The EVGA X570 Dark Motherboard Review: A Dark Beast For Ryzen
by Gavin Bonshor on October 8, 2021 8:00 AM ESTGaming Performance
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 runs 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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Eliadbu - Saturday, October 9, 2021 - link
Or RGB, but it has 2nd NIC and m.2 key E (incase you want to add wifi card).jtd871 - Friday, October 8, 2021 - link
AFAIK, RAM overclocking is more stable when you are using only 2 sticks, and this is a 'halo' board designed primarily for competitive overclocking.You wouldn't use a top-fuel dragster as your daily commuter car or to show up to a formal red-carpet event. In the same way, this board is not intended for 'normal' computing or gaming.
Threska - Friday, October 8, 2021 - link
Now I'm just waiting for the workstation/server version.WaltC - Friday, October 8, 2021 - link
I couldn't believe that I read this sentence in the review of this mboard:"While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS."
There will be zero (0) customers of this motherboard who will decline to use the bios...;) Every single one of them will be quite conversant with the bios and eager to use it.
Seem to be a lot of this kind of general assumptions here that really have no relevance for the people who will be buying this product.
WaltC - Friday, October 8, 2021 - link
If I missed the place where you discussed a dual bios on this motherboard, or its lack of one, I beg pardon. But there are a lot of interesting DIP switches visible on this motherboard and a brief explanation would have been nice. Also, why would you test a 65W CPU with this board? Seems like a 5900X or 5950X would have been far more interesting, not to mention in keeping with the type of CPU a customer of the $690, OC'ing board is much more likely to purchase.I did agree with your conclusion, though, about boards costing half as much having very similar features and options--for instance, my two-year old x570 Aorus Master ($350) includes both the RT 1220-VB HD & a headphone AMP for onboard sound, but the x570 Master also includes a hardware DAC, the SABRE 9118, while the EVGA board lacks a hardware DAC. The Master includes 4 DIMM slots, and a manually switched dual-bios setup--which in my estimation is just about a requirement for an overclocking board--which the Master is, even though it doesn't have the VRM chops of this EVGA board. But my Master was shipped on the same day that Zen2 CPUs shipped from AMD, so I think the EVGA board is targeting upper-end Zen3 CPUs for OC'ing.
But as I mentioned earlier, trust me when I say that nobody will be buying a $690 OC'ing board who is afraid to go into his bios...;) Glad to see EVGA supporting AMD again, and like you, it will be nice to see a range of AMD4/5 EVGA board products at some point.
Oxford Guy - Saturday, October 9, 2021 - link
"While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS."Stuff like this is a gift (of hilarity) that keeps on giving.
Silver5urfer - Friday, October 8, 2021 - link
There are few things, first this board doesn't use ASM SATA controller, I think you should correct that. All 8 SATA ports are from chipset only. The extra PCB for LN2 also shows the same, Manual also states the same.Now moving on to the board vs Z590 DARK. They removed one NVMe M.2 slot on this, Downgraded the phases and smaller Aluminum heatsink instead of massive Copper block on Interl board, then we have the rear DP and HDMI removed.
Next, the bigger things. First is the USB ports, the board has rear I/O from Chipset only. None of them are from CPU. Usually all X570(S) boards have ton of CPU USB ports, EVGA chose not to for this board. I can guess the only reason being AMD Ryzen 5000 CPUs have issues with the USB ports dropping and all sort of bugs, still not ironed out. So they avoided those, but the front I/O panel ports will be from CPU only, on top they dropped the ASMedia controller for USB C unlike the Z590 DARK. They also dropped the U.2 port.
Next is why they did they go with the Dual DIMM slots, Ryzen doesn't do well with Dual Rank B-Die kits unlike Intel which likes them. Now we have to be too cautious on that part due to the Zen 3 IMC. Now the price, it's highway robbery period. The board is exactly priced at X570 Aorus Xtreme at $700 which not only packs everything this has but even more. Plus it also has the 10G LAN, on top of the HiFi DAC which is not that buggy trash ALC4080 class, instead ALC1200 like this. Crosshair VIII Extreme is $100 more but it has more features, however it has that dreaded garbage ALC4082 and all that ASUS bloatware for the proper functioning of the DAC/AMP hardware. These guys should have included a 10G LAN port at-least, they really are saving a ton of cash on this board, simply a Z590 DARK based PCB design with extra PCIe 4.0 M.2 drive and much more reduced components and choices vs Intel board.
Coming to review, surprised on the DPC latency of this board. Now I'm just waiting on how this board does, esp related to the AMD Ryzen stability with Memory and OC AND USB. Also it's a shame that there's no Ryzen 5000 used for review and no Memory tuning as well. Everything this board got going is all about OC and unlocking potential...
leexgx - Friday, October 8, 2021 - link
If you use 2x dual rank sticks (anything above 16gb per stick) is exactly the same as using 4x8gb single rank sticks (because it's in dual rank due to 2 single ranks per channel)The point of this motherboard is for lm2 overclocking is why there is 2 slots
Slash3 - Saturday, October 9, 2021 - link
EVGA's specifications page does still list two ASMedia SATA ports, and they were incorporated on the Z590 and other, previous Dark boards for XP compatibility. It's possible that they were on internal or pre-release samples but then removed for the retail version.PsychoOC - Friday, October 8, 2021 - link
Whats ironic is the world record holder for most ln2 benchmarks on 3700x is on b450 tomahawk;)