The ASRock Z270 Supercarrier Motherboard Review: 4-way SLI and 5 Gigabit Ethernet on Kaby Lake
by E. Fylladitakis on September 29, 2017 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
- SLI
- Aquantia
- Z270
ASRock Z270 Supercarrier Software
Despite the motherboard’s class and price, ASRock made no effort to develop a software package any more advanced than what comes with their mainstream motherboards. The driver DVD has a very basic automated installer software with five tabs. The first tab lists all of the drivers and software that are compatible with this motherboard, plus Google’s Chrome Browser and Toolbar, even though these have their own tab. There is an “Install all” option that automatically installs everything, without leaving any room for the user to select what should be installed and what not. The “Utilities” tab is practically empty, with only the “Restart to UEFI” software to be found here, a simple shortcut that restarts the PC and automatically enters the BIOS. Manuals and guides can be found under the Information tab and, finally, the company’s contact information is all that can be seen under the Contact tab.
The core software package that accompanies the ASRock Z270 Supercarrier, and practically all of ASRock’s motherboards today, is the ASRock App Shop. This application doubles as a software “shop” and as an updates installer. Extra software packages that can enhance the system’s devices, offer more options, and even some basic games can be downloaded and installed.
ASRock’s A-Tuning utility is the software package that allows for overclocking, fan tuning and monitoring via the OS. In its “OC Tweaker” tab we found many of the settings that are accessible via the BIOS screen, allowing for casual overclockers to experiment with minimal risk, as the settings reset when the system restarts. It is also handy for people who do not want a permanent overclock forced via the BIOS but prefer to boot with stock settings and force an overclock whenever they want or after the OS has booted.
The ASRock XFast LAN technically is the well-known cFos software with ASRock’s skin. This software allows the user to prioritize network traffic according to his/her needs. For example, it can be set to prioritize the traffic of a specific game/application over a downloading/file sharing app or server. This is particularly useful for applications where seamless network traffic can be vital, such as, for example, when there are IP security cameras connected to the computer and they should not be disturbed by the downloading of a large OS update or other files.
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edzieba - Saturday, September 30, 2017 - link
A 'headphone amplifier' is just an op-amp used correctly in its linear region. Marketing departments may wish to tell you otherwise, but there is nothing magical about them.extide - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
WHY are we still seeing boards with SATA Express... That just needs to die!Regular Reader - Sunday, October 1, 2017 - link
Same reason this motherboard still has PS/2 on it.Samus - Saturday, September 30, 2017 - link
Is triple\quad SLI still a think? I mean, at what point are 2x 1080Ti's or 2x Vega64's not good enough for any game at any reasonable resolution even across multiple monitors?Regular Reader - Sunday, October 1, 2017 - link
Apparently there are enough buyers still out there (for multiple motherboard vendors no less) that want the braggingest brag of a gaming rig out there, regardless of the paltry 5% performance increase 3 and 4 cards affords.Notmyusualid - Sunday, October 8, 2017 - link
Its not all about gaming....CrazyHawk - Friday, October 6, 2017 - link
There are other uses for 4-way GPUs other than gaming. An inexpensive deep-learning rig is one of them. 16 PCI 3 lanes still provide 15.8 GB/second total bandwidth. With the PEX 8747 chip (in a 2-GPU system), if a single card is exchanging data with the CPU, it gets the entire 15.8 GB/second bandwidth, and GPU to GPU transfers are at 15.8 GB/second without involving the CPU.On GoogLeNet, with a GTX 1070, time spent transferring data at x16 is about 3% of runtime. With AlexNet (same hardware), it is about 5.5% of runtime. That means that for 95% of the job, there is no data going over the PCI x16 links. The PEX 8747 can give full access to the 16 PCI lanes to each GPU during that 95% of the time. With 4 GPUs, each gets x8 lanes, so the transfer time doubles, but it is still just around 10% of runtime, and only 40% of the total bandwidth is used (this analysis ignores optimizations possible through pipelining the data transfer with the compute).
The GTX 1080Ti is about twice the speed as the GTX 1070, so with 4 1080Ti cards, you are using near 80% of the bandwidth, which starts to become a stretch. But if you can afford 4 1080Ti cards, you can probably afford an HEDT machine. For getting started with deep learning, this motherboard, an 8700K processor, and 4 used GTX 1070 or GTX 1060 GPUs (after the mining craze goes bust) would be a very inexpensive way to build a real AI supercomputer.
Does anyone have any rumors/ideas on when the z370 version of this board will come out? (or the ASUS z370-WS version of their board?)
Notmyusualid - Sunday, October 8, 2017 - link
@ CrazyHawkPeople have been telling me since 2007, that mining is going to go bust:
1 Bitcoin equals 4469.43 US Dollar
Mining has changed, but alive & kicking!
oranos - Monday, October 2, 2017 - link
nobody knows how to push the irrelevant innovation of hardware quite like the ethernet industrywagletops - Tuesday, October 3, 2017 - link
save all these reviews for when the 370 comes out :)http://www.appcheatsonline.com/roblox-robux/