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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dgz - Monday, February 11, 2013 - link
Thresh is making big bucks in other areas. Their latest company provides quality product for big business.KoolAidMan1 - Sunday, February 10, 2013 - link
Warcraft 3 was bigger than Quake 3 ever was, and this is before we eve get into the massive DOTA scene. DOTA in China right now is bigger than Brood War, SC2, CS 1.6, and League Of Legends combined, and any of those individual games dwarf Quake 3 in popularity.Grubby hasn't won anything in Starcraft 2 so far, but he's been placing higher with almost every new tournament he competes in and he is a very well liked and respected player. His name on a product would easily help to sell it.
dgz - Monday, February 11, 2013 - link
While WC3 was indeed big, it was all dota after 2004-2005. You guys know it's true.Quake 3 community never consisted millions of players but it remained the ultimate duel shooter for how many years now? How many people drive F1 again?
dawp - Sunday, February 10, 2013 - link
[qouote]The Fatal1ty branded boards were ‘designed by Abit, but game-tested and approved by Fatal1ty’ up until socket 775 and FM2.[/quote]don't you mean AM2 there since FM2 wasn't around when Abit was?
TeXWiller - Sunday, February 10, 2013 - link
and ECC support. One might be able to forge workstations out of these.yzkbug - Sunday, February 10, 2013 - link
Is this you, Johnathan 'Fatal1ty" Wendel?JeBarr - Sunday, February 10, 2013 - link
Like many high end gaming boards, these two cram on the extra features that almost no gamer would ever use.Does anyone think that Johnny Wendel would use even half of the USB 3.0 and Sata III 6.0GB/s ports?
I don't.
Would even the most competitive gamer and power-user require such an amount of extra features for their at-home system?
Probably not.
I can see the need for extra PCIe x16 slots, for obvious reasons.....but legacy PCI slots on the Pro model is just ridiculous. Give me an extra PCIe 2.0 x1 or x4 slot instead. Get with the times, geez.
And how about these high end gaming boards with creative audio chip on-board? Right, because everyone knows it's such a great idea to have an audio amplifier mixed in with all the traces. I mean, seriously, just get rid of the extra unused PCI slots and put PCIe slots instead so I can add my own sound card....geez.
Tech-Curious - Sunday, February 10, 2013 - link
Yeah, I would expect a motherboard aimed particularly at gamers to be stripped down on features, with extremely high-quality components supplying the features that are important.The review sorta makes that very point, when it compares the Fatal1ty mobos to their Asus analogues -- quality over quantity of features.
That said, motherboards in general seem to be over-featured, and there is a segment of the market that would (understandably) balk at paying high-premium prices for a motherboard without all possible bells and whistles. But perhaps those two points only tend to suggest that motherboards are a bad fit for a pro-racer-style marketing campaign: motherboards don't tend to contribute all that much to the overall performance of a computer system, beyond a relatively low threshold of quality. Whatever difference motherboards do make tends to be overwhelmed by the performance attributes of other components, and so motherboard manufacturers feel compelled to add features to motherboards to differentiate their products from their competitors'.
Don't get me wrong: the motherboards reviewed in this article are high-end, performance-oriented parts, but they fit that description in large part because they use a socket-2011 chipset (and therefore they must be paired with a top-of-the-line CPU). That in itself is a bit of a head scratcher, IMO, because there's no compelling evidence to suggest that the LGA-2011 CPUs are noticeably better than the i7 3770k in a gaming context. Where the 2011 platform shines is in heavy-duty high-threaded workloads.
The long and the short of it is that ASRock's branding an LGA 2011 motherboard around a pro gamer is a little like a car company branding a luxury sedan around Jeff Gordon.
dgz - Monday, February 11, 2013 - link
Who the hell is this Jeff Gordon guy? Never heard of him. Quite a few F1 and rally guys are used to promote regular cars.JlHADJOE - Monday, February 11, 2013 - link
Which regular cars? Almost every car I know that has a racing driver's name on it has been pretty sporty.Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce Niki Lauda
Ford Mustang McLaren
Caterham JPE (Jonathan Palmer Edition)
Acura/Honda NSX Zanardi Edition
McLaren Mercedes SLR Stirling Moss
Subaru Imprezas in Colin McRae, Richard Burns and Peter Solberg editions
Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution 6.5 Tommi Makinen Edition