ASRock FM2A88X Extreme6+ Review
by Ian Cutress on March 19, 2014 11:59 AM ESTScientific and Synthetic Benchmarks
2D to 3D Rendering –Agisoft PhotoScan v1.0: link
Agisoft Photoscan creates 3D models from 2D images, a process which is very computationally expensive. The algorithm is split into four distinct phases, and different phases of the model reconstruction require either fast memory, fast IPC, more cores, or even OpenCL compute devices to hand. Agisoft supplied us with a special version of the software to script the process, where we take 50 images of a stately home and convert it into a medium quality model. This benchmark typically takes around 15-20 minutes on a high end PC on the CPU alone, with GPUs reducing the time.
Console Emulation –Dolphin Benchmark: link
At the start of 2014 I was emailed with a link to a new emulation benchmark based on the Dolphin Emulator. The issue with emulators tends to be two-fold: game licensing and raw CPU power required for the emulation. As a result, many emulators are often bound by single thread CPU performance, and general reports tended to suggest that Haswell provided a significant boost to emulator performance. This benchmark runs a Wii program that raytraces a complex 3D scene inside the Dolphin Wii emulator. Performance on this benchmark is a good proxy of the speed of Dolphin CPU emulation, which is an intensive single core task using most aspects of a CPU. Results are given in minutes, where the Wii itself scores 17.53; meaning that anything above this is faster than an actual Wii for processing Wii code, albeit emulated.
Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test: link
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores.
Encryption –TrueCrypt v0.7.1a: link
TrueCrypt is an off the shelf open source encryption tool for files and folders. For our test we run the benchmark mode using a 1GB buffer and take the mean result from AES encryption.
Synthetic – 7-Zip 9.2: link
As an open source compression tool, 7-Zip is a popular tool for making sets of files easier to handle and transfer. The software offers up its own benchmark, to which we report the result.
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PEJUman - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
^This^I love my kaveri ITX build:
1. it's quite capable for HTPC-NAS unified solution with the large numbers of SATA 3 out of A88X 2. $130 A10-7850K CPU+GPU pricing @ microcenter.
3. $90 ASrock A88X-ITX+ @ newegg.
Sold my ivy bridge ITX HTPC & nehalem X58 NAS. each are more capable than the Kaveri CPU. but now I run both
PEJUman - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
systems on 1 kaveri system alone, saving a boatload of idle power consumption + getting more capable GPU for MADVR in the process.duploxxx - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
not sure how you look at charts, but the issue with these reviews has always been to compare equal products, which is very obvious many tech sites can't. Again today this review is a mucked up comparison.Why not do a decent test with the onboard gpu and for example mantle and see the difference again, these amd series are not thrown into the market to compete on that CPU front, they are there for general purpose and mid stream market. Who ever believes he need a 4770 for general use (not all are video freaks) should think twice, but yet they can't since they are stuck in believing just benchmark results....
why?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
309$ vs 184$
with that price difference i buy a 128Gb latest gen SSD and you know what the AMD will fly over any application while the intel with a normal HD would cripple. so useless compare of benchmarking as if one would watch a usb3 copy being few secs faster - slower, people buy a chinese brand usb or budget usb3 device which on its own will already be slower...
the mucked up mind is with the reviewers and believers looking purely at benches while daily almost every user is stuck with stupid MS OS.
Viewgamer - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
I wanted to see overclocked performance.It's a shame that he didn't even bother to benchmark the overclocked CPU.
Also complaining that you get high temperatures with overclocking on the stock CPU cooler is stupid.
Intel Haswell CPUs operate at extraordinarily high temperatures without any overclocking and yet the reviewer has the nerve to complain about Kaveri temperatures after overclocking the chip by 700mhz.
Ian Cutress - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
Overclocked performance is given in the overclocking section under the PovRay column in that table. Here it shows the score PovRay gets at the given overclock.Also, I talk repeatedly about the VRM temperatures - not the CPU temperatures. 'At stock' and 'using the stock cooler' are not interchangeable phrases. I cannot find anywhere in this review that I use the phrase 'stock cooler'. The heat given off at stock by the VRMs (a point which I highlight many times), not the CPU, can be the cause for concern, especially when the system is overclocked.
If you would like to discuss the above issues, I do have an email you can contact.
Tom01 - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
There is no reason to give up AMD. The AMD FX-9590 is equal to an Intel Core i7-4770.That is very fast.
I personally am an Apple-Intel user, but would prefer AMD-chips.
DigitalFreak - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
LMAOA 220 watt AMD process is equal to an 84 watt Intel processor?
Tom01 - Thursday, March 20, 2014 - link
Yes, speed wise.Lucian2244 - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
As i remember this has always been a "problem" with most AMD based boards, their VRM runs hot. I guess this can be an issue in the long term but who has the time to test that :).alyarb - Wednesday, March 19, 2014 - link
Recently, I paid ~$120 for a "new" Asrock board from Newegg. I received a box with no plastic wrap, no seal on the ESD bag containing the board. The socket had bent pins under the plastic cap and neither Newegg nor Asrock assumed any responsibility or offered any recourse besides a $60 repair job that would take 2 months.I ended up eating the $120 and bought an ASUS board that came new and undamaged. I've been dealing with Newegg since the beginning and was let down by this, so I get my LGA boards from Amazon now :(. ZIF sockets and less fragile stuff is OK to get from Newegg.