The GIGABYTE X570 Aorus Xtreme Motherboard Review: Fanless AM4
by Gavin Bonshor on September 24, 2019 9:00 AM ESTCPU Performance, Short Form
For our motherboard reviews, we use our short form testing method. These tests usually focus on if a motherboard is using MultiCore Turbo (the feature used to have maximum turbo on at all times, giving a frequency advantage), or if there are slight gains to be had from tweaking the firmware. We put the memory settings at the CPU manufacturers suggested frequency, making it very easy to see which motherboards have MCT enabled by default.
For X570 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 1903 update as per our Ryzen 3000 CPU review.
Rendering - Blender 2.7b: 3D Creation Suite - link
A high profile rendering tool, Blender is open-source allowing for massive amounts of configurability, and is used by a number of high-profile animation studios worldwide. The organization recently released a Blender benchmark package, a couple of weeks after we had narrowed our Blender test for our new suite, however their test can take over an hour. For our results, we run one of the sub-tests in that suite through the command line - a standard ‘bmw27’ scene in CPU only mode, and measure the time to complete the render.
Streaming and Archival Video Transcoding - Handbrake 1.1.0
A popular open source tool, Handbrake is the anything-to-anything video conversion software that a number of people use as a reference point. The danger is always on version numbers and optimization, for example the latest versions of the software can take advantage of AVX-512 and OpenCL to accelerate certain types of transcoding and algorithms. The version we use here is a pure CPU play, with common transcoding variations.
We have split Handbrake up into several tests, using a Logitech C920 1080p60 native webcam recording (essentially a streamer recording), and convert them into two types of streaming formats and one for archival. The output settings used are:
- 720p60 at 6000 kbps constant bit rate, fast setting, high profile
- 1080p60 at 3500 kbps constant bit rate, faster setting, main profile
- 1080p60 HEVC at 3500 kbps variable bit rate, fast setting, main profile
Rendering – POV-Ray 3.7.1: Ray Tracing - link
The Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer, or POV-Ray, is a freeware package for as the name suggests, ray tracing. It is a pure renderer, rather than modeling software, but the latest beta version contains a handy benchmark for stressing all processing threads on a platform. We have been using this test in motherboard reviews to test memory stability at various CPU speeds to good effect – if it passes the test, the IMC in the CPU is stable for a given CPU speed. As a CPU test, it runs for approximately 1-2 minutes on high-end platforms.
Compression – WinRAR 5.60b3: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30-second 720p videos.
Synthetic – 7-Zip v1805: link
Out of our compression/decompression tool tests, 7-zip is the most requested and comes with a built-in benchmark. For our test suite, we’ve pulled the latest version of the software and we run the benchmark from the command line, reporting the compression, decompression, and a combined score.
It is noted in this benchmark that the latest multi-die processors have very bi-modal performance between compression and decompression, performing well in one and badly in the other. There are also discussions around how the Windows Scheduler is implementing every thread. As we get more results, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test: link
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz, and IPC win in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores. For a brief explanation of the platform agnostic coding behind this benchmark, see my forum post here.
Neuron Simulation - DigiCortex v1.20: link
The newest benchmark in our suite is DigiCortex, a simulation of biologically plausible neural network circuits, and simulates activity of neurons and synapses. DigiCortex relies heavily on a mix of DRAM speed and computational throughput, indicating that systems which apply memory profiles properly should benefit and those that play fast and loose with overclocking settings might get some extra speed up. Results are taken during the steady-state period in a 32k neuron simulation and represented as a function of the ability to simulate in real time (1.000x equals real-time).
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Smell This - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link
Maybe __ but I'm not sure I get your point.A conventional top down plugin has to bend 180-degrees to route under the tray as opposed to a 90-degree 'bend' ??
DanNeely - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link
A 90* plug doesn't get you anything unless you're routing the cable on the same side as the board (which isn't normal these days outside of SFF), or can make a tight 90* bend as the cable comes out of the routing hole. Unless you have a really flexible cable you're not going to be able to do that. Instead you end up having to make a 270* loop (up, then forward into where drive bays used to be, and then down and back to the board), so you still end up with a big loop.With a big loop a 180* can be done without putting any bending stress on the plug. A 270* either needs more cable to match the same bending radius or will have to be tighter and puts more stress on the board as a result. With the one system I had this sort of setup in there wasn't enough slack in the cable to do a loop with enough slack that it wasn't trying to bend/twist the board up. When I plugged the cable in before the board was screwed down it was flexing the board up when I tried screwing it down on the edge with the socket. With the board screwed down first, it was very difficult to get the plug to the socket partly because of the tray meaning I could only grip the cable from one side and partly because the cable didn't want to be bent tightly enough to go in. On the whole it was among the most frustrating build steps I ever did and the stiffness of the cable meant that it completely failed at the notional goal of keeping the wires out of the way that's normally behind 90* edge plugs.
