The GIGABYTE X399 DESIGNARE EX Motherboard Review
by E. Fylladitakis on June 22, 2018 11:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Gigabyte
- ASRock
- Asus
- Ryzen
- ThreadRipper
- X399
- 1950X
Gaming Performance
AoTS Escalation
Seen as the holy child of DirectX12, Ashes of the Singularity (AoTS, or just Ashes) has been the first title to actively go explore as many of DirectX12s features as it possibly can. Stardock, the developer behind the Nitrous engine which powers the game, has ensured that the real-time strategy title takes advantage of multiple cores and multiple graphics cards, in as many configurations as possible.
As a real-time strategy title, Ashes is all about responsiveness during both wide open shots but also concentrated battles. With DirectX12 at the helm, the ability to implement more draw calls per second allows the engine to work with substantial unit depth and effects that other RTS titles had to rely on combined draw calls to achieve, making some combined unit structures ultimately very rigid.
Stardock clearly understands the importance of an in-game benchmark, ensuring that such a tool was available and capable from day one, especially with all the additional DX12 features used and being able to characterize how they affected the title for the developer was important. The in-game benchmark performs a four-minute fixed seed battle environment with a variety of shots and outputs a vast amount of data to analyze.
GRID: Autosport
No graphics tests are complete without some input from Codemasters and the EGO engine, which means for this round of testing we point towards GRID: Autosport, the next iteration in the GRID and racing genre. As with our previous racing testing, each update to the engine aims to add in effects, reflections, detail, and realism, with Codemasters making ‘authenticity’ a main focal point for this version. GRID’s benchmark mode is very flexible and, as a result, we created a test race using a shortened version of the Red Bull Ring with twelve cars doing two laps. The car is focus starts last and is quite fast, but usually finishes second or third. For low-end graphics, we test at 1080p medium settings, whereas mid and high-end graphics get the full 1080p maximum. Both the average and minimum frame rates are recorded.
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Oxford Guy - Sunday, June 24, 2018 - link
I agree. When TR 2 hits I would highly recommend Anandtech do an "undervolting Threadripper" page that compares Gen 2 an Gen 1 — on multiple boards.And, since this is a pro product, the overclocking stability threshold needs to ensure real stability, not the quick and dirty standard.
ECC RAM would also be useful to look at, when analyzing TR 2.
azrael- - Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - link
I was just going to point out that one of the foremost features on what is a semiprofessional motherboard for AMD's ThreadRipper should be support for ECC memory and the subsequent test thereof. Luckily, as far as Gigabyte's specification table goes the motherboard *does* support ECC memory. Now AT only needs to test it.Tom S - Monday, February 24, 2020 - link
I know that this is not a conclusive test, but with my X399 Designare EX...I have 4X16GB sticks of Kingston KSM26ED8/16ME - 2666GHz - ECC - CL19 - 1.2V
When I OC'd the memory to 3600MHz @ 1.2V with very tight timings (I forget exactly what)
it threw an ECC error that was captured by Memtest86.
Other ECC boards I've owned, have reported ECC errors in Windows event log "Kernal-WHEA",
or another log viewable in BIOS.
hansmuff - Saturday, June 23, 2018 - link
Which program did you use for measuring DPC? There are a few different ones, and I find they all produce different results.CEH - Monday, June 25, 2018 - link
You seem a bit obsessed with AMD lately. Isn't there anything interesting in Intel-related boards?oleyska - Tuesday, June 26, 2018 - link
I'll throw this out there:No..
Z170->270->Z370 is similar with minor updates to bling and the vrm circuit but nothing exciting.
X299 apart from evga's isn't very interesting.
The thing that makes x399 very exciting is the 64(60) pci-e lanes exposed to board manufactures while Intel have been giving 20,28,44 forever!
crashtech - Tuesday, June 26, 2018 - link
Flash drive instead of DVD should really be doable at this price level for sure.zukefok - Wednesday, June 27, 2018 - link
A quick glance at the motherboard's specifications reveals that up to eight SATA drives and three M.2 drives can be connected on the GIGABYTE X399 Designare EXvirpuain@gmail.com - Sunday, July 15, 2018 - link
"The second important feature of the GIGABYTE X399 Designare EX is the implementation of an International Rectifier IR35201 digital controller. What is unique about this particular controller is that it implements an algorithm that balances the load (and the heat output) across all of the power phases. This means that instead of having a couple of stages heavily loaded all of the time while the rest are idling, all eight stages are continuously sharing about the same load, greatly increasing the longevity of the circuitry. This means that the motherboard should hold up well for the upcoming Threadripper 2 launch."The IR35201 is not the reason any board will fulfill the power delivery needs ofa TR2, fets and phases will.
That being said, eight real phase consisting of the IR3556 is subpar VRM for a motherboard that needs to handle cpus at the 200W range. Board is pricey, in fact the VRM on this board is weaker than what you have on the flagship AM4 boards, like the taichi or ASUS CVII.
Tom S - Monday, February 24, 2020 - link
Did you run this with a special BIOS?I am trying to enter an offset voltage, but my BIOS F12, and every reviewer post that I've seen
seems to have Dynamic Vcore(DVID) and Dynamic VCORE(DVID) for SOC grayed out.
Is there some other field that I need to set in order to enter a value here? Help someone, thanks.