The GIGABYTE X470 Gaming 7 Wi-Fi Motherboard Review: The AM4 Aorus Flagship
by Gavin Bonshor on July 26, 2018 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- Gigabyte
- AORUS
- Ryzen
- X470
- Ryzen 2
- Gaming 7 Wi-Fi
- Gaming 7
CPU Performance, Short Form
For our motherboard reviews, we use our short form testing method. These tests usually focus on if a motherboard is using MultiCore Turbo (the feature used to have maximum turbo on at all times, giving a frequency advantage), or if there are slight gains to be had from tweaking the firmware. We put the memory settings at the CPU manufacturers suggested frequency, making it very easy to see which motherboards have MCT enabled by default.
Video Conversion – Handbrake v1.0.2: link
Handbrake is a media conversion tool that was initially designed to help DVD ISOs and Video CDs into more common video formats. For HandBrake, we take two videos and convert them to x264 format in an MP4 container: a 2h20 640x266 DVD rip and a 10min double UHD 3840x4320 animation short. We also take the third video and transcode it to HEVC. Results are given in terms of the frames per second processed, and HandBrake uses as many threads as possible.
Compression – WinRAR 5.4: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2017. 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.
Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test v2.1: 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. For a brief explanation of the platform agnostic coding behind this benchmark, see my forum post here. We are using the latest version of 3DPM, which has a significant number of tweaks over the original version to avoid issues with cache management and speeding up some of the algorithms.
Rendering – POV-Ray 3.7.1b4: link
The Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer, or POV-Ray, 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.
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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
29 Comments
View All Comments
vicbee - Thursday, July 26, 2018 - link
I know, right? I think this article was voice to text - or whatever that's called, because there are simple words that are spelled wrong but sound correct, such as "..however the margins are theme." Are what?asmian - Thursday, July 26, 2018 - link
Let's also call out "would of" instead of "would have", a schoolboy error any competent editor should have picked up. :(AdrianB1 - Thursday, July 26, 2018 - link
The proper command of the English language is no longer required to write articles on Anandtech. Anand left a long time ago.hansmuff - Thursday, July 26, 2018 - link
"The lackluster gaming results brings the overall results down, however the margins are theme."My sides. Really, Anandtech, you need to have an editor or at least rigid peer review. This article is written rather poorly.
PhrogChief - Thursday, July 26, 2018 - link
I specifically do not buy Gigabyte anymore because of the stupid name and silly eagle. What ever happened to the UD5, UD7, Formula OC? I'm sure I'm not the only one being lost to teenage 'gamer' marketing. I mean, is it so hard to come up with some non-lame marketing? Make it look nice with a slick name like Spectre, or whatever. So sick of stupid brands on electronics like the msi dragon and gigabyte, oh wait, AEOOORUSSSS, deformed bird. This isn't cereal. It's gdammed high tech. Make it slick and sophisticated. And make heatsinks that actually work again! Now get off my lawn!!!AdrianB1 - Thursday, July 26, 2018 - link
Aorus is kind of a "Goldie"/"Goldish" for Latin languages. Gold in Latin is Aurum.I specifically don't buy Gigabyte because they save 1$ using Realtek LAN instead of Intel (an Intel chip is $1.75). The performance difference is small, but worth more than the extra $1 if one also considers drivers and reliability.
Breadwinka - Thursday, July 26, 2018 - link
But this is using an Intel Lan.AdrianB1 - Thursday, July 26, 2018 - link
Correct. But only a couple from the dozen of variants are using Intel LAN, the ones with the most flashy and useless configuration for professional use. If you want a reasonable setup (no "gaming" or other childish features) then you only get Realtek LAN. I would gladly pay more than $10 for a decent mobo with Intel LAN.Ratman6161 - Thursday, July 26, 2018 - link
In the text you say "is capable of 3.90 GHz at 1.375 V" but in the chart you say 3.9 at 1.325. Are you saying that less voltage was required on the x470 than in tests with previous chipsets? I have found that to be true in my particular case. I moved my 1700 from an Asrock B350 board where it was at 4.0 and 1.38. On my Prime x470 pro, the same CPU still will not hit 4.1 without more voltage than I'm willing to risk. So I stuck to 4.0 and reduced the voltage to 1.35 and its completely stable. Next I'm going to try lowering it even more to find the lowest voltage where its stable at 4.0.So even though I'm not hitting higher speeds, I'd say that hitting the same speed at lower voltages is a good thing.
PhrogChief - Thursday, July 26, 2018 - link
Yeah, took Latin for 4 years, actually thought they were bastardising ancient Egyptian with a homage to Horus, what with the bird and all. If it was me, I'd nuke EVERY.GDAM.ANIMAL, in computer hardware branding. I don't need a bank-robber on ASUS boards to make me want it. Gimme the chipset, a 'plus' or 'deluxe' and call it a day.Asus WS boards are my idea of perfect looking hardware.