The MSI Creator TRX40 Motherboard Review: The $700 Flagship for Threadripper
by Gavin Bonshor on February 26, 2020 11:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- MSI
- Ryzen
- TRX40
- Threadripper 3000
- Creator TRX40
- 3970X
- sTRX4
Gaming Performance
For TRX40 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 1909 update as per our Ryzen Threadripper 3960X and 3970X CPU review. (Ed - we also use a GTX 1080 for our gaming tests because that's all we have to hand on location; our motherboard editor is ca.5000 miles away from our GPU editor.)
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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milkywayer - Wednesday, February 26, 2020 - link
Can someone ninja ban this troll please?WaltC - Wednesday, February 26, 2020 - link
But imagine spending $20,000 on the closest useless Intel system that runs much slower on top of being far more expensive--"ouch"!--so there's "useless" and then there's "Intel useless"--grow up, guy...;)twtech - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Yeah, totally useless. Don't buy it if you can't use it.MDD1963 - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
While *I* personally have no use for more than 8 cores, I'd certainly never refer to any systems that have many more cores as 'useless'. If you are alluding to the WIndows 10 above 64 threads issues, then use Linux. If you can't, perhaps your preferred term 'useless' should be fairly applied elsewhere...? :)beedoo - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
I've always wondered, do you have mental issues?twtech - Saturday, March 28, 2020 - link
It's useless if you don't have a use for it, sure.airdrifting - Wednesday, February 26, 2020 - link
Random error code 06 and no bifurcation on two of the PCIe slots. Fail.airdrifting - Wednesday, February 26, 2020 - link
Also, the included M.2 card is a giant 2 slot one.rrinker - Wednesday, February 26, 2020 - link
And why would that be a problem? There's a perfect place for it - in the slot just above the heatsink for the on-board M.2 slots. It's already a double wide space, so it would not obstruct the bottom most slot.airdrifting - Wednesday, February 26, 2020 - link
Because it does NOT need to be a 2 slot card. Both ASUS and ASRock has a single slot solution and they were able to keep my four Sabrent 4TB SSDs in RAID 0 under 40C during sustained transfer. Also I need a second video card for my build, without bifurcation the other two PCIe x 16 slots were literally useless.