The $120 MSI X470 Gaming Plus Review: Only 4-Phase VRM, Not 11-Phase as Advertised
by Gavin Bonshor on October 4, 2018 10:00 AM ESTCPU 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.
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just4U - Friday, October 5, 2018 - link
There really doesn't appear to be a great deal of difference between the Plus and the supposedly better pro version of this motherboard.. and typically, the pro can be had for in and around the same price. I like their Pro Carbon board tho as it's just better all around with more features (better lan/sound to) that imo are worth the little extra you pay.I do have to say that I've been very impressed with MSI's Ryzen MB offerings. The 300 and 400 series have been problem free for me and performed like champs whereas I've had some issues with Gigabyte and Asus offerings in those chipsets.
Oxford Guy - Friday, October 5, 2018 - link
"MSI do include an 8-pin 12V ATX power input for providing power to the CPU as well as an additional 4-pin for users looking to overclock their processors."Buildzoid says these additional power connectors are useless for Ryzen, as I recall. It's not possible to draw more than one power connector can provide, particularly given the anemic VRM setup here.
"This board does have an additional 4-pin available on top of the 8-pin ATX 12 V CPU power input and MSI advertises an 11-phase power delivery under the heatsinks. Underneath the heatsinks, there is an 11-phase VRM present, but the real configuration is revealed in our visual inspection of the board."
Umm.... No.
ballsystemlord - Sunday, October 7, 2018 - link
Gavbon, all the AMD MBs you have reviewed are misrepresenting their amount of power phases AFAIK, is their any way for a consumer to check this before purchasing?Does/has the lack of power phases adversely affected the non-overclocked performance of AMD's top chips?
You see, I'm planning to upgrade next year, and I think that this is important.
Dr. Swag - Sunday, October 7, 2018 - link
For the most part it doesn't matter much unless you're doing extreme ocing. Anything 4 phases and higher with a heatsink is usually gonna be fine for a 6 core and for an 8 core preferably you'd like something a bit beefier to handle the extra power requirements without potentially getting too hot (a fake 8 phase like the gaming plus would probably be fine because the extra fets means more max power the vrm can supply and also greater surface area to dissipate heat through)29a - Sunday, October 7, 2018 - link
Why was the testing done with a 980 and a 1700?Lazlo Panaflex - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
Agree with 29a. Why haven't you updated the test bed with (at least) a 2700? I doubt people buying these boards are paring them with 1st gen CPUs.Also, in the future could you disable Core Performance Boost and run some benches to see the difference in performance, please? FYI, My 2600 runs at 3.4 when it's disabled, and 3.9 when enabled; I have a MSI B450 Gaming Plus mATX.
Thanks
LP
Frenchyaz - Tuesday, April 9, 2019 - link
I've been so disappointed with MSI. I had a former generation 990FXA-GD80 and it has been rock solid from the get go. It had Military class 4 Caps and all bells and whistles.I got this board to upgrade along with a 2600X and the A2 Dimm port was dead, great. I returned the board and get another one after I called support and guess what, same Dimm port was also dead.
I returned the CPU and board, no more MSI for me.
So this board may be great when working but for me, I'll wait and will get a x570 when out, from Asus. Never had issues with Asus...we'll see.