ASRock FM2A88X Extreme6+ Review
by Ian Cutress on March 19, 2014 11:59 AM ESTReal World CPU Benchmarks
Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things – better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal), at the expense of heat and temperature, but also gives in essence an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, memory subtimings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk which is clearly visible, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the purchase.
Rendering – Adobe After Effects CS6: link
Published by Adobe, After Effects is a digital motion graphics, visual effects and compositing software package used in the post-production process of filmmaking and television production. For our benchmark we downloaded a common scene in use on the AE forums for benchmarks and placed it under our own circumstances for a repeatable benchmark. We generate 152 frames of the scene and present the time to do so based purely on CPU calculations.
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.
Image Manipulation – FastStone Image Viewer 4.9: link
Similarly to WinRAR, the FastStone test us updated for 2014 to the latest version. FastStone is the program I use to perform quick or bulk actions on images, such as resizing, adjusting for color and cropping. In our test we take a series of 170 images in various sizes and formats and convert them all into 640x480 .gif files, maintaining the aspect ratio. FastStone does not use multithreading for this test, and thus single threaded performance is often the winner.
Video Conversion – Xilisoft Video Converter 7: link
The XVC test I normally do is updated to the full version of the software, and this time a different test as well. Here we take two different videos: a double UHD (3840x4320) clip of 10 minutes and a 640x266 DVD rip of a 2h20 film and convert both to iPod suitable formats. The reasoning here is simple – when frames are small enough to fit into memory, the algorithm has more chance to apply work between threads and process the video quicker. Results shown are in seconds and time taken to encode.
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. The principle today is still the same, primarily as an output for H.264 + AAC/MP3 audio within an MKV container. In our test we use the same videos as in the Xilisoft test, and results are given in frames per second.
Rendering – PovRay 3.7: link
The Persistence of Vision RayTracer, or PovRay, 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.
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fteoath64 - Friday, March 21, 2014 - link
AMD/ATI needs to be very aggressive in lowering the power demands of their gpu. What NV has done in Maxwell should tell them a very important thing. Lowering the power demands means, one can cram more cores into the die, hence it will boost performance. There is so much one can cram into a specific node-technology but the power demands meaning heat dissipation is going to be a real issue that is hard to solve.With the latest R9 series running at such high heat and high power demands, it is going to impossible to cram even half that performance into an APU without resorting to water cooling so the challenge is huge for AMD to tackle. I hope they can make headway into power optimization so that we can get more serious APU chips with powerful gpus for once and help move the industry along.
Ammohunt - Thursday, March 20, 2014 - link
cpu performance is one thing getting a stable glitch free windows system has always been the true challenge. I had never seen a Win7 BSOD until i ran an FX-6100 AMD Build which i promptly replaced with an intel rig. As a server it runs linux like a champ though.Demiurge - Friday, March 21, 2014 - link
I have multiple laptops, all Intel based, at work that BSOD Win7. It isn't the CPU, it's the drivers. I know because mine doesn't crash anymore after updating the drivers. I'm pretty sure it isn't the CPU that was the weak point of failure in most problems because the CPU is one of the few things that gets tested and validated the most. Not saying it can't happen, but it is far more likely you or the device manufacturers screwed up. Trust me, I own a Creative X-Fi =)... sometimes I don't get sound on reboot. I know the hardware's good there too.MrBungle123 - Friday, March 21, 2014 - link
I've noticed instability with AMD rigs before and discovered that the issue was that the stock voltage was too low. AMD is always trying to compete from a process node behind so I think they drive the Vcore as low as possible to try and bring down their TDP numbers and as a consequence bring the CPUs to the edge of instability.0ldman79 - Saturday, March 29, 2014 - link
Odd.I've found that most of my AMD chips can work fine with a little less voltage at stock speeds.
Of course they don't stay that way, the tech in me overclocks them and gets Cool'n'Quiet working so they idle nice and cool then ramp up when needed.
Demiurge - Friday, March 21, 2014 - link
Not sure why...I see something a little different...Tomb Raider is probably very heavily AMD CPU (just assuming relative to the other benchmark performance) optimized because the $200 APU + GTX 770 is actually outperforming (ever so slightly) the $1000 and $320 I7... In the F1 game the exact opposite is happening ~84fps vs ~129fps... from what I see in the other games, it looks like about a -15% typical difference toward the APU just by looking at a high level. That's not bad considering the price/performance ratio.
The numbers (to me) aren't important as a CPU comparison for the vague remarks I made about suspected optimization, but it does matter if you are comparing the game performance in order to make a decision about which CPU to buy if I play a particular set of games.
PUGSRULE! - Monday, August 10, 2015 - link
As of today 8-10-15 an Intel i7-4960X costs $1,100 versus an AMD A10-7850k that goes for $130. If you have an unlimited budget, yeah go for the Intel. But dollarwise, you cannot do better with the AMD. It's like comparing a Hennessey Venom GT to a Mustang.TETRONG - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
Hmm, I agree. It's confusing why they keep reviewing and devoting so much time to something that hasn't been viable for a long time. Anyone can compare performance/price and conclude that there is no good AMD buy relative to Intels Core/Xeon lineup. It doesn't sound so bad until you factor in electricity which completely negates anything AMD might otherwise have going for them. Whatever you would save with the cheaper chip would get eaten up by the utilities -No thanks
tech6 - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
I think they can be viable at a certain price point. Offering "good enough" performance for office and non-3D gaming computers is AMDs strength and that is where OEMs should be aiming also. Making a $100+ "Extreme" AMD board makes no performance sense at all.bobbozzo - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
A mini-ITX Kaveri is attractive for HTPC builds, thanks to the excellent integrated graphics.