The GIGABYTE B550I Aorus Pro AX Motherboard Review: All The Small Things
by Gavin Bonshor on December 7, 2020 10:00 AM ESTGaming Performance
For B550 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 1909 update.
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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
76 Comments
View All Comments
Grabo - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
I've had this board since summer, currently on the latest firmware. No complaints, except the disappearing bluetooth. Sometimes it's there, mostly it isn't. Dual booting linux and windows and it's the same in both. I acquired a usb bluetooth adapter as soon as I read about others having the same issue with this board.mkarwin - Tuesday, December 15, 2020 - link
Seems like using the BT for key/mouse wireless device is out of the question in this case then?R3MF - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
I have this board, been great.Fujikoma - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
The owner's guide is pretty skimpy. There were no instructions or visuals for installation of the NVME drives, which I found very odd because the top side spacer screw threw me for a moment. It may seem dumb, but I'm a stickler for reading instructions before installing even simple things. Very much enjoyed seeing this article, since I bought this board for my wife to use for lite gaming.Dug - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
For the love of everything motherboards, please go back to or start testing the components on the motherboard. Wifi, ethernet, sound, memory, storage of m.2 front and back, sata, bluetooth, USB. These are the things that make or break a consumer buying a motherboard.All the testing you do, just says it runs some benchmarks. That's great, but unless a motherboard fails (I haven't seen a review yet that a motherboard fails to run your tests), then it's not really helping us.
How about clearance for popular heatsinks.
And why do you insist on measuring non uefi boot times? It's a waste of your time and everyone else.
Gigaplex - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
Fair comment, I did have some clearance issues with this board for heatsinks. Even the stock Wraith Stealth needed the plastic shroud to be rotated 90 degrees to fit on this board.Gigaplex - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
This is a weird time to post a review like this for this board. It has been out for a while, and has been solid for most of that time. However with the Zen 3 enablement BIOSes, there's been a lot of issues.6YearsLater - Tuesday, December 8, 2020 - link
Why didn't anandtech do graphis card reviews？biatch0 - Wednesday, December 9, 2020 - link
I recently got this exact board and am happy with it overall - other than the Bluetooth requiring a complete power off and disconnect from PSU in order to work regularly... but apparently that's a B550 issue?Grabo - Wednesday, December 9, 2020 - link
That may indeed be the case, am reading about the same issue for several brand B550 boards now. Back when I got this board in the summer I only found references to it. But yes, there was the unplug psu and replug advice then too, which does always work, but it isn't very handy when the psu is built into the chassis (nr200)..so I got an aptx usb bt adapter which always shows up. Software wise one just needs to handle the ax200 bt when it does randomly decide to show up (which it does sometimes, even if you don't unplug the psu).