The ASRock X399 Phantom Gaming 6 Motherboard Review: $250 Sixteen Core Stunner
by Gavin Bonshor on March 12, 2019 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- ASRock
- ATX
- ThreadRipper
- X399
- TR4
- 2950X
- 2.5G
- Phantom Gaming 6
Gaming Performance
Due to the change of graphics card on the X399 test bench from an AMD RX 570 to a slightly more powerful NVIDIA GTX 980, for game testing, we're comparing it to our AM4 chipset boards. The Ryzen 7 1700 and Ryzen Threadripper 2950X share the similar Zen core architecture ported over to 12 nm which does perform similarly in gaming scenarios. The Ryzen Threadripper 2950X was tested in our game benchmark suite with both SMT enabled and disabled as in previous testing, it has shown that SMT can actually hinder in-game performance due to the lack of high thread optimization within certain games.
CHECK OVER - The only anomaly came in our Total War: WARHAMMER benchmark testing with the 1950X performing considerably worse than the Ryzen 1700. Every other test provided the expected results.
For 2019, we are running an updated version of our test suite, including OS and CPU cooler. This has some effect on our results.
For this review, we had to test with a 2950X as the 1950X we normally use with X399 had to be returned. This has some effect on benchmark data, however it is still rated to the same 180W TDP as the 1950X.
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.
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andychow - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
These days, pcbs come with anywhere from 1 to 14 layers. I'm assuming that this means the audio circuits are isolated on their own layers.sonny73n - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
Then it should be stated as "The audio PCB is on its own layer”. But I’ll have to break it down to see it for myself.Alexvrb - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
"ASRock has built this motherboard to support AMD Threadripper with a thermal design point of up to 180 W, which means it can only support up to 16 core processors such as the AMD Threadripper 2950X."Zen 2 will pack more cores in that same envelope. I find it highly likely even an entry-level TR4 board like this will support more cores when the next-gen models hit the market - after a BIOS update, of course.
Smell This - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
El-Oh-El @ 'post latency'Want some whine with that cheese, much?
sorten - Tuesday, March 12, 2019 - link
Weird product offering, considering Threadripper isn't a gaming CPU.TrackSmart - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
Agreed regarding Threadripper and gaming-centric builds. It doesn't make a lot of sense.Of course, to look at the marketing used on computer components, one would clearly come to the conclusion that *almost all* powerful computers are primarily designed for gaming!
Now, please explain to the finance department why we appear to be purchasing "gaming" equipment for our high-end workstations...
xray9 - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
I am wondering why thunderbolt is still not available with AMD boards. AFAIR Intel ceased license fees for this technology. Even for Intel boards this option is rare, especially if you want to build a Xeon based system to get ECC RAM as well. Do you know why this is the case ?AMD would be interesting as platform supporting ECC RAM compared to Intel Xeon, because the AMD CPU offering look good and are cheaper compared to Xeon.
One proposal for mainboard reviews. Could you kindly perform DPC latency measuring with LatencyMon in your reviews ? One time with default BIOS settings and one time with energy saving disabled ?
It would be very useful for people to identify good designed mainboards to achieve a very responsive systems for i.e. recording or gaming.
I had for example in the past a bogus mainboard where kernel timer latency was relatively high which caused audio drops. The only way was to use higher ASIO buffer sizes for recording, which is in some situations not so ideal.
I replaced the mainboard with the successor of this board on the same system.
And of all sudden the kernel timer latency went down to the absolute minimum of ~2 microseconds on an IDLE system, which was never possible with the other mainboard.
On some Laptop Reviews I saw in the past that they deliver these figures, which I regard as very useful. The lower kernel latency is, the quicker CPU cores are available for working on processes and threads without lag.
Valantar - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
I wish this board was around back when I built my partner's TR workstation in late 2017. We went for the Asus X399-E Strix, and frankly I think I would have preferred this. More m.2 (the Strix has one + one on a kinda awkward bracket), standard ATX size, and very noticeably cheaper. The BYO WiFi solution is good IMO - m.2 WiFi cards are dirt cheap, you can pick whatever rocks your boat, or leave it if you don't care. I just wish the WiFi bracket was instead integrated into the I/O plate - there's room in the middle there. Other than that: Good job ASRock.Valantar - Wednesday, March 13, 2019 - link
... and I entirely forgot to mention the 2.5Gbit Ethernet. That's a _huge_ plus (if only someone were to launch some cheap-ish 5p 2.5/5GbE switches!)guyr - Saturday, April 6, 2019 - link
I'm a software developer, and this board looks great for that application. I want cores, high clocks and fast storage; I specifically don't care about multiple GPUs, so the 4x16 configuration of most of the existing Threadripper motherboards was overkill. This board appears to have what I actually need, saving cost on features I don't: 8 DIMMs for plenty of memory, 3 M.2 for fast storage, and of course the Threadripper. 16 cores is fine for software development, though perhaps with Zen 3 we'll get 32 cores in the 180 watt envelop. Kudos to ASRock for diversifying the market.