ASRock Rack C2750D4I Review: A Storage Motherboard with Management
by Ian Cutress on April 29, 2014 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Storage
- Atom
- ASRock
- Silvermont
- Enterprise
- server
- Avoton
As an interesting dynamic to our testing, it has been requested that we see how well the C2750 does in our discrete GPU benchmarks. The combination of a slower CPU and limited PCIe bandwidth will be the major culprit in almost all our benchmarks, although Tomb Raider is at least on an even keel. Most of our benchmarks show a 30+ FPS frame rate, if you are willing to pair a large GPU with the C2750D4I. Again, we are currently testing other 25W platforms to provide more applicable competition for this platform.
F1 2013
First up is F1 2013 by Codemasters. I am a big Formula 1 fan in my spare time, and nothing makes me happier than carving up the field in a Caterham, waving to the Red Bulls as I drive by (because I play on easy and take shortcuts). F1 2013 uses the EGO Engine, and like other Codemasters games ends up being very playable on old hardware quite easily. In order to beef up the benchmark a bit, we devised the following scenario for the benchmark mode: one lap of Spa-Francorchamps in the heavy wet, the benchmark follows Jenson Button in the McLaren who starts on the grid in 22nd place, with the field made up of 11 Williams cars, 5 Marussia and 5 Caterham in that order. This puts emphasis on the CPU to handle the AI in the wet, and allows for a good amount of overtaking during the automated benchmark. We test at 1920x1080 on Ultra graphical settings.
| F1 2013, 1080p Max | ||
| NVIDIA | AMD | |
| Average Frame Rates | ||
| Minimum Frame Rates | ||
Bioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite was Zero Punctuation’s Game of the Year for 2013, uses the Unreal Engine 3, and is designed to scale with both cores and graphical prowess. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
| Bioshock Infinite, 1080p Max | ||
| NVIDIA | AMD | |
| Average Frame Rates | ||
| Minimum Frame Rates | ||
During our Bioshock Infinite test there was a clear stutter during the benchmark that would make the game completely unplayable.
Tomb Raider
The next benchmark in our test is Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider is an AMD optimized game, lauded for its use of TressFX creating dynamic hair to increase the immersion in game. Tomb Raider uses a modified version of the Crystal Engine, and enjoys raw horsepower. We test the benchmark using the Adrenaline benchmark tool and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
| Tomb Raider, 1080p Max | ||
| NVIDIA | AMD | |
| Average Frame Rates | ||
| Minimum Frame Rates | ||
Tomb Raider is a game that seems to move almost entirely onto the GPU, not worrying much about the CPU or the DRAM attached to it.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
85 Comments
View All Comments
bernstein - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
not when you want to run it next to your tv in a 100m2 appartment :)ZeDestructor - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
I have a 48-port switch in my bdroom.. I fail to see your point :PIn your place, I'd run it under the TV, straight off the floor, with some quiet fans... 120mm fans are always quiet.
Guspaz - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
100 square metres is a pretty huge apartment, but the idea behind a storage server isn't to put it next to your TV or projector anyhow. I'm moving from a 34sqm apartment to a 65 sqm apartment, and I've got a 15-drive (18 drive if you include the boot/cache SSDs) ZFS file server for all my media. But it's a headless system, and even though it's pretty quiet (I've used nothing but low-power drives), it doesn't need to be anywhere near the home theatre setup. It's going to go in a closet somewhere. The only connection it needs to my home theatre is not an HDMI cable, but a Cat6 cable :)Of course, I don't have a dedicated HTPC either; my main desktop (an SFF system) will be in the same room as my home theatre, connected to my HDMI matrix switch. It can access files on the giant file server in the closet, while taking up very little space itself. If for some reason my desktop couldn't be near my home theatre, I'd probably just buy an NUC-like system for that.
bernstein - Thursday, May 1, 2014 - link
true it doesn't need to be near the tv... but at least my appartment doesn't have a closet. so its either bath, kitchen, living room or one of the sleeping rooms. or the cellar... 5 floors down. installing network cabling there is north of $5000... and wlan through multiple concrete thats just not going to do it.bernstein - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
yeah wouldn't have anything else than zfsextide - Wednesday, April 30, 2014 - link
You can always buy reverse breakout SFF-8087 cableshasseb64 - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
10W less in IDLE compared to a standard/high performance Z87 MB and Haswell top CPU?I'll pass!
jwcalla - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
Is there a Z87 MB that supports ECC ram?bernstein - Thursday, May 1, 2014 - link
noMarquis - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
The article states there are 4 fan headers, but there are actually 6. The aforementioned four next to the CPU socket and two more in the corner near the cluster of SATA ports that are all-white.