CPU Performance

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, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It 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, 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 system build.

For reference, the ASUS X99-A does not implement Multi-Core Turbo.

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.

3D Particle Movement: Single Threaded

3D Particle Movement: MultiThreaded

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.

WinRAR 5.01, 2867 files, 1.52 GB

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.

FastStone Image Viewer 4.9

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.

HandBrake v0.9.9 LQ Film

HandBrake v0.9.9 2x4K

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.

POV-Ray 3.7 Beta RC4

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.

7-zip Benchmark

System Performance Gaming Performance
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  • Samus - Tuesday, December 23, 2014 - link

    Probably an awesome board for $200, but I agree with the conclusion: just not worth it for $250+ when $300-$350 gets you a way nicer board. We're already talking supercar-class with the X99 platform as it is so why penny pinch when building a $1000+ PC. If you're building a Ferrari, build a Ferrari.
  • ziphnor - Tuesday, December 23, 2014 - link

    Just did a built with an X99-A myself. With the prices available to me the X99 Deluxe is ~60% more expensive than the X99-A and seems to only offer a lot of crap that i dont need in comparison? How does it make my desktop PC more "Ferrari" by having WiFi, extra ethernet ports or more storage options, especially when i have no need of them?
  • SuperVeloce - Tuesday, December 23, 2014 - link

    I agree. This is a spot on board for something like 5820k and single gpu setup.
  • dcoca - Tuesday, December 23, 2014 - link

    I disagree, it supports X16 X16 for sli and plus X8 for tri and solution: I have this board and with the Asus app it overclocked my cpu to 4.6 all cores stable.. and it had x4 for m.2 so that's great in the future... I picked it overs cause of the Asus name and features that I needed..
  • dcoca - Tuesday, December 23, 2014 - link

    That should of read AMD solution...
  • ziphnor - Friday, December 26, 2014 - link

    Out of curiosity, could you provide some details on that 4.6 OC? Is it "stable" or Prime95 stable, and what voltage did you need? I am on air, and have only managed 4.3@1.175V with my 5820k, and only in combination with setting a Turbo Boost TDP limit (otherwise i cannot run Prime95 succesfully)
  • dcoca - Friday, January 9, 2015 - link

    Sup sir, well the application did it's thing and increase the vcore to 1.3 and I ran prime95.. with that said I took it back to 4.4 cause the antech 650 wasn't cooling it to the level I want... I run simulations for a hobby of the universe so can't have the pc crash on me cause of heat
  • R3MF - Tuesday, December 23, 2014 - link

    agreed, what i did with the MSI X99 SLI-plus
  • paesan - Wednesday, December 24, 2014 - link

    I did a build with this board for my brother and was able to overclock the 5820K to 4700 using the 5 way optimization. I used the Corsair H100i for cooling the cpu. This board is the best price point for those that do not need wifi, extra lan port and other extra features that are in the deluxe version. I agree with you that the deluxe version adds more features that a lot of people have no need for. I have a z87-pro board and never use the wifi.
  • R3fug388 - Tuesday, December 23, 2014 - link

    The bottom of the first page, where you mention the 4 USB 2.0 on the back panel. Is that a typo? Is it supposed to be USB 3.0?

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