The MSI MEG X570 Ace Motherboard Review: Ace in the Hole at $369
by Gavin Bonshor on July 18, 2019 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- MSI
- AM4
- Zen 2
- Ryzen 3000
- X570
- MEG
- X570 Ace
- 3700X
- Ryzen 3700X
Gaming Performance
For X570 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 1903 update as per our Ryzen 3000 CPU review.
World of Tanks enCore
Albeit different to most of the other commonly played MMO or massively multiplayer online games, World of Tanks is set in the mid-20th century and allows players to take control of a range of military based armored vehicles. World of Tanks (WoT) is developed and published by Wargaming who are based in Belarus, with the game’s soundtrack being primarily composed by Belarusian composer Sergey Khmelevsky. The game offers multiple entry points including a free-to-play element as well as allowing players to pay a fee to open up more features. One of the most interesting things about this tank based MMO is that it achieved eSports status when it debuted at the World Cyber Games back in 2012.
World of Tanks enCore is a demo application for a new and unreleased graphics engine penned by the Wargaming development team. Over time the new core engine will implemented into the full game upgrading the games visuals with key elements such as improved water, flora, shadows, lighting as well as other objects such as buildings. The World of Tanks enCore demo app not only offers up insight into the impending game engine changes, but allows users to check system performance to see if the new engine run optimally on their system.
Grand Theft Auto V
The highly anticipated iteration of the Grand Theft Auto franchise hit the shelves on April 14th 2015, with both AMD and NVIDIA in tow to help optimize the title. GTA doesn’t provide graphical presets, but opens up the options to users and extends the boundaries by pushing even the hardest systems to the limit using Rockstar’s Advanced Game Engine under DirectX 11. Whether the user is flying high in the mountains with long draw distances or dealing with assorted trash in the city, when cranked up to maximum it creates stunning visuals but hard work for both the CPU and the GPU.
For our test we have scripted a version of the in-game benchmark. The in-game benchmark consists of five scenarios: four short panning shots with varying lighting and weather effects, and a fifth action sequence that lasts around 90 seconds. We use only the final part of the benchmark, which combines a flight scene in a jet followed by an inner city drive-by through several intersections followed by ramming a tanker that explodes, causing other cars to explode as well. This is a mix of distance rendering followed by a detailed near-rendering action sequence, and the title thankfully spits out frame time data.
F1 2018
Aside from keeping up-to-date on the Formula One world, F1 2017 added HDR support, which F1 2018 has maintained; otherwise, we should see any newer versions of Codemasters' EGO engine find its way into F1. Graphically demanding in its own right, F1 2018 keeps a useful racing-type graphics workload in our benchmarks.
Aside from keeping up-to-date on the Formula One world, F1 2017 added HDR support, which F1 2018 has maintained. We use the in-game benchmark, set to run on the Montreal track in the wet, driving as Lewis Hamilton from last place on the grid. Data is taken over a one-lap race.
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rocky12345 - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
If you were replying to me I don't think I ever said what I had hooked up to the Sata ports. SO here goes I have a Samsung 860 Pro 512GB as my C drive and 3 4TB WD blacks hooked to the system as just pure storage and game drives. When I upgrade to a new platform I probably will go with a 1TB NMVe drive as my C drive and pick up 3 6TB WD blacks for storage.I may also installed a second cheaper 1TB NMVe drive in the second M.2 slot so can install most played games on that drive.
TheUnhandledException - Saturday, July 20, 2019 - link
How about the horrible lack of punch card reader support. 4 SATA is fine these days. The future is m.2 (or ideally also u.2 but that seems server only). I am glad that OEMs aren't wasting PCIe lanes putting in 6 or 8 or 10 SATA ports. If you really need 8 SATA ports then get an expansion card and connect all your drives to that.rocky12345 - Monday, July 22, 2019 - link
4 ports for most are fine even my own needs only need up to 4 ports since on my current system I have 1 Sata SSD and 3 Sata hard drives installed and got rid of the Blu-Ray drive a long time ago.I think the point being made was for this amount of money for the board it seems like they cut some of the features. I think I have seen other recent Ryzen boards with 6 sata ports maybe even 8 ports and cost less also. Right now I require up to 4 ports on my current system and have 5 ports free.
In my next build I will only need 3 ports because of switching to NMVe m.2 SSD drive but I do plan on getting 3 hard drives for large storage needs because SSD drives can not match the price to storage size yet of a regular hard drive. My plan just like last time I got my drives is to get the fastest possible drives on the market in the consumer segment which is the WD Black drives. I probably will get 6TB drives this time around and would like to get the 8TB drives but they seem to be hard to find right now so 6TB will have to do I will just get 3 of them to fulfill my storage needs.
Tomyknee - Saturday, August 31, 2019 - link
Thank you. Why does no one see this? This is the first new PCIe upgrade in a decade and people are fretting about 6gb SATA? Stay with a stinking X399 board if you are going to continue to use SATAAzurael - Friday, July 19, 2019 - link
Are you ever planning to do native EFI post time? I'm not sure how relevant BIOS-emulation boot is any more.I certainly haven't had CSM enabled for about 5 years - just leaving it on, even if you're booting in EFI mode, easily doubles POST time on most of the Gigabyte boards I've used in that period - and that's without enabling AMI Fast/Ultra Fast boot mode where it doesn't bring up unnecessary things like AHCI and XHCI controllers which aren't hosting a boot device and will have to be initialised by the OS anyway.
My current machine starts booting Windows about 2 seconds after I press the power button (which is much faster than any of the OEM machines I've observed booting in EFI mode and leads me to suspect that the relative differences between boards will be totally different in EFI mode.)
marcle - Friday, July 19, 2019 - link
How much noise does the chipset fan make? Can I use the X570 chipset in an audio production environment that requires a (virtually) silent computer?Right now I've got an i7-4771 with 84w TDP that's inaudible in an insulated case, and stays under 60C (usually well under) even at load.
How would the X570 fare in that situation?
DillholeMcRib - Friday, July 19, 2019 - link
Is there any reason why the vendors have gone from reasonably priced X470 boards to overbuilt Intel-level price gougers on X570?zer0hour - Friday, July 19, 2019 - link
Ridiculously priced motherboard.Qasar - Friday, July 19, 2019 - link
nope.. that would be MSI's godlike x570 board..zer0hour - Saturday, July 20, 2019 - link
That one is even more ridiculous.