My initial thought was that a rigid 90* adapter that extended out to the cable management hole would avoid the problem by removing the need to tightly bend the cable to fit. Thinking a bit more, that probably wouldn't be enough because making a tight bend behind the board would be just as difficult; you'd either need a 180* piece so the cable could stay flat on the backside of the board, or a short extension with all loose wires to make it work.
Ratman6161 - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link
How about this:https://www.newegg.com/cooler-master-cma-cemb00xxb...
Ratman6161 - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link
https://www.google.com/search?q=ATX+24+Pin+90%C2%B...MamiyaOtaru - Wednesday, October 9, 2019 - link
cool, connect that to the side plug and come at it from behind /seek2121 - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link
IMO we need a better solution for all the connectors that exist on motherboards. For example, those USB3 connectors. How many times have I bent a pin trying to plug one in when it accidentally gets pulled out? More than I'd care to admit. I mean hell, at least put a snap/latch on it similar to what most SATA cables have. Ideally, we've had 1 cable running from the case to the motherboard, and 1 cable running from the PSU to the motherboard. Both connectors would had the little snap or latch or whatever you call it, and both would be right angled so that they can easily be hidden from view for a nice clean look.DanNeely - Wednesday, September 25, 2019 - link
USB-C does use a smaller and more robust connector than USB 3.0 (you can see one on this board near the diagnostic code display) that appears to take its design inspiration from PCIe.A single cable from the PSU to the mobo would run into one size fits all problems and end up huge, ex the difference between the needs of an SFF system using a 4 pin CPU header and a high end work station/gaming board using 2x8pin CPU headers and a PCIe header (to give extra power for multiple GPUs).
What could be done easily enough would be to gut the 24 pin cable by making about half of its wires optional; even if not followed up by a new smaller plug/socket a few years later it would remove a lot of the headaches from the worst connector on the mobo. This could be done safely because the original 20 pin connector dates back to when the CPU ran on 3.3v, everything else ran on 5V, and hardly anything needed 12V; vs today when 5V is used almost exclusively for USB, 3.3V for odds and ends (eg 10 of the 25/75W a PCIe card can draw from the mobo is 3.3v not 12v), while everything else runs 12V to component specific voltage regulators.
The reason nothing's happened is more or less the same as why the mess of jumper style headers for the front panel has never been replaced by a standard block style connection. The PC industry as a whole no longer cares about desktops enough to expend the effort needed for a major new standardization round. Big OEMs can and do address the issues via proprietary components scoring spare part lockin as a bonus; while for everyone else (eg the people who make parts for customer built systems/boutique vendors) the upfront time spent and short term costs from needing to bundle legacy/modern adapters for a few years is too high to try and push something on their own. Residual trauma from the effort spent on the failed BTX standard some years back was probably an issue back when desktops were still important enough of a market segment to get serious engineering effort in standard modernization as well.
Dug - Monday, October 7, 2019 - link
I just have to chime in and agree with changing the entire layout. Look what oem's can do when they aren't tied to the ancient atx power supply and standard pin layout. Look at the power supply used on an imac pro. That's how it should be done. These giant cables and connectors are really unnecessary.4everalone - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link
I wish MB makers would start providing SFP+ ports instead of 10GBASE-T ports. That way we at-least have the option of running fiber/copper.TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, September 24, 2019 - link
I like the look of the board and passive X570 cooling, but am dissapointed at the lack of expansion slots. No USB 3 header? Really? Just a gen 2 that cant be used on the vast majority of cases, and even if it can it will onyl feed a singular port? No PCIe x1 slots for, say, a USB 3 header card to make up for the lack of internal headers?Granted, this is a subjective problem, not many people use more then 1-2 slots, but for the price, I would want way mroe expansion for future upgrades. Think USB 3 headers, replacement NIC or sound cards in case of on board failure, NVMe cards for RAID arrays and better cooling, ece.