The ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming Wi-Fi Motherboard Review: Premium Value
by Gavin Bonshor on July 22, 2020 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- Asus
- ROG
- AM4
- Strix
- Ryzen 3000
- Ryzen 3700X
- B550
- B550-F
CPU 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 B550 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 1909 update.
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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Death666Angel - Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - link
So, single players games aren't a thing anymore? I game, but I don't play multiplayer modes or games.ZipSpeed - Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - link
I dunno, I'm not a competitive gamer by any means and I've been playing online via Wi-Fi for years with no issue. Maybe I'm just less sensitive to the variation because I honestly can't tell the difference wired and wireless.PeachNCream - Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - link
I haven't noticed a substantial difference, but there is a lot of hair splitting going on out there and it is well supported by marketing departments at hardware companies that want to land sales from people. Higher refresh rates, faster mouse polling, overclocking to gain like 2% more performance, Killer NICs that claim to give your game's data packets priority over other packets and so forth all appeal to people that feel like buying all of those things will make them more competitive so they get to teabag someone's corpse more often and feel proud of themselves when their only accomplishment in life is being at or around the top of a leader board. It's sad, but male competitiveness easy to exploit because the individual experiencing it is typically blind to it and will not think rationally about it. Why else to obese men purchase large pickup trucks or glitter bomb glowing computers except to feel empowered in some small way? The WiFi versus wired ethernet thing is just one more way to proclaim you feel superior to someone that doesn't care enough to throw a twisted pair cable across a room or two.CardiWAP - Tuesday, August 11, 2020 - link
Absolute rubbish.Play any fighting game and you can tell right away when somebody is on Wi-Fi. Same thing in shooters.
Wi-Fi really is awful for anything requiring quick action.
Fighting games are based on frames and you have to be aware at every single moment of the frame data of moves.
Any added latency, jitter or any hiccup and the things you thought should have worked (and would have worked in a low latency wired connection) doesn't anymore. You drop a combo, you fail to punish a move, you fail to party and you die.
This particular example that is familiar to me can be extended to any online game requiring quick action, reflexes and constant known data and behavior.
Not using WiFi in these online games is not about anything you've described. It's just about having the best online experience - meaning one closest to offline. And you obviously wreak havoc playing on WiFi it might also be a question of respect for people playing with/against you.
The part about high refresh rate monitor is as misinformed and far-fetched as the Wi-Fi one.
You simply need to drag a simple window in your favourite OS and switch between 60Hz and 144Hz to understand the wonders of the smoothness in high framerate gaming.
Moreover, the switch to flat screen panels really was in some instances a regression that is somewhat mitigated with high refresh rate panels (in the blur department).
Overclocking has been a core part of PC gaming for decades so I won't even bother going further than this.
You might have a leg to stand on regarding Killer NICs and their drivers but they don't jack up the price of the motherboards they are in so it doesn't matter anyway.
MrVibrato - Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - link
I didn't know that you spell ISP like "WiFI" in your corner of the world. ;-PGastec - Sunday, January 3, 2021 - link
WiFi "kills" more than just gaming performances, it's slower than Ethernet cable connection for everything. A WiFi connection between the computer and the router is useful in certain situations but we can't deny that there is a consistent propaganda campaign to convince the consumers to switch from Ethernet to wireless connections, for a good price of course. The more you buy, the more we profit, after all! :)DanNeely - Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - link
"USB 3.0 (5 Gbps) 2 x Type-A Header (2 x ports)"Type A headers are 2 ports, each so this should either be 1x header, or 4x ports.
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - link
Thanks Dan. That's indeed 1 header.mooninite - Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - link
What about a test network performance? The I225-V has two bad revisions (v1 & v2) and there is no known way to know what version you will buy. A benchmark could confirm it.DanNeely - Wednesday, July 22, 2020 - link
If they're not making it explicit in the specsheet any test Gavin did would be of limited value since there would be nothing stopping Asus from having a silicon lottery where not all production runs use the same version of the controller.