12-12 |
| Memory Settings | 2133 10-12-12 |
| Video Cards |
ASUS HD7970 3GB ECS GTX 580 1536MB |
| Video Drivers |
Catalyst 12.3 NVIDIA Drivers 296.10 WHQL |
| Hard Drive | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed - CoolerMaster Lab V1.0 |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit |
| SATA Testing | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| USB 2/3 Testing | OCZ Vertex 3 240GB with SATA->USB Adaptor |
Power Consumption
Power consumption was tested on the system as a whole with a wall meter connected to the OCZ 1250W power supply, while in a dual 7970 GPU configuration. This power supply is Gold rated, and as I am in the UK on a 230-240 V supply, leads to ~75% efficiency > 50W, and 90%+ efficiency at 250W, which is suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading. This method of power reading allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency. These are the real world values that consumers may expect from a typical system (minus the monitor) using this motherboard.
While this method for power measurement may not be ideal, and you feel these numbers are not representative due to the high wattage power supply being used (we use the same PSU to remain consistent over a series of reviews, and the fact that some boards on our test bed get tested with three or four high powered GPUs), the important point to take away is the relationship between the numbers. These boards are all under the same conditions, and thus the differences between them should be easy to spot.
Power consumption on the ASRock boards is much lower than that of the ASUS Rampage boards, especially during OCCT loading.
Windows 7 POST Time
Different motherboards have different POST sequences before an operating system is initialized. A lot of this is dependent on the board itself, and POST boot time is determined by the controllers on board (and the sequence of how those extras are organized). As part of our testing, we look at the POST Boot Time - this is the time from pressing the ON button on the computer to when Windows starts loading. (We discount Windows loading as it is highly variable given Windows specific features.) Despite the advent of Windows 8 introducing features for quick booting within several seconds, a significant number of users are still on Windows 7, where POST times usually fall in the 7-25 second range. For a good result, we are looking for around 12 seconds when the board has two GPUs fitted (one for mITX), as per our testing. We test both the stock boot time (with BIOS at default), and a stripped BIOS where all extra onboard controllers (LAN, USB 3.0, SATA, etc.) are disabled.
Unfortunately the Champion falls down on boot times, hitting over 20 seconds at default but saving a little grace with 16.87 seconds when stripped. The Professional has a better time, beating the stripped Champion while at stock, and going a little further when stripped. Neither however have great boot times.
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CeriseCogburn - Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - link
That ignorant "principle" called being a dumb*** cheapskate with an excuse will leave you in the dust half the time, but so what you probably LOVE amd like a fanboy fool like most here.LOL - Yes all the whining fools here are freaking fanboys anyway.
So since you have no clue who the guy is, wether or not you respect him is of no consequence, it's not even an opinion.
Problem is, you'd likely respect him if you had a clue.
Go watch some of the hour long vids - he certainly can earn your respect, I suspect it would happen.
Now back to your crybaby drone whining.
BTW - you an amd fanboy ? I bet you are. There's some more branding...
Concillian - Saturday, February 9, 2013 - link
"I don't get why they release these, he's done nothing in half a decade and no self respecting person who knows anything about hardware would buy because of a so called Celeb name being put on it. It just acts as a warning sign for me..."Well, it works in other markets... how about Michael Jordan endorsed products? He hasn't done anything of note recently... How many other retired competitors endorse products. Carl Lewis and Greg Louganis, long since retired, endorsed products well after retirement. Phelps surely will for years to come.
If they want to pay the guy to be able to use his name...more power to them and good for him. I'm not paying the bill or buying the products, so why would I care enough to speak out against it?
just4U - Sunday, February 10, 2013 - link
Look at the specs, the visuals.. than decide. the name is pretty much like any other. Asus has their line, Gigabyte.. MSI.. They all brand in one form or another to mark their high end. This is just another one is all.Blibbax - Sunday, February 10, 2013 - link
Asus aren't paying anyone to use the "RoG" brand.Blibbax - Sunday, February 10, 2013 - link
Though actually, I'd rather see the end of all those ridiculous brand names - "RoG", "Big Bang", "Classified", "Sniper" - none of them make any sense, and they all significantly cheapen the products they are attached to. The boards people really want are Asus Pro, Gigabyte UD9, Asrock Extreme11, and I think the lack of these stupid gamer brands is a lot of why.lukarak - Monday, February 11, 2013 - link
Sure they are. They are paying to market the RoG brand, thus increasing the price of the motherboards and other things. For example sponsoring tournaments. It's every bit the same as paying Wendel an amount for each product sold, if that's the licensing method they agreed upon.CharonPDX - Monday, February 11, 2013 - link
There's a reason he has changed manufacturers every couple years - and I doubt it's because each new one is offering him MORE money.......CeriseCogburn - Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - link
Yet the prior review Ian did with an Asrock motherboard had some overclocker bios with some guru branding and that board and bios was freaking awesome.So being a completely clueless idiot with a one size fits all mindset makes you a droning sheep like the rest of em here.
Congratulations on being just as dumb (dumber really, as age an experience claimed leaves you permanently clueless) as an emotionally excited teenybopper who loves Fatal1ty.
tynopik - Saturday, February 9, 2013 - link
"equipped with single screen a single GPU"Beenthere - Saturday, February 9, 2013 - link
John "Fatality" is a joke and Asrock is just milking what little success John Boy had in the past.The ignorant plastering of "Fatality" all over the mobo, heatsinks, OMs, etc. and on the BIOS and boot screen is for the 13 year old, immature, PC illiterate fanbois. Unfortunately the 13 year old kids don't represent the majority of the PC enthusiasts market so this marketing ploy to dupe the dumb, has pretty much failed. In fact their has been considerable backlash about the in-you-face display of John Boy by many Asrock consumers - to the point that Asrock has removed his Fuhly Puss from the BIOS menus completely and thankfully allows people to disable Jon Boy's face on the boot screen.
As far as the actual mobos are concerned, they are decent high end units, but nothing exceptional. They are IME as good as Asus or Gigabyte high end mobos, no more and no less. They appear to be more reliable than Asus as is Gigabyte, IME. I would recommend the Asrock Fatality models to enthusiasts for the mobo quality/performance over Asus, but not for the stupid marketing hype over John Boy.