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.
29 Comments
View All Comments
Flappergast - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
Again I’m looking at the msi b350 just kicking ass. Can anyone tell me why?mapesdhs - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
"... so while technically there is a 6+3 phase count there, ASRock’s marketing is somewhat misleading."Is this by any chance the same issue that Buildzoid talked about re a particular Gigabyte board?...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IjWCOXSuKU
ipkh - Tuesday, July 31, 2018 - link
There is no doubler chip on the board. Linking/Shorting is not the same and shouldn't be conflated with what a doubler actually does.ZolaIII - Wednesday, August 1, 2018 - link
Why on earth would you pair this with an old first gen Ryzen? Long anticipated chipset to drive second gen Ryzen 5's... Very disappointing review.plonk420 - Wednesday, August 1, 2018 - link
thanks for the K4's VRMs!walmart32 - Saturday, August 4, 2018 - link
Please tell us about https://www.walmartnearme.co/Dug - Monday, August 6, 2018 - link
Can we please get some relevant information on motherboards like in the old days of Anandtech? Hard drive speed tests, lan and wireless tests, sound tests, memory tests, an analysis on why fps is so much lower. You know, the reasons people look at getting one motherboard over another. Plus get a new processor in there. You are using a new generation motherboard.Langers - Thursday, August 9, 2018 - link
I'm planning on building a SFF PC with the ITX B450 board and a Ryzen 5 2400G. I've not built a PC for about 8 years so I'm a bit rusty so any help is appreciated. Can anyone recommend which RAM to use? I'd like to go as fast as is supported without overclocking (to start with).Cheers
Langers
bjocan - Saturday, August 25, 2018 - link
A thing that was missed in the article when comparing the Gaming B450-ITX/ac to the X470 version of the same board was that the later has Bluetooth 5.0 while former only has Bluetooth 4.2. Could be significant to some buyers.