The ASRock B450 Gaming ITX/ac and B450 Gaming K4 Motherboard Reviews
by Gavin Bonshor on July 31, 2018 10:00 AM ESTGaming Performance
Ashes of the Singularity
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.
Rise Of The Tomb Raider
Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-person action-adventure game that features similar gameplay found in 2013's Tomb Raider. Players control Lara Croft through various environments, battling enemies, and completing puzzle platforming sections, while using improvised weapons and gadgets in order to progress through the story.
One of the unique aspects of this benchmark is that it’s actually the average of 3 sub-benchmarks that fly through different environments, which keeps the benchmark from being too weighted towards a GPU’s performance characteristics under any one scene.
Thief
Thief has been a long-standing title in PC gamers hearts since the introduction of the very first iteration which was released back in 1998 (Thief: The Dark Project). Thief as it is simply known rebooted the long-standing series and renowned publisher Square Enix took over the task from where Eidos Interactive left off back in 2004. The game itself utilises the fluid Unreal Engine 3 engine and is known for optimised and improved destructible environments, large crowd simulation and soft body dynamics.
Total War: WARHAMMER
Not only is the Total War franchise one of the most popular real-time tactical strategy titles of all time, but Sega delve into multiple worlds such as the Roman Empire, Napoleonic era and even Attila the Hun, but more recently they nosedived into the world of Games Workshop via the WARHAMMER series. Developers Creative Assembly have used their latest RTS battle title with the much talked about DirectX 12 API so that this title can benefit from all the associated features that comes with it. The game itself is very CPU intensive and is capable of pushing any top end system to their limits.
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u.of.ipod - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Why does the USB-C port need to use an additional ASMedia chipset? I thought B450 could support two 3.1 10GBS ports?vkristof - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Good question! This non-utilization of the B350/B450 on-chip "2 x USB 3.1 Gen2" ports has been a pet peeve of mine. Theoretically, it seems that Gen 2 ports could be added to B450 motherboards for minimal cost...I give credit to Gavin Bonshor for mentioning how the motherboard USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports are implemented. His description "the inclusion of a pairing of USB 3.1 10 Gbps (Type-A and Type-C) port; the Type-A comes native to the B450 chipset" indicates that at least one of the B450 Gen 2/10 Gbps ports can be made to work is good to read.
linuxgeex - Thursday, August 2, 2018 - link
Probably so that it can support more USB-C features than the mobo chipset does. ie perhaps thunderbolt and enhanced power delivery.AdrianB1 - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
So Asrock was not able to spend the extra 50 cents to put an Intel LAN on the ATX and mATX boards? In those $100 there was no room for it?PeachNCream - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
An Intel NIC would have been nice, but at least it's a RealTek and not a Killer so ASRock deserves credit where its due.mapesdhs - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Just curious, what is it about Killer NICs that people seem to not like? My MSI laptop has a Killer NIC and it works fine, at least for the uses I've put it to. So when is it where Killer NICs can or do let one down?hyno111 - Wednesday, August 1, 2018 - link
Bloated driver.DanNeely - Wednesday, August 1, 2018 - link
Their drivers have historically been much less stable than Intel or even Realtek's, and I've never seen a 3rd party review from a trusted site able to show any actual benefit for killer's alleged optimization for gaming other than generating fodder for their marketing dept.PhrogChief - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Only the b350 itx ASRock board has red heatsinks. Is this some copy pasta?PhrogChief - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
And frankly, just using stock photos in a review is just lazy...