ASRock X79 Extreme4-M and X79 Extreme4 Review – Sandy Bridge-E meets mATX
by Ian Cutress on December 9, 2011 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
- X79
Test Setup
| Processor |
Intel Sandy Bridge-E i7-3960X 6 Cores, 12 Threads, 3.3 GHz (3.9 GHz Turbo) |
| Motherboards |
ASRock X79 Extreme4-M (mATX) ASRock X79 Extreme4 (ATX) |
| Cooling | Intel All-In-One Liquid Cooler, made by Asetek |
| Power Supply | Silverstone 1000W 80 PLUS Silver |
| Memory | G.Skill RipjawsZ DDR3-2133 9-11-9 28 4x4 GB Kit 1.65V |
| Memory Settings | XMP |
| Video Cards |
XFX HD 5850 1GB ECS GTX 580 1536MB |
| Video Drivers |
Catalyst 11.8 NVIDIA Drivers 285.62 |
| Hard Drive | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed - CoolerMaster Lab V1.0 |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit |
| SATA Testing | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| USB 2/3 Testing | Patriot 64GB SuperSonic USB 3.0 |
Comparison to Other Reviews
Where applicable, the results in this review are directly compared to the following chipsets and boards which we have reviewed previously.
Power Consumption
Power consumption was tested on the system as a whole with a wall meter connected to the power supply, while in a dual GPU configuration. This method allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency. These are the real world values that consumers may expect from a typical system (minus the monitor) using this motherboard.
In low power usage, the mATX uses less power, however in large usage scenarios, it uses more. This could be due to the GPU spacing - the Extreme4 has an extra slot gap between the GPUs, meaning there is some airflow, and the fans do not have to work as hard. That wouldn't really affect OCCT though, so I'm unsure where exactly the difference would be in this regard.
CPU Temperatures
With most users running boards on purely default BIOS settings, we are running at default settings for the CPU temperature tests. This is, in our outward view, an indication of how well (or how adventurous) the vendor has their BIOS configured on automatic settings. With a certain number of vendors not making CPU voltage, turbo voltage or LLC options configurable to the end user, which would directly affect power consumption and CPU temperatures at various usage levels, we find the test appropriate for the majority of cases. This does conflict somewhat with some vendors' methodology of providing a list of 'suggested' settings for reviewers to use. But unless those settings are being implemented automatically for the end user, all these settings do for us it attempt to skew the results, and thus provide an unbalanced 'out of the box' result list to the readers who will rely on those default settings to make a judgment. Ultimately, it all comes down to design – if a manufacturer has put thicker copper in its power plane, there is less resistance, and thus a higher voltage (and possibly temperature) at the CPU, but a higher overclockability, perhaps.
Overall CPU temperatures are within range for the two boards.
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54 Comments
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prophet001 - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
b/c this is perfect grammar"Also, whats with fascination with older video "
mischlep - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Minor typo on recommendations page:(e.g. currently $219 at time of writing, saving £6) Should be "saving $6".
zanon - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Interesting review overall. A few comments:Page 6:
You still refer to setup stuff as "BIOS" even though it's clearly (I hope?) UEFI nowadays. Any particular reason for this? Or is it actually still BIOS for real despite clearly saying UEFI on that screen. It's confusing that you use both if you only mean one.
Also on page 6: "With the XFast RAM software, users can shift certain parts of the OS to the RAMdisk, such as the memory pagefile"
What. The entire *point* of a pagefile is that all your physical memory is used up and you're now hitting secondary storage. Reducing your main memory in order to make a RAMdisk that you then...use for memory? Nope nope nope.
Spivonious - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Yeah, I don't understand why you'd want the pagefile in RAM instead of just using the RAM.JonnyDough - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
What he said. Some programs require a pagefile. Allocated memory and a pagefile are not the same.JonnyDough - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Also, a pagefile can be dumped/saved on shut down. RAM is cleared.Aisalem - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Some of the software will not work properly or will simply crash in some situation if you will have no pagefile enabled. That's why having RAMdisk is very good idea as even if you will have 32GB RAM you still need at least 300MB pagefile on the system to be sure that all software will run proper. Using XFast RAM you simply "cheating" system by creating special partition with only pagefile on it making sure that system is running stable.zanon - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Um, no. Windows doesn't have that crappy a VM system, nor does any other modern OS. While some applications may check for the presence of a pagefile if the authors that wrote them were brain dead morons (you should search for other applications in that case), the OS isn't going to start paging anything out of main memory while there is still free or inactive memory available. It'll only start hitting the VM when main memory is consumed. Leave it to the OS. If you want things to go faster once you exceed your maximum physical main memory, get an SSD. Get an SSD anyway, actually.Wardrop - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Actually, at work I regularly used up all 8GB of my RAM while running VM's and multi-tasking. When that happened, some programs would spontaneously crash and disappear. Re-enabling the page file (only a small 512MB page file) fixed the problem. This was on Windows 7 x64 by the way. I use to always turn off my page file, but now I always keep a small page file enabled for that reason.JonnyDough - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
You and Spivonious are so obviously not researched on the matter of using a ramdisk. I suggest you study up before posting, you look like a fool.